“'Blue as the heaven it gazes at,'” quoted Hale.
“Whut's 'gazes'?”
“Looks.” June looked up at the sky and down at the flower.
“Tain't,” she said, “hit's bluer.”
When they discovered something Hale did not know he would say that it
was one of those--
“'Wan flowers without a name.'”
“My!” said June at last, “seems like them wan flowers is a mighty big
fambly.”
“They are,” laughed Hale, “for a bachelor like me.”
“Huh!” said June.
Later, they ran upon yellow adder's tongues in a hollow, each blossom
guarded by a pair of ear-like leaves, Dutchman's breeches and wild
bleeding hearts--a name that appealed greatly to the fancy of the
romantic little lady, and thus together they followed the footsteps of
that spring. And while she studied the flowers Hale was studying the
loveliest flower of them all--little June. About ferns, plants and trees
as well, he told her all he knew, and there seemed nothing in the skies,
the green world of the leaves or the under world at her feet to which
she was not magically responsive. Indeed, Hale had never seen a man,
woman or child so eager to learn, and one day, when she had apparently
reached the limit of inquiry, she grew very thoughtful and he watched
her in silence a long while.
“What's the matter, June?” he asked finally.
“I'm just wonderin' why I'm always axin' why,” said little June.
She was learning in school, too, and she was happier there now, for
there had been no more open teasing of the new pupil. Bob's championship
saved her from that, and, thereafter, school changed straightway for
June. Before that day she had kept apart from her school-fellows at
recess-times as well as in the school-room. Two or three of the girls
had made friendly advances to her, but she had shyly repelled them--why
she hardly knew--and it was her lonely custom at recess-times to build
a play-house at the foot of a great beech with moss, broken bits of
bottles and stones. Once she found it torn to pieces and from the look
on the face of the tall mountain boy, Cal Heaton, who had grinned at her
when she went up for her first lesson, and who was now Bob's arch-enemy,
she knew that he was the guilty one. Again a day or two later it was
destroyed, and when she came down from the woods almost in tears, Bob
happened to meet her in the road and made her tell the trouble she was
in. Straightway he charged the trespasser with the deed and was lied to
for his pains. So after school that day he slipped up on the hill with
the little girl and helped her rebuild again.
“Now I'll lay for him,” said Bob, “and catch him at it.”
“All right,” said June, and she looked both her worry and her gratitude
so that Bob understood both; and he answered both with a nonchalant wave
of one hand.
“Never you mind--and don't you tell Mr. Hale,” and June in dumb
acquiescence crossed heart and body. But the mountain boy was wary, and
for two or three days the play-house was undisturbed and so Bob himself
laid a trap. He mounted his horse immediately after school, rode past
the mountain lad, who was on his way home, crossed the river, made a
wide detour at a gallop and, hitching his horse in the woods, came to
the play-house from the other side of the hill. And half an hour later,
when the pale little teacher came out of the school-house, he heard
grunts and blows and scuffling up in the woods, and when he ran toward
the sounds, the bodies of two of his pupils rolled into sight clenched
fiercely, with torn clothes and bleeding faces--Bob on top with the
mountain boy's thumb in his mouth and his own fingers gripped about his
antagonist's throat. Neither paid any attention to the school-master,
who pulled at Bob's coat unavailingly and with horror at his ferocity.
Bob turned his head, shook it as well as the thumb in his mouth would
let him, and went on gripping the throat under him and pushing the head
that belonged to it into the ground. The mountain boy's tongue showed
and his eyes bulged.
“'Nough!” he yelled. Bob rose then and told his story and the
school-master from New England gave them a short lecture on gentleness
and Christian charity and fixed on each the awful penalty of “staying
in” after school for an hour every day for a week. Bob grinned:
“All right, professor--it was worth it,” he said, but the mountain lad
shuffled silently away.
An hour later Hale saw the boy with a swollen lip, one eye black and
the other as merry as ever--but after that there was no more trouble
for June. Bob had made his promise good and gradually she came into
the games with her fellows there-after, while Bob stood or sat aside,
encouraging but taking no part--for was he not a member of the Police
Force? Indeed he was already known far and wide as the Infant of
the Guard, and always he carried a whistle and usually, outside the
school-house, a pistol bumped his hip, while a Winchester stood in one
corner of his room and a billy dangled by his mantel-piece.
The games were new to June, and often Hale would stroll up to the
school-house to watch them--Prisoner's Base, Skipping the Rope, Antny
Over, Cracking the Whip and Lifting the Gate; and it pleased him to see
how lithe and active his little protege was and more than a match in
strength even for the boys who were near her size. June had to take the
penalty of her greenness, too, when she was “introduced to the King and
Queen” and bumped the ground between the make-believe sovereigns, or got
a cup of water in her face when she was trying to see stars through a
pipe. And the boys pinned her dress to the bench through a crack and
once she walked into school with a placard on her back which read:
“June-Bug.” But she was so good-natured that she fast became a
favourite. Indeed it was noticeable to Hale as well as Bob that Cal
Heaton, the mountain boy, seemed always to get next to June in the Tugs
of War, and one morning June found an apple on her desk. She swept the
room with a glance and met Cal's guilty flush, and though she ate the
apple, she gave him no thanks--in word, look or manner. It was curious
to Hale, moreover, to observe how June's instinct deftly led her to
avoid the mistakes in dress that characterized the gropings of other
girls who, like her, were in a stage of transition. They wore gaudy
combs and green skirts with red waists, their clothes bunched at the
hips, and to their shoes and hands they paid no attention at all. None
of these things for June--and Hale did not know that the little girl had
leaped her fellows with one bound, had taken Miss Anne Saunders as her
model and was climbing upon the pedestal where that lady justly stood.
The two had not become friends as Hale hoped. June was always silent and
reserved when the older girl was around, but there was never a move of
the latter's hand or foot or lip or eye that the new pupil failed
to see. Miss Anne rallied Hale no little about her, but he laughed
good-naturedly, and asked why SHE could not make friends with June.
“She's jealous,” said Miss Saunders, and Hale ridiculed the idea, for
not one sign since she came to the Gap had she shown him. It was the
jealousy of a child she had once betrayed and that she had outgrown,
he thought; but he never knew how June stood behind the curtains of her
window, with a hungry suffering in her face and eyes, to watch Hale and
Miss Anne ride by and he never guessed that concealment was but a sign
of the dawn of womanhood that was breaking within her. And she gave no
hint of that breaking dawn until one day early in May, when she heard a
woodthrush for the first time with Hale: for it was the bird she loved
best, and always its silver fluting would stop her in her tracks and
send her into dreamland. Hale had just broken a crimson flower from its
stem and held it out to her.
“Here's another of the 'wan ones,' June. Do you know what that is?”
“Hit's”--she paused for correction with her lips drawn severely in for
precision--“IT'S a mountain poppy. Pap says it kills goslings”--her eyes
danced, for she was in a merry mood that day, and she put both hands
behind her--“if you air any kin to a goose, you better drap it.”
“That's a good one,” laughed Hale, “but it's so lovely I'll take the
risk. I won't drop it.”
“Drop it,” caught June with a quick upward look, and then to fix the
word in her memory she repeated--“drop it, drop it, DROP it!”
“Got it now, June?”
“Uh-huh.”
It was then that a woodthrush voiced the crowning joy of spring, and
with slowly filling eyes she asked its name.
“That bird,” she said slowly and with a breaking voice, “sung just
that-a-way the mornin' my sister died.”
She turned to him with a wondering smile.
“Somehow it don't make me so miserable, like it useter.” Her smile
passed while she looked, she caught both hands to her heaving breast and
a wild intensity burned suddenly in her eyes.
“Why, June!”
“'Tain't nothin',” she choked out, and she turned hurriedly ahead of
him down the path. Startled, Hale had dropped the crimson flower to his
feet. He saw it and he let it lie.
Meanwhile, rumours were brought in that the Falins were coming over from
Kentucky to wipe out the Guard, and so straight were they sometimes that
the Guard was kept perpetually on watch. Once while the members were at
target practice, the shout arose:
“The Kentuckians are coming! The Kentuckians are coming!” And, at double
quick, the Guard rushed back to find it a false alarm and to see men
laughing at them in the street. The truth was that, while the Falins
had a general hostility against the Guard, their particular enmity was
concentrated on John Hale, as he discovered when June was to take her
first trip home one Friday afternoon. Hale meant to carry her over,
but the morning they were to leave, old Judd Tolliver came to the Gap
himself. He did not want June to come home at that time, and he didn't
think it was safe over there for Hale just then. Some of the Falins had
been seen hanging around Lonesome Cove for the purpose, Judd believed,
of getting a shot at the man who had kept young Dave from falling into
their hands, and Hale saw that by that act he had, as Budd said,
arrayed himself with the Tollivers in the feud. In other words, he was
a Tolliver himself now, and as such the Falins meant to treat him.
Hale rebelled against the restriction, for he had started some work in
Lonesome Cove and was preparing a surprise over there for June, but old
Judd said:
“Just wait a while,” and he said it so seriously that Hale for a while
took his advice.
So June stayed on at the Gap--with little disappointment, apparently,
that she could not visit home. And as spring passed and the summer
came on, the little girl budded and opened like a rose. To the pretty
school-teacher she was a source of endless interest and wonder, for
while the little girl was reticent and aloof, Miss Saunders felt herself
watched and studied in and out of school, and Hale often had to smile
at June's unconscious imitation of her teacher in speech, manners and
dress. And all the time her hero-worship of Hale went on, fed by
the talk of the boardinghouse, her fellow pupils and of the town at
large--and it fairly thrilled her to know that to the Falins he was now
a Tolliver himself.
Sometimes Hale would get her a saddle, and then June would usurp Miss
Anne's place on a horseback-ride up through the gap to see the first
blooms of the purple rhododendron on Bee Rock, or up to Morris's farm on
Powell's mountain, from which, with a glass, they could see the Lonesome
Pine. And all the time she worked at her studies tirelessly--and when
she was done with her lessons, she read the fairy books that Hale got
for her--read them until “Paul and Virginia” fell into her hands, and
then there were no more fairy stories for little June. Often, late at
night, Hale, from the porch of his cottage, could see the light of
her lamp sending its beam across the dark water of the mill-pond, and
finally he got worried by the paleness of her face and sent her to
the doctor. She went unwillingly, and when she came back she reported
placidly that “organatically she was all right, the doctor said,” but
Hale was glad that vacation would soon come. At the beginning of the
last week of school he brought a little present for her from New York--a
slender necklace of gold with a little reddish stone-pendant that was
the shape of a cross. Hale pulled the trinket from his pocket as they
were walking down the river-bank at sunset and the little girl quivered
like an aspen-leaf in a sudden puff of wind.
“Hit's a fairy-stone,” she cried excitedly.
“Why, where on earth did you--”
“Why, sister Sally told me about 'em. She said folks found 'em somewhere
over here in Virginny, an' all her life she was a-wishin' fer one an'
she never could git it”--her eyes filled--“seems like ever'thing she
wanted is a-comin' to me.”
“Do you know the story of it, too?” asked Hale.
June shook her head. “Sister Sally said it was a luck-piece. Nothin'
could happen to ye when ye was carryin' it, but it was awful bad luck
if you lost it.” Hale put it around her neck and fastened the clasp and
June kept hold of the little cross with one hand.
“Well, you mustn't lose it,” he said.
“No--no--no,” she repeated breathlessly, and Hale told her the pretty
story of the stone as they strolled back to supper. The little crosses
were to be found only in a certain valley in Virginia, so perfect in
shape that they seemed to have been chiselled by hand, and they were a
great mystery to the men who knew all about rocks--the geologists.
“The ge-ol-o-gists,” repeated June.
These men said there was no crystallization--nothing like them, amended
Hale--elsewhere in the world, and that just as crosses were of different
shapes--Roman, Maltese and St. Andrew's--so, too, these crosses were
found in all these different shapes. And the myth--the story--was that
this little valley was once inhabited by fairies--June's eyes lighted,
for it was a fairy story after all--and that when a strange messenger
brought them the news of Christ's crucifixion, they wept, and their
tears, as they fell to the ground, were turned into tiny crosses of
stone. Even the Indians had some queer feeling about them, and for a
long, long time people who found them had used them as charms to bring
good luck and ward off harm.
“And that's for you,” he said, “because you've been such a good little
girl and have studied so hard. School's most over now and I reckon
you'll be right glad to get home again.”
June made no answer, but at the gate she looked suddenly up at him.
“Have you got one, too?” she asked, and she seemed much disturbed when
Hale shook his head.
“Well, I'LL git--GET--you one--some day.”
“All right,” laughed Hale.
There was again something strange in her manner as she turned suddenly
from him, and what it meant he was soon to learn. It was the last
week of school and Hale had just come down from the woods behind the
school-house at “little recess-time” in the afternoon. The children were
playing games outside the gate, and Bob and Miss Anne and the little
Professor were leaning on the fence watching them. The little man raised
his hand to halt Hale on the plank sidewalk.
“I've been wanting to see you,” he said in his dreamy, abstracted way.
“You prophesied, you know, that I should be proud of your little protege
some day, and I am indeed. She is the most remarkable pupil I've yet
seen here, and I have about come to the conclusion that there is no
quicker native intelligence in our country than you shall find in the
children of these mountaineers and--”
Miss Anne was gazing at the children with an expression that turned
Hale's eyes that way, and the Professor checked his harangue. Something
had happened. They had been playing “Ring Around the Rosy” and June had
been caught. She stood scarlet and tense and the cry was:
“Who's your beau--who's your beau?”
And still she stood with tight lips--flushing.
“You got to tell--you got to tell!”
The mountain boy, Cal Heaton, was grinning with fatuous consciousness,
and even Bob put his hands in his pockets and took on an uneasy smile.
“Who's your beau?” came the chorus again.
The lips opened almost in a whisper, but all could hear:
“Jack!”
“Jack who?” But June looked around and saw the four at the gate. Almost
staggering, she broke from the crowd and, with one forearm across her
scarlet face, rushed past them into the school-house. Miss Anne looked
at Hale's amazed face and she did not smile. Bob turned respectfully
away, ignoring it all, and the little Professor, whose life-purpose was
psychology, murmured in his ignorance:
“Very remarkable--very remarkable!”
Through that afternoon June kept her hot face close to her books. Bob
never so much as glanced her way--little gentleman that he was--but
the one time she lifted her eyes, she met the mountain lad's bent in
a stupor-like gaze upon her. In spite of her apparent studiousness,
however, she missed her lesson and, automatically, the little Professor
told her to stay in after school and recite to Miss Saunders. And so
June and Miss Anne sat in the school-room alone--the teacher reading a
book, and the pupil--her tears unshed--with her sullen face bent over
her lesson. In a few moments the door opened and the little Professor
thrust in his head. The girl had looked so hurt and tired when he spoke
to her that some strange sympathy moved him, mystified though he was, to
say gently now and with a smile that was rare with him:
“You might excuse June, I think, Miss Saunders, and let her recite some
time to-morrow,” and gently he closed the door. Miss Anne rose:
“Very well, June,” she said quietly.
June rose, too, gathering up her books, and as she passed the teacher's
platform she stopped and looked her full in the face. She said not
a word, and the tragedy between the woman and the girl was played in
silence, for the woman knew from the searching gaze of the girl and the
black defiance in her eyes, as she stalked out of the room, that her own
flush had betrayed her secret as plainly as the girl's words had told
hers.
Through his office window, a few minutes later, Hale saw June pass
swiftly into the house. In a few minutes she came swiftly out again
and went back swiftly toward the school-house. He was so worried by the
tense look in her face that he could work no more, and in a few minutes
he threw his papers down and followed her. When he turned the corner,
Bob was coming down the street with his cap on the back of his head and
swinging his books by a strap, and the boy looked a little conscious
when he saw Hale coming.
“Have you seen June?” Hale asked.
“No, sir,” said Bob, immensely relieved.
“Did she come up this way?”
“I don't know, but--” Bob turned and pointed to the green dome of a big
beech.
“I think you'll find her at the foot of that tree,” he said. “That's
where her play-house is and that's where she goes when she's--that's
where she usually goes.”
“Oh, yes,” said Hale--“her play-house. Thank you.”
“Not at all, sir.”
Hale went on, turned from the path and climbed noiselessly. When he
caught sight of the beech he stopped still. June stood against it like
a wood-nymph just emerged from its sun-dappled trunk--stood stretched to
her full height, her hands behind her, her hair tossed, her throat tense
under the dangling little cross, her face uplifted. At her feet,
the play-house was scattered to pieces. She seemed listening to the
love-calls of a woodthrush that came faintly through the still woods,
and then he saw that she heard nothing, saw nothing--that she was in a
dream as deep as sleep. Hale's heart throbbed as he looked.
“June!” he called softly. She did not hear him, and when he called
again, she turned her face--unstartled--and moving her posture not at
all. Hale pointed to the scattered play-house.
“I done it!” she said fiercely--“I done it myself.” Her eyes burned
steadily into his, even while she lifted her hands to her hair as though
she were only vaguely conscious that it was all undone.
“YOU heerd me?” she cried, and before he could answer--“SHE heerd
me,” and again, not waiting for a word from him, she cried still more
fiercely:
“I don't keer! I don't keer WHO knows.”
Her hands were trembling, she was biting her quivering lip to keep back
the starting tears, and Hale rushed toward her and took her in his arms.
“June! June!” he said brokenly. “You mustn't, little girl. I'm
proud--proud--why little sweetheart--” She was clinging to him and
looking up into his eyes and he bent his head slowly. Their lips met and
the man was startled. He knew now it was no child that answered him.
Hale walked long that night in the moonlit woods up and around
Imboden Hill, along a shadow-haunted path, between silvery beech-trunks,
past the big hole in the earth from which dead trees tossed out their
crooked arms as if in torment, and to the top of the ridge under which
the valley slept and above which the dark bulk of Powell's Mountain
rose. It was absurd, but he found himself strangely stirred. She was a
child, he kept repeating to himself, in spite of the fact that he knew
she was no child among her own people, and that mountain girls were even
wives who were younger still. Still, she did not know what she felt--how
could she?--and she would get over it, and then came the sharp stab of
a doubt--would he want her to get over it? Frankly and with wonder he
confessed to himself that he did not know--he did not know. But again,
why bother? He had meant to educate her, anyhow. That was the first
step--no matter what happened. June must go out into the world to
school. He would have plenty of money. Her father would not object, and
June need never know. He could include for her an interest in her own
father's coal lands that he meant to buy, and she could think that it
was her own money that she was using. So, with a sudden rush of gladness
from his brain to his heart, he recklessly yoked himself, then and
there, under all responsibility for that young life and the eager,
sensitive soul that already lighted it so radiantly.
And June? Her nature had opened precisely as had bud and flower that
spring. The Mother of Magicians had touched her as impartially as she
had touched them with fairy wand, and as unconsciously the little girl
had answered as a young dove to any cooing mate. With this Hale did not
reckon, and this June could not know. For a while, that night, she lay
in a delicious tremor, listening to the bird-like chorus of the little
frogs in the marsh, the booming of the big ones in the mill-pond, the
water pouring over the dam with the sound of a low wind, and, as had
all the sleeping things of the earth about her, she, too, sank to happy
sleep.