That night as Skimpy sat with the family group by the fireside in
his father’s cabin, he had much ado to maintain a fictitious flow of
spirits, for at heart he was far from cheerful. Often he would pause, the
laugh fading from his face, and he would lift his head as if listening
intently. Surely the wind had no message for him as it came blaring down
the mountain side! What significance could he detect in the clatter of
the bare boughs of the tree by the door-step that he should turn pale at
their slightest touch on the roof? Then recognizing the sound he would
draw a deep breath of relief, and glance covertly about the circle to
make sure that he had been unobserved. So expert in feigning had poor
Skimpy become that he might have eluded all but the vigilance of a
mother’s eye.
“Air ye ailin’, Skimpy?” she demanded anxiously. “Ye ’pear ter feel the
wind. Ye shiver every time it blows brief. Be thar enny draught thar in
the chinkin’?”
“Naw’m!” said Skimpy hastily. “I war jes’ studyin’ ’bout that thar song—
“‘The sperits o’ the woods ride by on the blast,
An’ a witch they say lives up in the moon.
Heigh! Ho! Jine in the chune!
Jine in, neighbor, jine in the chune!’
“It jes’ makes my marrer freeze in my bones ter sing that song,” Skimpy
said when his round fresh voice had quavered away into silence—somehow he
could not sing to-night.
“Waal, I never set no store by sech,” said his mother. She looked
reassuringly at him over the head of the baby, who slept so much during
the day that he kept late hours, and did his utmost to force the family
to follow his example. He sat on her knee, sturdily upright, although
she held her hand to his back under the mistaken impression that his
youthful spine might be weak; but he had more backbone—literally and
metaphorically—than many much bigger people. He was munching his whole
fist, for his mouth seemed not only large but flexible, and as he gazed
into the fire he soliloquized after an inarticulate fashion. His face
was red; his head was bald except for a slight furze, which was very red,
along the crown; notwithstanding his youth he looked both aged and crusty.
Bose was at his mistress’s feet. He too sat upright, meditatively
watching the fire with his one eye, and now and then lifting the remnants
of his slit ears with redoubled attention as the wind took a fiercer
twirl about the chimney. Occasionally as the baby’s monologue grew loud
and vivacious, Bose wagged the stump of his tail in joy and pride, and it
thwacked up and down on the floor.
It was a very cheerful hearth—the grinding tidiness of Mrs. Sawyer showed
its value when one glanced about the well-ordered room; at the clean pots
and pans and yellow and blue ware on the shelves; at the bright tints of
the quilts on the bed and of the hanks of yarn and strings of peppers
hanging from the rafters that harbored no cobwebs; at the clear blazes
unhindered by ashes.
Obadiah with his fiddle under his chin was directly in front of the
fire. He was tightening and twanging the strings; now and then cocking
the instrument close to his ear to better distinguish the vibrations.
There are few musicians who have a more capable and discerning air than
Obadiah affected in those impressive moments of preparation. His three
brothers sat on a bench, drawn across the hearth in the chimney corner,
its equilibrium often endangered, for the two at one end now and again
engaged in jocose scuffling, and Skimpy in the corner was barely heavy
enough to keep it from upsetting. Sometimes their father, solemnly
smoking his corn-cob pipe, would, with a sober sidelong glance and a deep
half-articulate voice, admonish them to be quiet, and their efforts in
this direction would last for a few moments at least. In one of these
intervals their father spoke suddenly to Skimpy.
“I war downright glad ye tuk Ike up ez short ez ye done this evenin’,
Skimp,” he said. “Though,” he added, with an afterthought, “I don’t want
ye to gin yerse’f up ter makin’ game o’ folks.”
“’Twar him ez fust made game o’ me,” said Skimpy, ruefully, the taunt
devised by the ingenious Binwell still rankling deep in his simple heart.
The twanging fiddle-strings were suddenly silent. Obadiah looked up with
a fiery glance. “What gin the critter the insurance ter make game o’
you-uns, Skimp?” he demanded angrily.
Until today Skimpy had never mentioned his grievance, so deeply cut down
was his self-esteem, and so reduced his pride in his “gift in quirin’.”
He had hardly understood it himself, but he dreaded to have the family
know how low his powers were rated lest they too think poorly of them.
For Skimpy himself had come to doubt his gift—the insidious jeer had
roused the first self-distrust that had ever gnawed him. His voice no
longer sounded to him so full, so sweet, and loud, and buoyant. He sang
only to quaver away, forlorn and incredulous after the first few tones.
No more soaring melodies for him. He could only fitfully chirp by the
wayside.
“He ’lowed,” said Skimpy, turning red, “ez I couldn’t sing—ez Bose,
thar, could sing better’n _me_—hed a better voice; Bose, yander, mind ye.”
Bose at the sound of his name looked up with a sleepy inquiry in his
single eye. Skimpy did not notice, but began to wheeze and rasp forth,—
“‘Oh-aw-ee-ye, Mister Kyune, Oh, Mister Kyune!’ That’s the way he ’lowed
I sing.”
“Dell-law!” Obadiah’s flexible lips distended in a wide and comprehensive
sneer that displayed many large irregular teeth, and was in more ways
than one far from beautiful. But to Skimpy no expression had ever seemed
so benignant, indicating as it did the strength of fraternal partisanship.
“He’s jes’ gredgin’ ye, Skimp,” cried Obadiah. “Else he be turned a
bodacious idjit! He air a idjit fur the lack o’ sense! Shucks!”—his
manner was the triumph of lofty contempt as he again lifted his violin to
his ear—“don’t ye ’sturb me ag’in ’bout Ike Guyther. Don’t ye, now.”
The two boys who sat at the end of the bench talked together, so eager
were they to express their scorn. “The whole Smoky Mountings knows
better’n that!” cried one belligerently.
“Nobody kin sing like Skimpy—sings like a plumb red-headed mocking-bird,
an’ Ike knows that fac’ ez well ez road ter mill,” said the other.
His mother had almost dropped the baby, who made a great lunge toward
Bose. “Why,” she cried, “Skimpy gits his singin’ ways right straight from
his gran-dad Grisham—_my_ dad—ez war knowed ter be the mos’ servigrous
singer they hed ennywhar roun’ in this kentry fifty year ago. I hev hearn
all the old folks tell ’bout’n his singin’ an’ his fiddlin’ when he war
young, an’ I ’members he sung fune’l chunes whenst he war a old man;
he hed gin up the ways o’ the worl’ an’ he wouldn’t sing none ’ceptin’
’round the buryin’ groun’ whenst they war c’mittin’ some old friend ter
the yearth. An’ his voice would sound strange—strange, an’ sweet an’
wild, like the water on the rocks in a lonesome place, or the voice of a
sperit out’n the sky. Oh my!—oh my!”—she was rocking herself to and fro
with the baby in her arms, her distended eyes looking far down the vistas
of the past. “How I ’members it—how I ’members it!”
Hark! Skimpy starts with a sudden shock. Was that the beating of the
boughs on the roof, drum-like, or a rub-a-dub measure played with two
pea-sticks on the rail fence of the garden—the signal by which Jerry
Binwell was to summon him should he conclude to try the hazardous
enterprise this night? The wind—only the wind; wild weather without!
Thankful he was to be left to this cheerful fireside, and the warm
partisan hearts so near akin to him.
“I wonder ye didn’t larrup Ike, Skimpy,” said Obadiah. “Ye could do it.
He’s heavy, but mighty clumsy. Ye could run aroun’ him fifty times whilst
he war a-turnin’ his fat sides roun’.”
Obadiah knitted his brows and nodded confidently at Skimpy.
“I never thunk ’bout fightin’,” responded Skimpy. “My feelin’s war jes’
so scrabbled up I never keered fur nuthin’ else! Arter Ike an’ me hed
been so frien’ly too!”
“That’s like my dad. Skimpy’s like his gran-dad,” said Mrs. Sawyer,
dreamily. “He war tender an’ easy hurt in his feelin’s.”
Like that saintly old man! How _could_ she think it. Skimpy was ready to
burst into tears. And yet, he argued, there was nothing wicked about what
he was to do. He wished only to help Jerry Binwell to secure the box of
papers that could do naught but harm now—to help a man who could have no
other aid. Why did the enterprise terrify him as a crime might? he asked
himself in exasperation. Certainly as far as he could see there was no
mischief in it. As far as he could see! Alas, Skimpy! How shortsighted
a boy is apt to be! He began to say to himself that it was because
everybody was down on Binwell, being poor and therefore unpopular, that
he too was influenced by the prevalent feelings, even when he sought
to be friendly. Yet this reasoning was specious. If it had involved no
disobedience, his heart would have been light enough. He could have gone
along gayly with his father, whom he trusted, and explored every chasm
and cavity in Keedon Bluffs, or, for the matter of that, in the Great
Smoky Mountains. But as he listened for the summons—a faint travesty of
a drum-beat on the rail fence—he would grow rigid and pale, and when
the boughs swaying in the blast touched with quick, tremulous twigs the
clapboards of the roof with a tapping sound, he shivered, and started
from his seat, and fell back again, hot and cold by turns.
“I be glad fur ye ter hev no mo’ ter do with them Guythers, ennyhow,”
said his father gravely. “They hev acted mighty strange bout’n Jerry
Binwell—an’ ef they consorts with sech ez him me an’ mine can’t keep
in sech comp’ny. Folks hev tuk ter specla’tin’ powerful bout’n Ab an’
him hevin’ been sech enemies—Ab war blinded through his treachery—an’
now livin’ peaceable together under one roof. Some folks ’low ez Ab hev
got his reasons fur it, an’ they ain’t honest ones. I ain’t a-goin’ ter
pernounce on that; I ain’t a-goin ter jedge, kase I don’t want ter be
jedged. I reckon I’d show up powerful small—though honest—thar ain’t no
two ways ’bout that, I thank the mercy. But ye done mighty well, Skimpy,
ter gin up yer frien’ like I tole yer ter do thout no questions, kase
this Binwell war thar. Ye’ll l’arn one day ez I hed a reason—a mighty
good one, too.”
He sucked his pipe sibilantly. “Ye done mighty well, Skimpy,” he repeated
with an earnest sidelong glance at his son.
Skimpy listened, half choking with the confession that crowded to his
lips. And yet how could he divulge that he had given up Ike indeed for
Binwell himself; how could he confide Binwell’s secret of the Bluffs, the
story of the courier and his hidden box and the order to be shot as a
deserter; and above all, how could he admit having assisted in throwing
away old Corbin’s ladder—the malice and the mischief of it frightened him
even yet.
“I’ll tell ez soon ez I kin put it back. I’ll tell dad ennyhows; I hev
got ter holp Jerry Binwell this time, but arter that I’ll never go along
o’ him ag’in,” he thought, as he stared pale and abstractedly at his
father, who was tilted back in his chair contentedly smoking his pipe.
Obadiah twanged gleefully on his fiddle while the firelight and shadows
danced to the measure; the other two boys scuffled merrily with one
another, sometimes leaving the bench to “wrastle” about the floor,
falling heavily from time to time. The baby sputtered and crowed and
grabbed Bose’s ear in a strong mottled fist until that amiable animal
showed the white of his eye in gazing pleadingly upward at the infantile
tyrant. The wind whirled about the house, the door shook, and the
branches of the tree close by thrashed the roof.
“Why, Skimpy, how mournful ye look!” exclaimed Mrs. Sawyer.
“Shucks!” said Obadiah fraternally, “ye needn’t be mournin’ over Ike an’
his comp’ny. I wouldn’t gin a pig-tail, nor a twist of one, fur Ike!”
“Ye hev got comp’ny a plenty at home,” exclaimed Mrs. Sawyer, “with yer
three big brothers”—
“An’ the baby,” cried one of the wrestlers pausing for breath.
“An’ Bose,” added the other, red-faced and panting.
“Laws-a-massy, Skimp,” exclaimed Obadiah, rising to the heights of
heroism, “I’ll gin ye the loan o’ my fiddle. Thar!”
He placed the instrument in Skimpy’s trembling hand, and laid the bow
across his knee. And this from Obadiah, who had always seemed without
feeling except for his own music!
Their kindness melted Skimpy, who held the instrument up to his agitated
face as if to shield it from observation, and burst into tears.
“Waal, sir!” exclaimed the wrestlers in chorus.
“Tut—tut—Skimpy boy!” said his father in remonstrance.
Obadiah’s face was anxious. “Jes’ lean a leetle furder ter the right,
Skimp,” he said, “don’t drap no tears inter the insides o’ that thar
fiddle—might sp’ile it tee-totally.”
Skimpy held the violin well to one side, and wept as harmlessly as
he might. He found a great relief in his sobs, a relaxation of the
nervous tension—he might have told them all then had it not been for the
inopportune solicitude of his mother.
“Ye hed better go ter bed, sonny. I know it’s early yit, but ye look
sorter raveled out. Ye better go ter bed an’ git a good sleep, an’ ye
won’t keer nuthin’ ’bout Ike an’ his aggervations in the mornin’.”
Skimpy, still carefully holding the precious violin, sat on the bench
for a moment longer, struggling with that extreme reluctance to retire
which is characteristic of callow humanity. But he felt that it would be
better to be out of the sight of them all; he might be tempted to say or
do something that he would regret afterward; he rose slowly, and with
an averted face, held the fiddle and bow out toward Obadiah who grasped
them with alacrity, glad enough that his generosity had not resulted in
the total destruction of the instrument in which his heart was bound up.
Skimpy with slow tread and a downcast look which greatly impressed the
two sympathetic wrestlers, who were standing still now and gravely gazing
after him, took his way up the ladder in the corner which ascended into
the roof-room of the cabin. He paused when he had almost reached the top,
turned and glanced down doubtfully at the group below.
The flames, yellow and red, filled all the chimney, and the little
room was brave in the golden glow. Already the two wrestlers were
again matching strength in friendly rivalry, seizing each other by the
waist, and swaying hither and thither with sudden jerks to compass a
downfall—their combined shadow on the wall reeling after them seemed some
big, frightful two-headed monster. Obadiah’s cheek was tenderly bent upon
the violin; a broad smile was on his face as the whisking bow in his deft
handling drew out the tones. The baby’s stalwart grip on Bose’s ear had
begun to elicit a long, lingering, wheezing whine for mercy, not unlike
the violin’s utterance; it ended in a squeak before Mrs. Sawyer noticed
how the youngster was enjoying himself.
“Pore Bose!” she cried as she unloosed the mottled pink and purple fist,
and then with a twirl she whisked the baby around on her lap with his
back to his victim. A forgiving creature was Bose, for as the baby’s
bald head turned slowly on its neck and the staring round eyes looked
after the dog, Skimpy could hear his stump of a tail wagging in cheerful
fealty to the infant, and thwacking the floor—although the wrestlers were
unusually noisy, although the violin droned and droned, and although the
winds sang wildly without and the sibilant leaves whirled.
Skimpy hesitated even then for a moment as he stood on the ladder;
finally he mounted the remaining rungs, his story untold.
It was not very dark in the roof-room; through the aperture in the floor,
where the ladder came up, rose the light from the fire below, and there
were many cracks which served the same purpose of illumination. Skimpy
could see well enough the two beds where he and his brothers were wont to
sleep. Garments hung from the rafters, familiar some of them and often
worn, and others were antique and belonged to elders in the family long
ago dead; these had never been taken down since placed there by their
owners; several were falling to pieces, shred by shred, others were
still fresh and filled out, and bore a familiar air of humanity.
Skimpy did not approach the beds, he quietly crossed the room to the
gable end, paused to listen, then opened the batten shutter of a little
glassless window beside the chimney. Dark—how dark it was as he thrust
out his head; he started to hear a dull swaying of the garments, among
the rafters, as if they clothed again life and motion. Only the illusion
of the wind, he remembered, as he strove to calm the tumultuous throbbing
of his heart, his head instinctively turning toward the fluttering
vestments that he could barely see.
The wind still piped—not so sonorous a note, however; failing cadences
it had and dying falls, as of a song that is sung to the end. Once again
the boughs beat upon the eaves—and, what was that! Skimpy’s heart gave a
great plunge, and he felt the blood rush to his head. A faint clatter—a
ra-ta-ta, beaten drum-like on the rail fence of the “garden spot”—or was
it his fancy?
The wind comes again down the gorge. The althea bushes and the holly
shiver together. The dead Indian corn, standing writhen and bent in the
fields, sighs and sighs for the sere season. And the boughs of the tree
lash the roof. An interval. And once more—ra-ta-ta! from the garden
fence! And ra-ta-ta, again.