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DIXIE HART
_By_ WILL N. HARBEN
Author of "The Redemption of Kenneth Galt," "Gilbert Neal,"
"Abner Daniel," "Pole Baker," etc.
[Illustration]
WITH FRONTISPIECE
A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Published by arrangement with Harper & Brothers
Copyright, 1910, by HARPER & BROTHERS
* * * * *
TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE
RICHARD WATSON GILDER, WHOSE
KINDLY APPRECIATION OF THE
CHARACTER OF "DIXIE HART" WAS MY
INSPIRATION IN WRITING THIS BOOK
* * * * *
DIXIE HART
CHAPTER I
In a blaze of splendor the morning sun broke over the mountain, throwing
its scraggy brown bowlders, spruce-pines, thorn-bushes, and tangled
vines into impenetrable shadow. Massed at the base and along the rocky
sides were mists as dense as clouds, through the filmy upper edges of
which the yellow light shone as through a mighty prism, dancing on the
dew-coated corn-blades, cotton-plants, and already drinking from the
fresh-ploughed, mellow soil of the farm-lands which fell away in gentle
undulations to the confines of the village hard by.
"A fellow couldn't ask for a prettier day than this, no matter how
greedy he was," Alfred Henley mused as he stood in the doorway of his
barn and heard the gnawing of the horses he had just fed in the stalls
behind him. A hundred yards distant, on the main-travelled road which
ran into the village of Chester, only half a mile away, stood his house,
the eight rooms of which were divided into two equal parts by an open
veranda, in which there was a shelf for water-pails, tin wash-basins,
and a towel on a clumsy roller. A slender woman, with harsh, sharp
features, older-looking than her thirty years would have justified, and
a stiff figure disguised by few attempts at adornment, was sweeping the
veranda floor, and in chairs propped back against the weather-boarding
sat an old man and an old woman in the plainest of mountain attire.
For a moment Henley's eyes rested on the group, and he sighed deeply.
"Yes, she's my wife," he said. "I owe her every duty, and, before God,
I'll stick to my vows and do what's right by her, come what may! She was
the only woman I thought I wanted, or ever could want. They say every
cloud has a silvery lining, but my cloud was made out of lead--and not
rubbed bright at that. I reckon, if the truth must be told, that the
whole mistake was of my own making. Whatever the Creator does for good
or ill, He don't seem to bother about hitching folks together; He leaves
that job to the fools that are roped in. Well, I'm going to stick to the
helm and guide my boat the best I can. I made my bed, and I'm as good a
sleeper as the average."
Here the attention of the man, who was tall, strong, good-looking, and
about thirty-five years of age, was attracted by the dull blows of an
axe falling on wood, and, looking over the rail-fence into the yard of
an adjoining farm-house, a diminutive affair of only four rooms and a
box-like porch, he saw an attractive figure. It was that of a graceful
young woman about twenty-two years of age. Her hair, which was a rich
golden brown, and had a tendency to curl, was unbound, and as she raised
and lowered her bare arms it swung to and fro on her shapely shoulders.
"Poor thing!" the observer exclaimed. "Here I am complaining, and just
look at her! A stout, able-bodied man that will grumble over a mistake
or two with a sight like that before his eyes ain't worth the powder and
lead that it would take to kill him. Look what she's took on her young
shoulders, and goes about with a constant smile and song on her red
lips. Yes, Dixie Hart shall be the medicine I'll take for my disease.
Whenever I feel like kicking over the traces I'll look in her direction.
I'd jump this fence and chop that wood for her now if I could do it
without old Wrinkle making comment."
Her work finished, the girl turned and saw him. She flushed a shade
deeper than was due to her exercise, and with the axe in hand she came
to him. Her large hazel eyes held a mystic charm behind the long lashes
which seemed actually to melt into the soft pinkness of her skin.
"Good-morning, Alfred," she greeted him, her lips curling in a smile. "I
know this ain't where you sell goods, but I thought it might save me a
trip to town to ask you if you keep axes at your store. This old plug of
a thing is about as sharp as a sledgehammer."
"I've got a few poked away behind the counters somewhere," he laughed,
as he always did over her droll and original speech, "but the handles
ain't in them, and that is a job for a blacksmith, if they are ever made
to hold. Let me see that thing." He took the axe from her, and ran his
thumb along the blunt and gapped edge. "Look here, Dixie," he said, "I
thought you was too sensible a farmer to discard good tools. This axe is
an old-timer; you don't find such good-tempered steel in the axes made
to sell these days, with their lying red and blue labels pasted on 'em.
Give this one a good grinding and it will chop all the wood you'll ever
want to cut. Let me have it this morning. I've got a grindstone at the
store, and I'll make Pomp put a barber's edge on it."
"Of course you'll let me pay--"
"Pay nothing!" he broke in. "That nigger is taking the dry rot; he's
asleep under the counter half the time. The idea of you delving in the
hot sun with a tool that won't cut mud! You oughtn't to chop wood,
nohow. You ain't built for it. Your place is in the parlor of some rich
man's house, leaning back in a rocking-chair, with a good carpet under
foot."
"That's the song mother and Aunt Mandy sing from morning to night," the
girl smiled, showing her perfect teeth. "They want me to quit work, and
get some man to tote my load. I reckon if the average young fellow out
looking for a wife could see behind the hedge he'd think twice before he
jumped into the thorns."
Henley laughed again, his eyes resting admiringly on her animated face.
"I reckon the gals wouldn't primp so much either if they could see the
insides of their prize-packages," he returned. "I reckon neither side is
as wise while courting is going on as they are after the knot is tied.
Folks hereabouts certainly have plenty to say about me and my venture."
There was a frank admission of the truth of his remark in the girl's
reply. "Well, if I was you, I wouldn't let anything they say bother me,"
she said, sympathetically. "Mean people will say mean things; but you've
got friends that stick to you powerful close. I've heard many a one say
that in taking your wife's father-and mother-in-law to live with you,
and treating them as nice as you have, you are doing what not one man in
ten thousand would do."
"I don't deserve any credit for that--not one bit," the young man
declared. "I'm not going to pass as better than I am, Dixie; I'm just
human, neither better nor worse than the average. I reckon you've heard
about how I happened to get married?"
"Not from _you_, Alfred," the girl answered, in a kindly tone. "I have
often wondered if the busybodies got it straight. I've heard that you
used to go to see your wife before she married the first time."
"Yes, me and Dick Wrinkle was both after her in a neck-and-neck race,
taking her to parties, corn-shuckings, and anything that was got up.
Hettie never was, you know, exactly pretty, but she had a sort o' queer,
say-little way about her that caught my eye. I was a gawky boy, as
green as a gourd, and never had been about with women. Dick was just the
opposite: he was a reckless, splurging chap that dressed as fine as a
fiddle, wasn't afraid to talk, joke, and carry on, and he could dance to
a queen's taste; so he naturally had all the gals after him. I was
afraid he was going to cut me out, and I was fool enough to--well, I
used to hope, when I'd see him so popular in company, that he'd make
another choice. And he might--he might have done it--for he was the most
wishy-washy chap that ever cocked his eye at a woman; he might, I say,
if me an' him hadn't had a regular knock-down-and-drag-out row. He was
drinking once, and said more than I could stand about a hoss trade I'd
made with a cousin o' his, and it ended in blows. The crowd parted us,
and he went one way and me another; but after that he hated me like a
rattlesnake, and he told her not to let me come there again. He might
not have made that demand if he had thought it over, for it sorter give
'er a stick to poke 'im with. She used to say nice things about me to
egg him on, and he often went with her for no other reason than to keep
me away. Well, you can see how it was. She wanted to beat the other
gals, and he wanted to outdo me, and, in the wrangle, they got married
one day all of a sudden."
"And you felt bad, I reckon," Dixie Hart said, sympathetically.
"I wanted to die," Henley answered, grimly. "I cursed man and God. That
gal was my life. I was as blind as a bat in daytime."
"Then I've heard," the girl pursued, "that he neglected her and finally
went off West with Hank Bradley, and almost quit writing to her."
"Yes," Henley nodded, "and she moped about home as pale as a dead
person, and never seemed interested in anything that was going on. All
that didn't do me any good, I'm here to tell you. Her trouble become
mine. I toted it night and day. I wasn't fit for work. I was as nigh
crazy as a man could well be out of an asylum."
"Then the news come back that he was dead?" The girl leaned on the fence
and looked down.
"Yes; Hank Bradley come home, and told how Dick was blowed away in the
awful tornado that destroyed that new town in Oklahoma. Hank had helped
hunt for his body; but it never could be identified among the hundreds
that was picked up, and so his remains never was brought home. That one
fact nearly killed Hettie. I'm talking plain, Dixie, but me and you are
good, true friends, and I want you, anyway, to understand my fix. I used
to watch her taking walks all by herself in the woods, always in her
thick, black veil, and bowed over like, as if she was under a heavy
load. I reckon no woman the Lord ever constructed is quite as attractive
to the eye uncovered as she is partly hid, for we are always hunting for
perfection, and so nothing under the sun seemed to me to be so good and
pure and desirable as Hettie did. I even gloried in the attention she
paid his mammy and daddy. I thought it was fine and noble, and that it
gave the lie to the charge that women are changeable. I don't want you
to think that I rate her any lower now, either, Dixie, for I don't.
She's a sight better woman than I am a man, and I certainly dogged the
life out of her till she agreed to marry me. She told me fair and square
at the start that she'd always love him, and I told her that it wouldn't
matter a bit. It hurts my pride a little now, but that ain't her
lookout. Folks say she's odd and peculiar, and that may be so, too, but
she was that way all along, and it's a waste of time to criticise
anybody for what they can't help."
"I've always liked her," the girl said. "She certainly attends to her
own business, and that is more than I can say for my chief enemy, Carrie
Wade. Alfred, that girl hates the ground I walk on, and yet she keeps
coming to see me. She has me on her visiting list so she can devil me.
She has no work to do at home, and so she comes over to nag me. She
never has a beau or gets a thing to wear without trotting over to tell
me about it or flaunt it in my face. She even makes fun of me for having
to work in the field, and is actually insulting sometimes. I'd shut the
door in her face, but it would only please her to think she'd made me
mad."
"She's more anxious to get attention from men than any woman I ever laid
eyes on," Henley declared, resentfully. "When drummers come to sell me
goods, she scents 'em a mile down the road, and is in the store
pretending to want to buy some knickknack or other before they open
their samples. I oughtn't to talk agin a lady, Dixie, but she lays
herself open to it, and is so much like a man in some things that I
forget what's due her as a woman. She has such a sneering way, too. That
reminds me. I heard her mention my name when I passed you and her at the
spring the other day. I couldn't hear what she said, but from the way
she snickered I knew she was poking fun. I caught this much: she said
that I was the only man on earth who was fool enough to do something or
other. I couldn't hear what it was, and I didn't care much, but--"
Henley broke off, and for a moment his eyes rested on the averted face
of his companion.
"I don't carry tales," Dixie finally said, with a touch of
embarrassment, "but I've a good mind to tell you exactly what she said,
Alfred, so that you won't think it is worse than it really was. It
wasn't such an awful thing, and she was laughing more at her own
smartness than at you. She said--she said you was the only man under the
sun who had gone so far as to adopt a step-father-in-law. Now, that
wasn't so terrible, was it?"
A sickly smile struggled for existence on the face of the storekeeper,
and his color rose. "Well, that was a new way to put it, anyway," he
said. "I think I could laugh hearty at that joke if it was on some other
fellow, and I'm glad you told me what it was. I didn't know but what she
was saying something even nastier than that."
"She really said some _nice_ things," Dixie went on, diplomatically.
"She said it was good of you to give a home to the Wrinkles, and--"
"As I said just now, I won't take credit for that," Henley broke in; "in
fact, I'd have refused if I could have done it. It come as a surprise,
and it almost knocked me silly. I'd counted on Hettie doing a good many
odd things, but I never expected that. So when she come home from the
camp-meeting, where there had been such a big religious upheaval, and
said she'd met the old man and woman there, and that they both looked so
lonely and peaked and ill-fed that she felt like she was acting
unfaithful to Dick's memory in living in one county and them in
another--well, that's the way it happened. I confess I never thought the
pair looked so bad when they come over, for they was awful cheerful, and
seemed to 'a' been fed on the fat of the land. Hettie told me afterward
that she'd been sending 'em all her spare change, so that was explained.
You'd never know the old woman was about unless you stumbled over her in
the dark, for she is as quiet as a mouse, and never says a thing nor
listens to anybody but him. He's all right. The old man's all right. I
really think I'd miss 'im if he was to leave. I never like to encourage
him too much, but I often laugh at the jokes he plays on folks. People
poke fun at me for having him around, but he drives off the blues
sometimes. He showed me what to expect from him the first day he got
here. He come down to the store, and walked in and looked around till he
saw the tobacco-boxes behind the counter, and he went to 'em and pulled
a plug off of each one, and smelt of 'em and looked at 'em in the light.
Then he took the best one and sidled over to me. He run his hand down
in his pocket, and I thought he was going to pay me for it, but he was
just hunting for his knife. He grinned as he clipped a corner off the
plug, and stuck it betwixt his short teeth. 'You'll find that I'm a
great chawer and smoker, Alf,' he said. Then he axed me if I had such a
thing as a empty dry-goods box about, and when I pointed to some in the
back-yard that I was saving to put seed-corn in, he said he'd take one
and wanted me to have the horses and wagon sent over for a pig they had
left. 'I wouldn't send for it,' he said, 'but it has got to be a sort of
pet. Its pen used to be right at our window, an' me an' the old lady
miss its squealing, especially in the morning. It is as good as an
alarm-clock.'"
The girl wiped a smile from her merry mouth. "Excuse me, Alfred," she
said, "but it does seem powerful funny. It must be the way you tell it."
"I'm glad it's funny to _somebody_, and you are more than excusable," he
said, dryly. "If I could get as good a joke as that on an enemy of mine
I'd never kill 'im in a duel; I'd keep him alive to laugh at."
"You didn't say whether Mr. Wrinkle paid for the tobacco or not," Dixie
reminded him, expectantly.
"Well, I'll tell you now that he didn't," was the answer, "nor for a
pocketful of red stick-candy which he took from a jar. He said it was
for his wife's sweet tooth; but if she got any of it she met him on the
road home, for he was chucking it in at a great rate as he walked away."
They both glanced toward Henley's house. They saw the subject of their
remarks emerge from the kitchen door, and hang his slouch hat on a nail
on the veranda, and reach for the dinner-horn.
"He's going to blow for me," Henley smiled, as the spluttering blast
from the horn rang out and reverberated from the mountain-side.
"Breakfast is ready. He eats like a horse at all times, and is as hardy
as a mountain-goat. I'm going to call him 'Kind Words.'"
"Kind Words"? Dixie looked up inquiringly and smiled. "That's as odd as
Carrie's 'stepfather-in-law.' Why are you going to call him that?"
"Because," and Henley glanced back as he was moving away, "the
Sunday-school hymn says, 'Kind words can never die,' and I know old
Wrinkle won't."