The house was the usual small log-cabin, so overshadowed, however, by
trees, dense and dark, that not the whole structure, but only the tiny
porch and door were visible up the dusky green vista. When the sun fell
through the leaves it was in fleckings of abnormal lustre, so deep was
the shade. Fowls pecked about in the long dank grass. From high up
on the mountain-side came the clear metallic clink of a cow-bell. A
spring gurgled close at hand in the yard, and a vessel, with butter or
milk in it, covered with a white cloth, was visible among the gravelly
banks that bounded the spring branch. An old woman, tall and stalwart,
sitting upon the porch, furtively looking at the two visitors as they
came through the bars and up the path, had so forbidding an aspect
that Shattuck was reminded of the superstition of "an evil eye." She
gave them no greeting, but listened silently as Rhodes, having pulled
himself together again into his genial, rustic, canvassing identity,
asked for Felix Guthrie. He broke off short.
"Now, I wonder if you ain't Mrs. Guthrie!" he exclaimed.
"Ye air a good guesser," she said, with a sneer. "Who else would I be,
hyar in Fee Guthrie's house?"
She wore no cap. Her hair, luxuriant and gray, was combed plainly down
over her ears and caught in a heavy coil, that betokened its great
length, at the back of her head. Her face in contrast was sallow and
parchment-like. The features were singularly straight; her eyes were
dark, her spectacles were mounted upon her head, and her expression
was unsmiling. It was hardly wonderful that Rhodes should have lost
his balance, and he had a discomfited sense that Shattuck might relish
the fact. Shattuck, however, was looking about with his usual keen
susceptibility to the interest of new places and people.
"I mean," said Rhodes, confused, "the second Mrs. Guthrie."
"I ain't the _fust_ one, now, sure," she said, her eyes fixed upon him
with a sort of pertinacious attention. "An' what's that to you?"
Rhodes made a mighty endeavor to cast off the influences that paralyzed
his advances. "You'd never guess, and so I'll tell you. I have heard
my grandfather talk about you enough--how he danced with you at a bran
dance down on Tomahawk Creek. Remember old Len Rhodes? Young Len, he
used to be; but I am young Len now, myself."
Her face changed suddenly, so unexpectedly that one might wonder that
it did not creak, so stiff and immobile had the features seemed. There
was a new expression in her eye--a sort of glitter of expectancy.
"What did he say, this hyar old young Len Rhodes o' yourn? What did
he say 'bout'n me?" She had a cautious air, as if she reserved her
opinions.
Rhodes had taken off his hat and was leaning against the post of the
porch, although he still stood upon the ground. He burst into sudden
laughter that seemed to startle the somnolent dark stillness of the
shadows.
"Oh, no, Mrs. Guthrie," he cried, archly. "You don't catch me that
way. You'll be saying next thing that because I'm running for the
Legislature I'm going round the country trying to get votes by
flattering the ladies. I don't know what the _t'other_ Len Rhodes
said to _you_ that day at the bran dance on Tomahawk Creek years and
years ago, but _this_ Len Rhodes ain't a-goin' to repeat any of his
second-hand compliments, not if he knows himself, and he think he do!"
A faint color was in her parchment-like cheek, a yellow gleam in her
black eyes; the woman seemed to have grown suddenly young! A moment ago
the idea might have been ridiculous, but now it was easy to see that
she must have been beautiful--most beautiful. And she was determined
to hear the words in which old Len Rhodes--in her day young Len
Rhodes, the judge's son, and the richest and most notable man in all
the county--had celebrated the fact. Her vanity still burned, albeit
embers. How long, how long since fuel had been brought to feed this
fire, that nevertheless would die only when her breath might leave her!
"Oh, ye air jes' a-funnin'! Ye can't remember nuthin' yer gran'dad tole
'bout the gals he danced with forty-five year ago. He couldn't tell 'em
one from t'other hisself arter twenty year had passed. Gals is mos'ly
alike," she added, with a consciousness that Rhodes had knowledge,
as far as she herself was concerned, which contradicted this humble
assertion. She smiled upon him. "Ye mus' git in the habit o' tellin'
a heap o' lies electioneerin'. An' ye feel like ye mought ez well
bamboozle one or two old wimmin ez not 'mongst the men. A few lies mo'
or less won't make much diff'ence in the long count again ye at the
jedgmint-day."
"I'll tell _you_ something that's got the ear-marks of truth--something
that Len Rhodes told _me_ about _you_," declared Rhodes, apparently led
on and over-persuaded into loquacity--"something that I couldn't know
of myself. Ain't that fair, Shattuck? This is my friend Mr. Shattuck,
Mrs. Guthrie. I carry him around to keep the girls from running off
with me. The other Len Rhodes had no such trouble when you knew him.
I'll be bound the main thing was to keep _him_ from running off with
the girls. Ha! ha! ha!"
Mrs. Guthrie bent her softened and unrecognizable face upon Shattuck,
and said that he was "right welcome" and she was glad to see him. Then
she turned to the candidate, with an anxiety which was almost pathetic,
to hear that younger self praised in the repeated words of a man she
had known forty-five years ago.
"Waal, I'll know the ear-marks of the truth whenst I hear it," she
prompted his lagging resolve.
"Your name was Madeline Crayshaw," he began. He was gayly fanning
himself with his hat.
"Ye could hev fund that out ennywhar," she said, expectantly.
"And your eyes were black," he went on, with an air of gallantry.
"They air yit," she interposed, flashing them at him.
"And for all your eyes were black, your hair was as yellow as gold, a
yard long. Could I find that out _now_ by looking at you?"
She shook her head.
"And Len Rhodes said you looked when you danced for all the world 'like
a lettuce-bird a-flying.'"
"Who would hev thunk o' hearin' that old foolishness agin?" she cried,
her eyes dim with pleasure. "I don't look like a lettuce-bird now; some
similar ter a ole Dominicky hen, I reckon, stiddier a lettuce-bird.
But that war the word on the tip o' Len Rhodes's tongue, for he never
got tired o' talkin' o' yaller hair an' black eyes. I wonder the 'oman
he married at las' warn't no better favored," she added, with a sudden
hardening of the lines of her features. "Sech a admirer o' beauty ez he
war! But he war a admirer o' lan's an' cattle an' bank-stock ez well;
an' yer granmam war mighty well off, ef she _war_ little an' lean an'
hed no head o' hair at all, ter speak of."
Rhodes did not change color. There may have been those in his
grandmother's days ready to break a lance in support of the supremacy
of her charms, but her grandson had no mind to enter such antiquated
lists. He only said, with electioneering subtlety--the development
of which Shattuck watched with the admiring curiosity and wonder
that he might feel concerning some acrobatic feat which he should,
nevertheless, never desire to imitate or emulate--"Yes, pretty girls
had mighty little need of bank-stock and lands then, as now. Beauty
always will be chosen. If you had a daughter now, you might make it up
to me for having given my grandad the go-by."
She looked at him with narrowing lids, wondering if he truly thought
it possible that his grandfather had been her rejected suitor--a gay
gallant, who had danced with all the country-side beauties, among whom
he was a toast with his soft words and his flatteries sown broadcast,
but who, when about to settle down, had chosen a staid, pious,
educated wife, whose social status was such as to make his marriage a
decided looking-up, even for him. Leonard Rhodes's claim to rank with
"the quality" was largely dependent upon her side of the house. The
assumptions of vanity, however, have an elastic limit. Mrs. Guthrie
stretched it, convinced that he believed that the rich, dashing,
flirting son of the judge was in the old days the disappointed swain of
a simple mountain girl. Thenceforward, when she set herself to boast of
her youth, she claimed the trophy of his heart, dust and ashes long ago
in the grave of the simple-minded old gentleman, who had grown sober
under life's discipline before he was forty, and had forgotten his
merry youth save for a casual reminiscence.
"Yes," continued Rhodes, "I ought to be coming up here to see some
lettuce-bird of a girl, instead of those hulking step-sons of yours,
Fee and Ephraim, to humbug 'em into voting for me. _Make_ 'em vote for
me, Mrs. Guthrie. You owe me one now--you owe me one for the old time's
sake."
"They needn't kem home ter me ef they don't vote fur ye," she said,
fascinated with this fictitious conquest. She bore herself more proudly
for it to the day of her death, although she knew in her secret soul
the falsity of what he seemed to believe. On such slight fare as this
can the vanity of a woman subsist.
And when he turned casually and asked, "Where are the boys, anyhow?"
she directed him to a barley field, where they were cradling barley,
and told him to come back that way with his friend, and she would have
a "snack" for them. Shattuck marked, as they started, the alacrity
with which she was rolling up the stocking that she had been knitting,
and sticking the needles into the ball of yarn, her fine head, with
its wealth of gray hair, distinct against the heavy vines that draped
the porch. Their way took them around the side of the house in the
deep lush grass, past the beehives all ranged by the fence, which
was ascended and descended by a flight of steps, and surmounted by a
small platform, and thence down through the orchard. Here the birds
congregated in the thickly matted foliage. Only now and then at long
intervals its dark-green shadow was penetrated by the sun. The warm
fragrance of the so-called June apples was on the July air; the clover
bloomed underfoot, and the bees boomed; the call of the jay, the sweet
pensive cooing of a dove, sounded; then all was silence, save for a
mere whisper of the sibilant wind.
Rhodes took off his hat as he walked, with the air of a need to refresh
himself, his richly brown hair slightly stirring in the breeze. He cast
his absorbed glance at his friend.
"Ain't she tur'ble 'oman?" he said, his electioneering ellipses
sticking to his speech.
"Not so very 'tur'ble,' that I can see," said his friend, with
unnoticed mimicry.
"Oh, Lord! yes, she is!" And Rhodes wagged his head with an unequivocal
sincerity. "I know folks say she was an awful termagant with her first
husband, who was a consumptive; and they _did_ have a story"--he
lowered his voice, and glanced cautiously around him--"that she
hastened his end to be rid of the bother of nursing him. And then she
married this fellow Guthrie's father. And she made a perfect jubilee
up here a-beatin' the childern. I know the tales about it useter skeer
me! I was a little shaver then, and I wouldn't go in the dark for fear
of meeting her, though I had never seen her. At last one day Felix
got his chance, and bit her arm nearly through, and ever afterward he
clawed and bit and fought till she let him and Ephraim alone. Yes, my
grandfather said she turned out exactly like he always knew she would."
"Why, I thought you said he was in love with her," exclaimed Shattuck,
for Rhodes's representation had borne such verisimilitude as might
deceive a casual on-looker as well as one eager to be convinced. Rhodes
cast upon him an amazed glance.
"What!" he said, in his genuine "quality" voice, as if this had touched
the climax of the improbabilities.
Shattuck marked the vibrations of pride and surprise ring out smartly.
Then Rhodes, hesitating for a moment, added, "My grandmother was
a _lady_. As to beauty"--the sneer about beauty _had_ evidently
rankled--"why, such things as prettiness and coquetry were never
thought of in connection with _her_. She was a _lady_, and when you've
said _that_ you've said it all. And she was such a superior woman! My
grandfather outmarried himself more than any man you ever saw."
Shattuck was silent for a moment. "I thought," he remarked at
length, "that it was the American eagle that fluttered most through
the rhetoric of electioneering eloquence. I didn't know that the
lettuce-bird had superseded the big national fowl."
"Oh," exclaimed Rhodes, who had waited on his friend's words with a
knitted brow, and he drew a long breath of comprehension, "grandpa
_did_ use to say the prettiest girl he ever saw was this Madeline
Crayshaw. He never saw her but once. It was at a bran dance on Tomahawk
Creek--some sort of a political commotion, speechifying in favor of
Henry Clay or some other old cock. He said her hair was the color of
nothing in this world but a lettuce-bird, and she had the disposition
of a panther. He said she reminded him of a wild woman--some sort of
savage--and he wondered if she _could_ look pleased, and if she were
subject to the same sort of compliments that other girls like. So when
she was glowering round at the other girls as if she could rend 'em
with jealousy, he tried the lettuce-bird dodge. And, bless your soul,
she was as pleased and sweet as pie."
"And has remembered it for forty-five years, poor thing!" said Shattuck.
"Ha! ha! ha! 'Poor thing!' She never made _you_ learn to kick and bite
and fight to keep a whole skin and a whole set of bones. Fee Guthrie
don't say 'poor thing!' I won't go back to the first husband, for I
hadn't the pleasure of his acquaintance, and he may have died simply
because it was too much trouble to live."
"And _you_ made her believe that you thought your grandfather was in
love with her--had been rejected by her. You deceived her!"
"Man alive! how could I? She knew she never saw him but once in her
life. And how can I make tenders of his affections at this late day?
Tenders of affection are not retroactive. A man can't flirt as proxy
for his dead grandfather. It was merely a little electioneering
compliment."
"Oh, Rhodes, how do you manage to look yourself in the face in the
mirror?" exclaimed Shattuck, with a laugh.
"I look at myself in the mirror with a good deal more pleasure than is
proper, I expect," said Rhodes, smoothing his handsome and lustrous
red-brown beard. He tipped his straw hat over his smiling, full-lashed
dark eyes, for they were out of the shadows at last, and in the sun
amongst a stretch of the barley. The wind bent it; long glintings of
pale light pervaded it. The whole field was of a delicate, fluctuating
green, with these fine undulations like quicksilver running over it.
Sometimes the shadow of a cloud came, a thing swiftly scudding and
noiseless too, and the green, hitherto held in indefinite solution, was
precipitated into a pure emerald tint, for this was a later sowing than
the spaces further down the slope, which had grown tawny with ripeness,
and showed on the hither side the long swaths from the cradling, drying
upon the ground. The cradles lay there too, and beneath the dark
shadow of a great spreading buckeye-tree in a corner of the fence--the
only one in the field that bore its pristine richness of foliage, for
the rest, gaunt and bare, girdled long ago, towered into the air, dead,
white, and unsightly--lounged the two brothers, loitering away the
heated hour.
From the depths of the cove below, this field on the mountain slope
was visible a long way. Shattuck remembered having observed it as a
dull, light-tinted, tiny square in the midst of the dense primeval
woods that encompassed it. Now he looked with interest to identify in
turn the landmarks of the cove. So purple it was in the distance, save
where the slopes rose on either hand, and the summits of the forest
grew gradually into a bronze hue, and thence to the deep, restful green
of the full summertide. Far away all the horizon was bounded by many
a range and peak, painted in all the gradations of blue, from a dull,
blurred tint to the finest turquoise delicacy, and rising tier upon
tier, till at last the enamelled sky limited the climbing heights. Here
and there in the depths below, vague lines marked where the fences
ran. A tiny curl of smoke first betokened the Yates cabin; he saw the
sun strike full on its shining roof. But most salient of all, the
river gleamed a steely gray beneath the craggy walls of the gorge, and
the cataract danced all white and green, like a jewel endowed with a
flashing life. This only, in the sweet serenity and peace of the scene,
seemed to move. The wind came and went, it is true, but with scant
token of its presence; only now and again a suggestion of the pallid
reverse side of the leaves bestreaked the mountain slopes and marked
its path. A flock of sheep feeding in a brambly, rocky space were as
motionless as a pastoral scene on canvas. Once a glow of an intense
blood-bay color struck his keen eye, and made him aware that a horse
was tethered a little way down from the house; the sun struck upon the
glossy flank; then the animal slipped into the deep shadow, and was
seen no more.
None of this had Rhodes observed. His eyes were fixed upon the two
brothers as they lounged amongst the grass and weeds in the fence
corner, culpably overgrown in the eyes of a farmer, but cool and
sweet in the dense shade of the buckeye-tree, and with sundry long
tangled vines of the purple and white passion-flowers, clear-eyed in
the grass, and the scarlet trumpet-blossom flaring over the staked
and ridered rail-fence. There could hardly be two men less alike,
the difference accented since they were both bareheaded--the one
with his grave, forceful features, at once sullen and sad, his long
curling hair hanging on the shoulders of his blue cotton shirt; the
other bullet-headed, close-cropped, with a twinkling, merry eye, a
propitiatory expression, a broad face that would look young even
when it should be withered and wrinkled like a shrivelled apple, and
the coarse brown tufty hair should be as white as snow. The latter
looked up with a ready-made, adjustable smile as Rhodes's hearty
"Howdy, boys?" rang upon the perfumed air. The candidate did not wait
for them to rise, but flung himself at length into the sweet grass,
taking his hat off his head and leaning his shoulders against the big
buckeye-tree.
"Waal, how do _you_-uns do, Mr. Rhodes?" said Ephraim, with smooth
cordiality. "How be you-uns a-kemin' on these days? A month o' Sundays
sence we hev seen ye."
He then looked quickly at his brother, with an anxious submission of
his conduct for the fraternal approval. For Ephraim Guthrie labored
heavily between the quick geniality of a mercurial temperament, a lack
of confidence in his own judgment, and a childlike reliance on his
brother's opinion: without its coincidence with his own he could not be
at ease for a moment. He always spoke precipitately on the impulse of
the first, was checked by the second, and waited with pathetic anxiety
for the third. He was all things to all men, and this vacillating
lack of consistency rendered his amiability of little value in the
estimation of the candidate. Rhodes saw with disappointment the other
brother, the valid object of conciliation, rise, after a mutter of
salutation, to join Shattuck, who, with a nod to the two, had turned
away, and stood, with one hand in his pocket, silently surveying the
scene below him. He only lifted his eyes slightly in recognition of
Guthrie's approach as the burly young mountaineer drew near him, and it
was his uncommunicative host who spoke first.
"Glad ter see ye, Mr. Shattuck--glad ter see ye on the mounting."
Shattuck divined that he enjoyed unusual cordiality in being deemed
by his host preferable for conversation to Rhodes. The injury which
Guthrie had inflicted upon the candidate, and which he had been thought
to so magnify, recurred to his mind, with the further fact that it
was no accident. Guthrie evidently still cherished the motive that
prompted it, and bore malice. It was intention that had led him to
leave the candidate to talk to the plastic younger brother while
he himself held aloof under the guise of joining the other guest.
Nevertheless, his ear was keen for the conversation between the two,
which the crafty Rhodes may have in part designed for him, and Shattuck
was aware that it was only a divided attention with which he was
favored. He responded, however, with equal courtesy.
"A fine view you have here, Mr. Guthrie--a very fine view. I don't know
its equal anywhere."
Guthrie glanced quickly at him, then ran his eye over the scene, with
the effect of seeing it for the first time. He knew no other aspect
of the world. It had never occurred to him that the lives of many
other people were not bounded by these fine and massive symmetries of
mountain ranges in every tender phase of purest color; by infinite
distances, challenging the capacities of farthest vision; by softest
pastoral suggestions of cove and slope; by primeval wildernesses and
stern and rugged solemnities of crags; by phantasmal chutes of flying
mountain torrents. His sense of its beauty was blunted by the daily
habit of its presence; paradoxically, it could be brought home to him
only if it were swept away.
"Yes," he said, uncertainly, "an' we'd hev a good lookout fur corn ef
we could hev mo' rain." And he cast a weatherwise eye angrily at the
sky, where all the clouds seemed gadding abroad a-pleasuring only, and
with no idea of utility as they dallied with the wind. "Not," he added,
with an after-thought and a certain precipitation, as if he were afraid
that the remark might be overheard, and forthwith acted upon--"not ez
I want ter hev enny fallin' weather nuther till we-uns git in this hyar
barley."
The differing interests of his crops evidently divided his affections,
and he was in the normal condition of the farmer disappointed in either
rain or shine.
They stood silent for a moment by the fence, and as Shattuck turned
one of the great trumpet-flowers in his hand and looked down into its
scarlet horn, then let the tendril spring back elastically into its
place, Rhodes's words came to them as he wrestled with Eph Guthrie's
presumable political persuasions against him. These were altogether
assumed by the candidate for the purposes of argument, for which the
plastic Eph furnished but a straw man, as it were, easily knocked down,
requiring to be cleverly and surreptitiously picked up again by his
insistent opponent, in order to plant still more well-delivered and
coercive blows.
"Fee 'ain't got no grudge against me, I know," Rhodes was saying. "_I_
don't bear no malice for a little tussle like that, and I _know_ Fee
don't."
"How ye know he don't?"
Shattuck was startled by hearing this _sotto voce_ comment upon the
dialogue by Fee in person close to his elbow. He turned and looked
at the man, seeking to convey in the glance an intimation that he
had spoken his thought aloud and that it had been overheard. Felix
Guthrie evidently cared as little as might be. His eyes met Shattuck's
unabashed.
"Fee ain't in no wise malicious," Eph piped up.
"I know it--I know that--no man better," Rhodes interrupted him
promptly, for he knew that Eph could talk by the yard measure on the
subject of his brother's perfections, so close was the fraternal bond.
"I _know_ Fee can't bear malice. I like Fee, and Fee likes me, and
won't do a thing against me--not a thing!"
"Waal, ye better not be too sure o' that," the voice at Shattuck's
elbow said, in that suppressed, significant soliloquy.
Shattuck, embarrassed by these confidences in prejudice to his friend's
loudly expressed conclusions, was about to turn away, when Guthrie's
hand was laid upon his arm.
"Stranger," he said, his head with his big broad hat and its clinging
curls bent forward, "don't it 'pear a sorter cur'ous dispensation to
you-uns that that man yander b'lieves so what he say whenst it air in
my heart ter kill him--yes, sir, ter kill him!--if he war ter interfere
with me?"
[Illustration: "'YES, SIR, TER KILL HIM EF HE WAR TER INTERFERE WITH
ME!'"]
"What!" said Shattuck, uneasily feigning. "Do you want to go to the
Legislature too?"
"Legislatur' be damned!" said the other, in a deep husky tone, and with
a meeting of the straight heavy eyebrows above his intent eyes. "I
ain't keerin' a minit's breath 'bout'n the kentry an' sech. But ef he
interferes with me 'bout--'bout Letishy Pettingill, his life ain't wuth
much purchase--not," he shook his head with a formidable look in his
eye, "much purchase."
Shattuck was roused to a sense of danger. He had already interfered too
much, and with disastrous results, in his friend's interests; but here
was a peril so patent, so immediate, that it was a most obvious duty
to seek to diminish the menace. "You mus'n't be disposed to lay too
much blame on Rhodes," he said. "She mightn't like either one of you,
but somebody else."
"Who's _he_?" demanded Guthrie, breathlessly, with an evident
instantaneous transference of the intention of vengeance and the pangs
of anxiety to this myth.
"_I_ don't know. Do you suppose she told _me_? Women don't tell these
things; that's one of their little ways."
Guthrie drew a long sigh. "An' a mighty mean way too," he commented.
"And men are not often more communicative," Shattuck dexterously
equalized the balance. "Mr. Rhodes hasn't talked to me on the subject,
but I think I might undertake to say for him that he doesn't want to
interfere with you in that quarter."
"He did the night o' the infair at Pettingill's," the slow mountaineer
argued, with a swift application of logic.
"Oh, pshaw! he didn't want to 'dance Tucker,' that's all," said
Shattuck, with a laugh, and once more seeking to turn away.
Guthrie's hand closed upon his arm; his eyes were on the stretch of
barley, bending and swaying as the wind swept through its pliant
blades, and shoaling from an argentine glister to green, and from
green again to elusive silver glintings--what time the cove below was
dark and purple and blurred, as a great white cloud hung, dazzling
and opaque, high, high in the sky, and, as it passed, the valley grew
graduually into distinctness again, with the privilege of the sunshine
and the freedom of the wind, and all its landmarks asserted anew.
"Stranger," Felix said, lowering his tone, "she made ch'ice o' him
stiddier me. _I_ hed the right ter dance with her, an' she made ch'ice
o' him."
"What of it? That happens every day; a woman prefers one man to
another. 'Tisn't worth a quarrel."
"'Pears ter me it's better wuth killin' a man fur than all the other
quar'ls that men die in daily."
Shattuck, looking into those vehement eyes, felt an uncomfortable chill
stealing along his spinal column, hearing all the time Rhodes's hearty
voice as he lay all unconscious on the grass, and held forth to the
acquiescent, utterly unimportant Ephraim.
"Would that make her like you any better if she liked him?"
Guthrie's eyes turned ponderingly away to the roof gleaming in the cove
that sheltered her at the moment.
Shattuck took confidence. "That isn't the way to make her like you, and
that's what _you_ want."
"Hain't Rhodes been thar lately?" demanded Guthrie. "I axed her, but
she hev got sech a tormentin' way she wouldn't tell me."
"Only to talk to Mrs. Yates, and see if he could do anything to help
her to hear from her husband. Oh, Rhodes would like Letitia a deal
better if she could vote for him. He would go to see her every day
_then_, you might be sure."
Guthrie cast a glance of frowning contempt over his shoulder at Rhodes;
then, with a sudden change of tone, he said: "I hev been mightily
troubled in my mind lately 'bout'n him. I war fitten ter hope in my
heart ez he wouldn't git well, though I hev been layin' off ter repent
some, fur I know _that_ ain't well pleasin' ter the Sperit. I wouldn't
hold Rhodes no gredge ef 'twarn't fur her. An' though she showed she
hed ruther dance with him than with me, she _don't_ 'pear ter like him
noways special. An' sometimes I feel like I ought ter make myse'f easy."
The pitiable vacillations of a lover's hopes and fears appealed to
Shattuck. The strength of the man's will, the sternness, almost
savagery, of his character, added a force to all that he said, not
lessened by Shattuck's knowledge of the object of his affections, or,
rather, that upon that aerial and whimsical identity little knowledge
was predicable. His disposition was to reassure, to soothe.
"Oh, you may indeed make yourself easy as far as Rhodes is concerned,"
he insisted. "Rhodes is thinking about nothing in this world but his
election, and you ought to show a generous, friendly spirit, and vote
for him, and let by-gones be by-gones."
"Oh, Lord! I'd jes' ez soon vote him inter a seat 'mongst the choir
o' archangels ez not--though he'd look mighty comical thar, I'm
a-thinkin'--ef I war sure ez he warn't gittin' ahead o' me 'bout Litt
Pettingill."
He sighed deeply, and cast an absorbed, unseeing glance over the
landscape. His strong brawny hand, still on Shattuck's arm, trembled
slightly.
"I ain't like other men, stranger. I never loved nobody but her in all
my life. Hate hev been my portion. Hard licks hev been my policy, an'
the more ye air ready ter give, the less ye hev ter take. That's the
way the world goes."
And Shattuck could not gainsay this dictum of the mountain philosopher,
albeit the world from which he deduced this cogent truth was but the
breadth of the cove.
"Ephraim I hed ter stan' up fur, bein' ez he war so all-fired helpless
whenst small, but it air sorter of a habit o' takin' keer o' him an'
speakin' him fair, account o' other folks treatin' him mean; I never
sure enough keered fur him--though I don't want him ter hear me _say_
that, nuther. I never knowed what love meant till I tuk ter dreamin'
'bout Litt all night an' studyin' 'bout her all day. An' I do swear
it's in my heart ter kill enny man ez kems atwixt us."
"Well, 'tisn't Rhodes," Shattuck declared, easily. "And to that I'd be
willing to take my oath."
"Ye see, stranger, I be mightily afflicted," said Fee Guthrie, and his
strong voice trembled.
"You don't look like it, my friend," returned Shattuck, with a smile.
"Oh, I _am_!" cried the other, with a poignant intonation. "Even ef
Rhodes warn't ahead of me, an' ef she liked me, she moughtn't be
willin' ter marry me. Some wimmen wouldn't. I hev got that step-mam o'
mine ter take keer of; many a gal wouldn't 'gree ter 'bide with her.
An' I can't leave her!"
Shattuck, tiring but a moment ago, felt a freshening of interest.
"Why," he said, "I have heard that she was unkind to you and your
brother when you were children."
"Onkind! Lord! that warn't the word fur it till I got the strength
ter be more onkind ter her. But she don't own nuthin'. She 'ain't got
nuthin' ter live on. I promised my dad ter support her."
There was a pause.
"Stranger, folks tell a heap o' tales on her. They 'low she killed
her fust husband, an' hev 'witched folks, and casts the evil eye. She
wouldn't be safe. Ef 'twarn't fur my dad fust, an' then fur me, she'd
hev been made ter answer ter the folks in the cove fur her deeds. But
the Guthries hev the name o' shootin' mighty straight. So she hev been
lef' ter be."
There was another pause while he took off his hat and fanned himself
with its broad brim. With it still in his hand he resumed: "She
'witched my dad, I reckon, ter git him ter marry her, though folks said
she war good-lookin' in them days. An' dad ez good ez 'witched me; it's
an evil spell he flung around me, sure. I knowed what he war goin' ter
ax me on his death-bed; I jes' knowed it in all my veins, in every drap
o' blood. The doctor said he couldn't live fur twelve hours more. An' I
got on my horse an' I rid away. I rid fur an' I rid constant, an' when
the horse couldn't git along no furder I rested under a tree. I rid fur
forty-eight hours--mind ye, the doctor said _twelve_--an' at last I
'lowed 'twar safe ter kem home. I kem. An' thar, propped up in the bed,
war the skeleton o' a man with Death's hand on his throat, waitin' fur
me an' fur my promise--an' Death waitin' too. I reckon Death tuk right
smart pleasure in that minit--he knowed he got us both through that
promise, fur life couldn't mean nuthin' fur me arterward. An' somehow,
though I hed fled that promise, I couldn't holp makin' it. How kin
ye look in a dyin' man's eyes an' deny him? I promised I'd bide with
her an' take keer of her ez long ez she should live. He war dead in a
minit. He jes' waited till the words passed my lips. An' he looked at
me. An' then he fell back dead."
Shattuck was silent. Even his facile optimism was at fault for the
nonce. And after another long-drawn sigh Felix went on:
"'Tain't made my life easy. I knowed that minit I went into chains, fur
a promise ter the dead ain't like one ter the livin'. An' though I owe
her nuthin' but gredges, both fur me an' Ephraim, 'tain't in gredges I
be 'lowed ter pay the debt. I never knowed the weight of it, though,
till I met that thar leetle snip o' a gal. 'Pears ter me Litt ain't
like nobody that ever lived afore; the very way she turns her head air
diff'ent, an' the hair grows on it not similar ter none. Folks round
about the mountings say she ain't good-lookin', but her face shines ter
me in the darkest night."
"She _is_--she is beautiful, and the rarest type of beauty," cried
Shattuck, warmly; "she is unique. She would be considered most
beautiful anywhere else."
Guthrie turned upon him a face aglow with gratification. "That's what
makes me like you-uns, stranger," he said, cordially. "Ye 'pear ter
_sense_ things so. But I war set agin ye some, at fust, knowin' ye ter
be Rhodes's friend," he added, frankly. "She likes ye too, Litt do. The
t'other night whenst I war visitin' thar she talked ter Mis' Yates an'
me an' Baker Anderson 'bout nuthin' in this worl' but you-uns, an' how
smart an' perlite ye be, an' book-l'arned, an' diff'ent from them in
the cove."
Shattuck received this with a vague, indeterminate thrill, which he did
not then discriminate as premonition, but which he remembered afterward.
Guthrie was beset by no suspicion. "Lord!" he exclaimed, his face
fervent and flushed, "ef I could take that thar leetle gal's hand in
mine ter walk through this life, I could make the journey well pleasin'
ter the Lord, though I don't reckon I'd keer whether 'twar heaven or
hell arterwards. 'Twould make up ter me fur all the troubles I hev hed
in this life. An' they ain't a few--they ain't a few. But I be powerful
hampered, powerful hampered, stranger, even ef I warn't so all-fired
'feared o' Rhodes. She never would abide ter live along o' my step-mam,
an' I can't leave her. I hev swore a oath ter the dead." Then he seemed
to shake off his fears. "It's done me good ter talk so free. I couldn't
hev done it--ter a stranger too--'ceptin' I knowed what store Litt set
by ye, an' how smart she 'lows ye air."
Once again that vague prophetic disquiet thrilled along Shattuck's
nerves. Felix had put his hat again upon his head; his face was
softened with a reminiscent smile, as his eyes dwelt upon the furthest
blue peaks, most illusory semblances of mountains, faint sublimations
of azure, refined almost to nullity, upon the horizon.
"T'other night, what time she could spare from tormentin' Baker
Anderson--an' she do make _him_ funny enough ter set a horse
a-laffin'--she spent in tellin' them cur'ous tales ye hev set a-goin'
'bout the folks ez war in this kentry 'fore the Injuns. An' Baker axed
ef them Phœnicians warn't jes' the Fed'ral army. He 'peared ter think
ez ye hedn't got the news o' the War yit. It liked ter hev killed Litt.
She couldn't quit laffin'. But she tuck Mis' Yates up mighty short
'bout the Leetle People, an' 'lowed ye didn't want ter examinate thar
graves fur gain, but fur knowledge fur the hist'ry o' the kentry."
And suddenly Shattuck's eyes were alight. He took instant advantage of
this unexpected recruit to the ranks of scientific investigation. "She
was exactly right, and shows her common-sense. And I wish, Fee"--he
adopted a cordial familiarity of tone in his anxiety--"you would take
that view yourself, and let me examine one or two of those graves."
Guthrie evidently experienced an inward struggle. He was divided
between a sincere attraction which he felt toward the stranger, a wish
to please, and a repugnant reluctance into which conscience--his queer,
distorted, backwoods conscience--entered largely.
"I couldn't let ye tote the bones off, even ef they air prehistoric."
He thought the word signified some sect different from Baptist or
Methodist, and heterodox enough to forfeit the sanctity of sepulchre,
since he had heard it so often urged by Shattuck, in extenuation of
his wish to examine the graves. "I couldn't do that. _He_ mought not
like it whenst he wakes on the jedgmint-day ter find his bones in a
strange place; he mought never hev been out'n Tennessee in his life,
an' not be 'quainted with nobody risin' at the same time 'round him.
But ye may open one grave, an'"--he relented still further, looking
into Shattuck's eyes, eagerly fixed upon him--"an' ef he hev got a jug
like the one I seen, I'll let ye hev it, an'," his brows grew anxious
with the devising of the expedient, "I'll _loan_ him a pitcher from the
house, so he'll hev one, though the Lord only knows what he wants with
it, an' mebbe at the las' day he will hev forgot, an' won't know the
diff'ence."
"I won't take the jug," said Shattuck, suddenly infected with
the reluctance to rifle the sarcophagus, so strong amongst the
mountaineers, so alien to the man of science. The forgotten relics
lying there in that long rest became all at once, through Guthrie's
homely speech, individualized, invested with the rights of property,
the sense of a past and the certainty of a future, humanized as a man
and a brother, rather than a system of bones that might, ethnologically
considered, establish or disprove a theory, its manner of burial less
significant of the universal doom of death and the hope of resurrection
than of the civilization of the race and the fashion of the day. "I
won't take the jug. I only want to see what this widespread story of
prehistoric pygmy dwellers in Tennessee rests upon. That is all. I
think they must be children--these Little People. I won't take the jug."
Guthrie's face cleared instantly. "Waal"--he drew a long breath--"I'm
glad o' that. Fur ef they air chil'n, _he_ mought set mo' store on his
jug an' his beads 'n on his soul's salvation. I don't see ez it could
hurt ter jes' lift up the top stone an' set it back agin. Bein' ez it's
you-uns, I'll resk it enny-hows." The opportunity of investigating
this most unique myth, originating how and where no man can tell, of
which so much has been so diversely written and said, caused every
sentiment of the archæologist to glow within him. In this secluded
region it was hardly probable that the tread of science had ever
before pressed the turf of the pygmy burying-ground. He should be able
to speak from actual experience. There was no doubt concerning the
spot. And all the country-side confirmed the tradition with singular
unanimity, with one voice. Every detail was full of interest; the very
method of coffining--the six slabs of stone in the shallow graves,
the strange weavings and material of the shrouding rugs and mats, the
ornaments, the weapons, the jugs with the sea-shells within--what rich
intimations of the industrial status, the civilization of these people
of the pygmy myth! Ah, here indeed was history in its most unimpugnable
form! These tokens should balk oblivion, and truth prevail even in the
grave.