frolicked gayly with Sydney's ruddy hair, as she tossed aside her hat
and sat down to recover her composure, so suddenly and extraordinarily
lost. Perhaps five minutes, perhaps ten, had passed thus in reflection
which she called to herself "disgustingly self-conscious," when Johnny
lifted his head and pointed his ears towards that side where the
undergrowth was thickest. Sydney sprang to her feet and put on her hat,
for she had no desire to be caught day-dreaming.
Having taken this precaution, however, she stood quite still, and
Johnny, with satisfied curiosity, renewed his search among the fallen
leaves.
The approaching sounds betrayed that there was a path on the other side
of the thicket. Indeed, Sydney remembered that one ran from Melissa's
cabin to a spring not far off, and she realized that she must be nearer
to the house than she had appreciated. The voices were those of a man
and a woman in no good humor with each other. In fact, a lively quarrel
seemed to be in progress.
"Ah certainly wish you-all wouldn' come here no mo'." It was Melissa.
"_Ah_ don' wan' to see ye; 'n you are so aggravatin' to Bud."
"Ye used to like to have me come, ye know ye did, M'lissy. Don' you-all
remember the time Ah kissed ye behin' the big oak in yo' daddy's
pasture? Ye liked me well enough then."
"You shut up, Pink Pressley. Ah was a silly girl then, 'n Ah'm a
married woman now, 'n hit's time you-all stopped foolin' roun' here."
The voices lessened in the distance, and a jay-bird which had screamed
lustily at their approach turned his attention once more to Sydney, and
found her still standing, bridle in hand.
She was shocked at the trouble that seemed to threaten the happiness of
Bud Yarebrough's household, and she stood uncertain whether to turn
back from the encounter upon which unwittingly she had intruded, or
whether to go on in case Melissa needed her help or her comfort. Johnny
pushed against her invitingly, and she mounted him from a near-by
stump, and, breaking through the scrub, turned his head along the path
in the direction of the cabin.
The house proved, indeed, to be close at hand; it had been hardly worth
while to mount the horse, so near it stood to the pine-tree of Sydney's
ambush. The mud daubing between the logs shone bright through the hazy
spring atmosphere, and a thick white smoke, betokening a handful of
chips newly tossed upon the fire, ascended slowly into the air as if
eager to explore the dulled blue sky above.
As Sydney came around the corner of the cabin, for the path debouched
at the rear, a terrified white rooster came running from the front, his
outstretched wings lengthening the stride of his sturdy yellow legs,
and his wattles swinging violently from side to side. At the same
moment angry voices again struck Sydney's ears.
"Never, never, never!"
Melissa was tremulously insistent.
"Ah'll make you-all sorry you ever married Bud Yarebrough," the man
responded, and Sydney turned the corner just in time to see him seize
Melissa by the waist and lean over to kiss her. The girl took advantage
of the loosening of his hold as he caught sight of Miss Carroll, and
delivered him a resounding slap upon his cheek, when she turned panting
to her opportune visitor.
"You-all saw, Miss Sydney, he didn' do hit! He's that hateful, he won'
let me alone,--always pesterin' roun' here when Bud ain' to home. Ah
'low Ah jus' hate him!"
Stricken still with surprise, Sydney sat upon her horse, her face
scarlet with distress and stern with disapproval. Pink glanced up at
her, and began to sidle off, abashed. He could not forbear, however,
throwing back a parting threat.
"You-all remember what Ah said. Ah'll make you sorry you ever married
Bud Yarebrough."
"What does it mean, Melissa?" asked Sydney, dropping from the saddle
and turning her face, now colorless, upon the weeping little wife
crouching in a corner of the doorway.
"Jus' what you-all heard, Miss Sydney. He's always comin' here when
Bud's away; 'n when he meets Bud anywheres they's always quar'lin', 'n
Ah'm jus' wore out with him."
Sydney hung the horse's bridle over the end of an upturned horseshoe
nailed to a tree before the cabin, and sat down on the door-step beside
her humble friend.
"Melissa, tell me,"--she was very grave,--"did he ever before--does
he----?"
She sought vainly for some phrase less bald than that which seemed so
uncompromisingly full of embarrassment.
"Did he ever try to kiss me, ye mean? No, indeed, Miss Sydney; he sho'
didn'. Only one time when Ah was a girl we kep' company fo' a right
smart bit, 'n one night, when a lot of us was playin' tag in the
pasture, he caught me 'n kissed me. That's the only time, hones', Miss
Sydney. He never done a thing like this befo' to-day since Ah been
married; jus' hung roun' 'n been aggravatin'."
Sydney took the hard hand between her own soft palms and stroked it
gently.
"Hush, dear, don't sob like that. Can't Bud keep him away? Can't he
forbid him to come here?"
"Ah'd be afraid to tell him about this, he's that fiery-tempered, Bud
is. He goes along jus' as easy, 'n then some day he jus' natchelly goes
rarin'. When Ah've tol' him how Pink comes botherin' me, he jus' says,
'Pore feller, he didn' get ye. Ah'm sorry fo' him.' But 'f Ah tell him
this he might shoot him, 'n Ah couldn' bear that!"
Melissa ended with a shuddering cry, and Sydney remembered pityingly
how the girl's brother had been brought home dead two years ago, shot
in a quarrel whose primary cause was corn whisky.
"Tell me, Melissa, what did he mean by that threat,--that he'd make you
sorry you'd married Bud? How can he harm him?"
"Ah don' know, oh, Ah don' know," sobbed the poor girl; "only hit's
somethin' mahty mean fo' sho'. He's that low-down 'n sneaky hit's sho'
to be somethin' mean," she reiterated.
"It seems to me, Melissa, that if I were married, I shouldn't want to
have a secret that my husband didn't know. Of course, you understand
Bud best; but be sure, quite sure, that it is right before you keep
anything from him, won't you?"
A wail from within the cabin brought both the girls to their feet. The
fortunate rule that most women who have to worry over their husbands
have children to divert their minds was unbroken in Melissa's case. She
wiped her eyes, took the morsel from the bed, and kissed it
passionately, while Sydney looked on with avid gaze.
"May I take her for a little while, Melissa?" she asked, humbly. "She's
so sweet!"
V
A Strong Man's Weakness
Through all the year's round of weather, good and bad; through the snow
of January and the wind of March; through the glare of the warm April
days before the foliage casts its protective shade over the earth;
through the heat of midsummer and the glorious wine-clear air of
October, round again to the rigors of Christmas,--through all the
circle of the twelvemonth Melissa's door stood open.
To all appearance, ventilation is a hobby ridden and overridden in the
Carolina mountains, but the doors are not left open for hygiene's sake,
or even in hospitality's good name. It is to promote the performance of
the ordinary duties of life, more comfortably carried on in the light
than in the dark; for since the shuttered openings that serve as
windows are unglazed, the door must be left open to admit the sun's
bright rays.
The one room of Melissa's cabin was scrupulously clean. Pictures of the
President and of one of the happy victims of Somebody's Pleasant
Pain-Killer were tacked upon the walls beside long strings of dried red
peppers and of okra. A gourd, cut into the shape of a cup, hung upon a
nail by its crooked neck. The bed was covered neatly with a
blue-and-white homespun coverlet, and a kettle steamed upon the fire at
the opposite end of the room.
The sunlight swept across the floor as far as Sydney's feet, and
glinted upon the silver spur at her left heel. It crept up to her
radiant face and glowing hair. As she held the little baby in her
strong young arms, she stood transfigured like an angel of old in the
eyes of Friedrich von Rittenheim as he walked up the trail that served
as an approach to the cabin.
"_Himmlisches Maedchen_," he whispered, and pulled off his cap with a
feeling of guilt that he was bringing into this pure presence his
thoughts of hatred and revenge.
Little Miss Yarebrough had a narrow escape from a fall as her temporary
nurse's eyes fell upon the figure outside the door.
"Ah, Baron, it is you!" cried Sydney, tucking the baby into the hollow
of one arm and extending her hand. "Grandmother has been disturbed
about you. Have you been away? It is a long time since you were at
Oakwood."
"Has it seemed so to you?" he said, tenderly. "I have been to the town,
and I am but now r-returned within a pair of minutes. I have come to
ask Mrs. Yare-brough to put into order my house for me."
The unexpected sight of Sydney was like the sudden breaking out of
sunshine through a bank of stormy cloud to the man whose whole mind had
been filled for days with poisonous thoughts. He beamed upon Melissa
and shook hands with her cordially.
"Yes, sir, Ah'll go this mo'nin'. You-all wants yo' flo's mopped up, Ah
suppose."
She took the baby from Sydney and laid her on the bed, and began to get
together what paraphernalia she needed.
"Bud ain' comin' home to dinner, so Ah c'n stay 'n cook yo's 'f ye
want," she called, cheerily, breaking in upon the silence that had
fallen between her two guests; a silence fraught with happiness for the
man, and with a return of that terrible shyness for the girl. Why she,
the belle of two seasons, whose composure always had been the envy of
the girls of her age, should stand overcome with embarrassment before
this jeans-clad German she truly did not know. All power of initiative
seemed to have passed from her, and von Rittenheim stood before her and
feasted his eyes upon her in a way that she had been wont to condemn as
"horridly foreign," and she did nothing to relieve the situation.
At last the happy idea of flight suggested itself. She pinned her hat
more securely and unlooped her skirt.
The glow died from von Rittenheim's face.
"You go? So goes ever-ything from me--love and fr-riendship--and even
hope," he added, in a whisper. Then, as Sydney looked at him curiously,
"Let me bring Yonny for you."
Sydney kissed a "good-by" upon the fat hand of the baby, now hooded for
her journey to the Baron's, and murmured to Melissa,--
"You will think of what I said? You will be quite sure?"
She turned and surrendered her slender, booted foot to the Baron's
palm, and was tossed deftly into the saddle. She had no realization of
the thrill that went through him at the touch; he had no notion of the
admiration that his dexterity roused in her.
"I came by a path through the woods and tore down some of Bud's fence.
Will you go with me and put it up? It is only a little way."
Von Rittenheim was delighted at the prolongation of his happiness. To
walk with his hand on her horse's neck; to do her a trifling service!
It was heaven!
"You will come soon to Oakwood, won't you? Grandmother is eager to see
you, and we are expecting some guests from New York on this afternoon's
train--the Wendells; I want them to know you."
The words were as sweet as the voice, and he repeated them in a whisper
as he put together the rails of Bud's fence after Johnny's surmounting
heels had cleared them.
Then the chill swept around his heart again. It did seem to him as if
he were losing everything that made life good. In the old country he
had yielded up the little that was left after happiness had been stolen
from him. Here he had yearned for friendship, and it had played him a
scurvy trick; he had begun to see a faint glimmer of hope at the end of
the black cavern--just a point of light that gave promise of a land of
sun and cheer beyond. And now he felt that he had no right to travel
towards that point of light, to strive to reach it and make that land
his own, while shame hung over him, and black and bitter thoughts
filled his heart.
His was a simple nature, von Rittenheim's,--one that yielded easily to
the common thralls of love and life. He should have been the happy head
of a family with the daily round of duties on a large estate to occupy
his thoughts. It was one of the freaks of fate that the kindly
outpourings of his heart always had been flung back at him. Unkind
chance had done her best to ruin a gentle and trusting disposition.
He was musing on his wrongs as he tramped along the path between Bud's
cabin and his own. His high-flung head was bent and his gaze downcast.
He struck ruthlessly at the dry stalks of goldenrod on the bank,
nodding southward before the prevailing wind. He still was brooding as
he approached his cabin; brooding so darkly as to bring over his
judgment the dim mists of error and of injustice with their attendant
cloud of revenge.
A mud-spattered buggy before the door drew his attention. It must
be--yet how would he dare? Still it _was_ Dr. Morgan's buggy. That
long-haired black mule was unmistakable. The sight of it shook von
Rittenheim as a breeze drives through pine-boughs. He felt choked, and
put his hand to his throat.
The old man had come to exult over him, and what could he do in his own
house? Ah, there was only one thing to be done. Everything pushed him
towards it.
But _now_--he would not be so cowardly as not to face the man he hated,
though a step into the brush beside the road would have concealed him.
As he approached he saw the Doctor's tall figure filling the height of
the doorway, though there was plenty of room to spare on each side. He
was talking to Melissa Yarebrough, who was within making a fire as a
preliminary to her cleaning and cooking operations.
"He sent you-all over, did he? Well, Ah 'low that means he's coming
along in a little bit. He's been away? Is that so? Ah wonder where. Oh,
here he is. How are you, Baron? Pretty day, isn't it? Melissa tells me
you-all've been away."
"Yes," curtly. "I have been away, as no one should know better than
you."
"Better'n me? Ah never knew it till this minute when Melissa told me.
Ah was at Mrs. Carroll's this morning, and she commissioned me to find
out where you-all were at, and why you hadn't been to see her. She had
sent Sydney to my house for news, but Ah missed her on the road
somehow. The old lady put me through mah catechism, and Ah couldn't
tell her anything about you since the day Sophy and Ah were here, so Ah
came by to find out."
"Do you dare say to me, sir, that you do not know where I have been?"
"Ah certainly do say it! How in the world should Ah know all the
movements of people in God-forsaken coves like this?"
The German's persistence was beginning to irritate the Carolinian,
grown autocratic and unaccustomed to question by long years of practice
among a country-folk submissive to the dictation of a leader.
"You are under my r-roof there where you stand. Come you down here
where only heaven's blue covers you, and I will tell you some things
which it is well that you should know."
To keep them out of mischief Friedrich thrust his clinched hands into
his pockets. Morgan did not see the application of von Rittenheim's
words about the sky, but he felt a threat in his tone, and, being no
coward, he came down the steps promptly. He even went so far as to
dispense with his quid.
A sharp contrast they presented,--the German, erect, well-poised,
plainly a soldier in spite of his ill-fitting clothes; the American,
lank and stomachless, yet taller than the other in spite of his bent
shoulders. His tawny beard was guiltless of care. Of all his slack body
only his eyes showed alertness as they looked sidewise from under his
old felt hat.
"Ah don't know what you-all are driving at, but Ah'm thirsting fo' that
information you're advertising to present me with free!" he drawled.
Von Rittenheim now had himself under control, though his feet and hands
were cold because of the retreat to his head of the fighting fluid.
"Let me ask you--after you were here with Mrs. Morgan--it is now three
weeks ago--did you not meet a man who asked you the way?"
"Asked the way? Let me see. Yes, Ah 'low we did. White horse?"
"A white horse. Exactly," returned von Rittenheim, dryly. "You directed
him on his road only too well."
"What do you mean? He asked if there was any cut that would shorten the
way to Asheville, and Ah told him the shortest he could do was to stick
to the State Road."
"Allow me to tell you, sir, that you lie."
Dr. Morgan flung up his head angrily. But he was loath to think that
von Rittenheim, whom he liked, was trying to pick a quarrel with him.
Besides, English spoken with a foreign accent fails to carry conviction
to ears unaccustomed to hearing it, and Morgan thought the German
unfortunate in his choice of a word.
"You mean Ah'm mistaken, and there is a short cut? If there is, Ah
don't know it. Where do you leave the State Road?"
"I mean, sir, that you tell not the truth, that you lie, when you say
that that was your conversation with that man. You lie, I say!"
Now there could be no mistake. The Doctor's sixty years fell from him
like a mantle. He looked a young man, and his face unfurled the banner
of wrath that knows no nation, but calls all the earth its own. The two
men glared at each other like dogs leaping against their collars, eager
to bury their teeth in each other's throats.
"By God," growled the elder man, "if you-all weren't a damned foreigner
Ah'd kill you! But Ah suppose you don't know any better, and Ah've got
to let you alone."
He turned and walked to his buggy. He did not forget to pat the noses
of the horse and mule that drew his equipage. He clambered into the
carriage, which protested, creaking, against his weight, and he jogged
slowly out of sight.
"Oh, my Lawd," he whispered to himself, gently rocking from side to
side,--"oh, my Lawd, why ain't he an American? Oh, why ain't he? But a
foreigner! He ain't responsible!"
Friedrich watched the retreating buggy with mingled disgust and
surprise.
"Why did he not r-resent that? If not that, what? He is br-rave, that
is clear; then why does he not fight? Ah, these Americans, I
compr-rehend them not!"
A furnace of indignation, he walked into the house. He passed through
his living-room, where Melissa was scrubbing the floor and singing a
doleful hymn as an encouragement to exertion, and went into his
bedroom. There, in the glass, he suddenly came upon his own face,
filled with bitterness, scowling.
He paused, shocked that this mask of hatred should be his. Abashed, he
turned away from the too truthful mirror of his tell-tale features. A
gurgling sound fell upon his ear, and he saw, lying contentedly upon
his bed, babbling inexplicable nothings, waving meaningless gestures,
rosy, happy, a baby--Melissa's baby.
The soldier looked down upon her solemnly. His face grew less stern and
his whole form seemed to relax.
Glancing guiltily towards the open door of the other room, he leaned
over the bed, and, turning the little head to one side with the tip of
his forefinger, he kissed the baby's cheek just on the rosiest spot.
VI
"I Warrant There's Vinegar and Pepper In't!"
A heavy rain was beating against the windows with intermittent bursts
of fury. Dr. Morgan, sitting in front of the fire in the room in which
Sydney and Bob had had their painful interview on the previous morning,
heard a mandatory whoop from without. Thrusting his stockinged feet
into his slippers, and laying down the _Pickwick Papers_ with a sigh
for the probability of his having to make a visit in such a storm, he
opened the door. A blast of wind brought in a sheet of rain that
dampened the ashes swept from the fireplace by the sudden draught.
"O-oh, Doctor!" came a voice from the rider on the other side of the
fence.
"Hullo! Who are you?"
"Bud Yarebrough. Ah got a letter fo' you."
"Well, light, ye fool, and put yo' beast under the shack."
The Doctor slammed the door and shivered back into the range of the
fire's glow.
"Come in," he shouted, when he heard Bud's stamping feet on the porch.
"Come in and warm. Who's sick, Melissa or the baby?"
Bud unwound the scarf that protected his ears, shook the water from his
jacket, and began to untie the strings that secured pieces of sacking
to his feet.
"Ne'er one. M'lissy's tol'able, 'n the baby's right smart. Doctor, Ah
don' know's Ah ever knew a baby 's was 's lively 's Sydney M'lissy."
"Common failing o' first babies," grunted the Doctor.
"Now mos' babies," pursued Bud, spreading out his scarf and the pieces
of burlap to dry before the blaze,--"mos' babies ain' overly
interestin', but Ah 'low Ah never saw a baby suck her thumb no
prettier'n Sydney M'lissy!"
"Did you-all say something about a letter?"
The Doctor was torn between a desire to be hospitable and a yearning to
return to Sam Weller.
"Yes, Ah got a letter fo' ye."
Bud began to hunt in the inner recesses of his apparel.
"'N Ah 'low he cain't be well."
"He? Who?"
The Doctor's hopes of picking up his book again, which had risen when
he heard of the admirable physical state of Melissa and the baby, sank
once more.
"Mr. Baron. He sho' mus' be crazy to go out in such weather's this, 'n
what's mo', to expect me to."
"He seemed to know the right person to apply to."
"That's the trouble with me. Ah'm that lackin' in good sense Ah do
anythin' anybody asts me to 'cos Ah'm flattered to be ast!"
"Does he say he's sick?"
"He don' say so, but he looks powerful res'-less 'n wild-like. He came
over 'bout noon 'n ast me would Ah carry you this letter."
Here Bud's prolonged search resulted in the discovery of the letter's
outline under his sweater, and he extracted it by way of the neck of
that elastic garment.
"Ah said, no, Ah wa'n' no fool to go out in such weather, 'n then he
cut loose 'n talked the most awful language. Ah couldn' understan' a
word of hit; Ah reckon hit's his foreign words or somethin', but Ah
never heard anythin' like hit befo'. 'N then he ast me again, mahty
quiet like, wouldn' Ah take this letter to you-all fo' him, 'n Ah jus'
natchelly thought Ah would!"
The boy grinned sheepishly. The Doctor nodded and ran his finger under
the flap of the envelope.
"So you think he's sick."
"M'lissy does. When Ah was puttin' the saddle on the mule she come out
to the stable with them bits o' crocus sack fo' mah feet, 'n she said
Mr. Baron'd jus' gone, 'n she 'lowed he had a fever comin' on, he
looked so bad."
Dr. Morgan was reading the letter for the second time, frowning heavily
over it.
"What do you-all think yo'self?"
"Well, Ah don' see how he can be right to walk a mile to our house in
this weather, not needin' to, 'n to _in_-sist on mah comin' here. Is
they e'er an answer?"
The older man rose and put a log on the fire, while Bud gathered
together his primitive panoply and began to arm himself against the
elements.
"You tell him, Bud, that Ah'll attend to it when the mud dries after
this rain. Ah get enough hauling round to do in the mud, without
anything extra," he added.
Bud's curiosity was suffering.
"Ain' you-all goin' to see him?"
"You tell him what Ah say." The Doctor picked up his book with an air
of dismissal. "Shut the do' tight," he called, and then read the same
page three times over with unthinking mind, until he heard Bob's step
coming down the stairs.
"Bob."
"Sir?"
The young man looked out of the window, wondering how soon the rain
would stop enough for him to go to see Sydney.
"Read this."
Bob took the letter.
"The Baron," he said, studying the small, foreign hand.
"Read it aloud."
Bob began obediently:
"MY DEAR SIR,--It is now more than three weeks that you played upon
me a trick most treacherous. What it was I will not relate, for it
would be needless. This I do assert, and more, that when you tell
me you do not know what I mean, as you told me yesterday, you say
not the truth. When I demand that you give to me the satisfaction
that a gentleman should offer to another under such circumstances,
I feel that I am treating you with a courtesy which you do not
deserve. I think a whipping would suit better your contemptibility.
Still, nevertheless, I conceal my pride, and I beg that you will
meet me at whatever place you may appoint, and that you will fight
with me with any weapon that you may choose.
"My unfriended condition in this country makes it not possible that
I should be accompanied by a person who shall be suitable to be my
second. But I entreat that my poverty in this respect will not
deter you from bringing a friend with you.
"I am, sir,
"Yours with faithfulness,
"FRIEDRICH JOHANN LUDWIG V. RITTENHEIM."