Hale was beyond Black Mountain when her letter reached him. His work
over there had to be finished and so he kept in his saddle the greater
part of two days and nights and on the third day rode his big black
horse forty miles in little more than half a day that he might meet
her at the train. The last two years had wrought their change in him.
Deterioration is easy in the hills--superficial deterioration in
habits, manners, personal appearance and the practices of all the little
niceties of life. The morning bath is impossible because of the crowded
domestic conditions of a mountain cabin and, if possible, might if
practised, excite wonder and comment, if not vague suspicion. Sleeping
garments are practically barred for the same reason. Shaving becomes a
rare luxury. A lost tooth-brush may not be replaced for a month. In time
one may bring himself to eat with a knife for the reason that it is hard
for a hungry man to feed himself with a fork that has but two tines. The
finger tips cease to be the culminating standard of the gentleman. It
is hard to keep a supply of fresh linen when one is constantly in the
saddle, and a constant weariness of body and a ravenous appetite make a
man indifferent to things like a bad bed and worse food, particularly
as he must philosophically put up with them, anyhow. Of all these things
the man himself may be quite unconscious and yet they affect him more
deeply than he knows and show to a woman even in his voice, his walk,
his mouth--everywhere save in his eyes, which change only in severity,
or in kindliness or when there has been some serious break-down of soul
or character within. And the woman will not look to his eyes for the
truth--which makes its way slowly--particularly when the woman has
striven for the very things that the man has so recklessly let go. She
would never suffer herself to let down in such a way and she does not
understand how a man can.
Hale's life, since his college doors had closed behind him, had always
been a rough one. He had dropped from civilization and had gone back
into it many times. And each time he had dropped, he dropped the deeper,
and for that reason had come back into his own life each time with more
difficulty and with more indifference. The last had been his roughest
year and he had sunk a little more deeply just at the time when June had
been pluming herself for flight from such depths forever. Moreover,
Hale had been dominant in every matter that his hand or his brain had
touched. His habit had been to say “do this” and it was done. Though
he was no longer acting captain of the Police Guard, he always acted as
captain whenever he was on hand, and always he was the undisputed leader
in all questions of business, politics or the maintenance of order and
law. The success he had forged had hardened and strengthened his mouth,
steeled his eyes and made him more masterful in manner, speech and
point of view, and naturally had added nothing to his gentleness, his
unselfishness, his refinement or the nice consideration of little things
on which women lay such stress. It was an hour by sun when he clattered
through the gap and pushed his tired black horse into a gallop across
the valley toward the town. He saw the smoke of the little dummy and, as
he thundered over the bridge of the North Fork, he saw that it was just
about to pull out and he waved his hat and shouted imperiously for it to
wait. With his hand on the bell-rope, the conductor, autocrat that he,
too, was, did wait and Hale threw his reins to the man who was nearest,
hardly seeing who he was, and climbed aboard. He wore a slouched hat
spotted by contact with the roof of the mines which he had hastily
visited on his way through Lonesome Cove. The growth of three days'
beard was on his face. He wore a gray woollen shirt, and a blue
handkerchief--none too clean--was loosely tied about his sun-scorched
column of a throat; he was spotted with mud from his waist to the soles
of his rough riding boots and his hands were rough and grimy. But his
eye was bright and keen and his heart thumped eagerly. Again it was the
middle of June and the town was a naked island in a sea of leaves
whose breakers literally had run mountain high and stopped for all time
motionless. Purple lights thick as mist veiled Powell's Mountain. Below,
the valley was still flooded with yellow sunlight which lay along the
mountain sides and was streaked here and there with the long shadow of
a deep ravine. The beech trunks on Imboden Hill gleamed in it like white
bodies scantily draped with green, and the yawning Gap held the yellow
light as a bowl holds wine. He had long ago come to look upon the hills
merely as storehouses for iron and coal, put there for his special
purpose, but now the long submerged sense of the beauty of it all
stirred within him again, for June was the incarnate spirit of it all
and June was coming back to those mountains and--to him.
* * * * * * *
And June--June had seen the change in Hale. The first year he had come
often to New York to see her and they had gone to the theatre and the
opera, and June was pleased to play the part of heroine in what was such
a real romance to the other girls in school and she was proud of Hale.
But each time he came, he seemed less interested in the diversions that
meant so much to her, more absorbed in his affairs in the mountains and
less particular about his looks. His visits came at longer intervals,
with each visit he stayed less long, and each time he seemed more eager
to get away. She had been shy about appearing before him for the first
time in evening dress, and when he entered the drawing-room she stood
under a chandelier in blushing and resplendent confusion, but he seemed
not to recognize that he had never seen her that way before, and for
another reason June remained confused, disappointed and hurt, for he
was not only unobserving, and seemingly unappreciative, but he was more
silent than ever that night and he looked gloomy. But if he had grown
accustomed to her beauty, there were others who had not, and smart,
dapper college youths gathered about her like bees around a flower--a
triumphant fact to which he also seemed indifferent. Moreover, he was
not in evening clothes that night and she did not know whether he had
forgotten or was indifferent to them, and the contrast that he was made
her that night almost ashamed for him. She never guessed what the matter
was, for Hale kept his troubles to himself. He was always gentle and
kind, he was as lavish with her as though he were a king, and she was
as lavish and prodigally generous as though she were a princess. There
seemed no limit to the wizard income from the investments that Hale
had made for her when, as he said, he sold a part of her stock in the
Lonesome Cove mine, and what she wanted Hale always sent her without
question. Only, as the end was coming on at the Gap, he wrote once to
know if a certain amount would carry her through until she was ready to
come home, but even that question aroused no suspicion in thoughtless
June. And then that last year he had come no more--always, always he was
too busy. Not even on her triumphal night at the end of the session was
he there, when she had stood before the guests and patrons of the school
like a goddess, and had thrilled them into startling applause, her
teachers into open glowing pride, the other girls into bright-eyed envy
and herself into still another new world. Now she was going home and she
was glad to go.
She had awakened that morning with the keen air of the mountains in her
nostrils--the air she had breathed in when she was born, and her eyes
shone happily when she saw through her window the loved blue hills along
which raced the train. They were only a little way from the town where
she must change, the porter said; she had overslept and she had no time
even to wash her face and hands, and that worried her a good deal. The
porter nearly lost his equilibrium when she gave him half a dollar--for
women are not profuse in the way of tipping--and instead of putting her
bag down on the station platform, he held it in his hand waiting to do
her further service. At the head of the steps she searched about for
Hale and her lovely face looked vexed and a little hurt when she did not
see him.
“Hotel, Miss?” said the porter.
“Yes, please, Harvey!” she called.
An astonished darky sprang from the line of calling hotel-porters and
took her bag. Then every tooth in his head flashed.
“Lordy, Miss June--I never knowed you at all.”
June smiled--it was the tribute she was looking for.
“Have you seen Mr. Hale?”
“No'm. Mr. Hale ain't been here for mos' six months. I reckon he aint in
this country now. I aint heard nothin' 'bout him for a long time.”
June knew better than that--but she said nothing. She would rather have
had even Harvey think that he was away. So she hurried to the hotel--she
would have four hours to wait--and asked for the one room that had a
bath attached--the room to which Hale had sent her when she had passed
through on her way to New York. She almost winced when she looked in the
mirror and saw the smoke stains about her pretty throat and ears, and
she wondered if anybody could have noticed them on her way from the
train. Her hands, too, were dreadful to look at and she hurried to take
off her things.
In an hour she emerged freshened, immaculate from her crown of lovely
hair to her smartly booted feet, and at once she went downstairs. She
heard the man, whom she passed, stop at the head of them and turn to
look down at her, and she saw necks craned within the hotel office when
she passed the door. On the street not a man and hardly a woman
failed to look at her with wonder and open admiration, for she was an
apparition in that little town and it all pleased her so much that she
became flushed and conscious and felt like a queen who, unknown, moved
among her subjects and blessed them just with her gracious presence.
For she was unknown even by several people whom she knew and that, too,
pleased her--to have bloomed so quite beyond their ken. She was like a
meteor coming back to dazzle the very world from which it had flown for
a while into space. When she went into the dining-room for the midday
dinner, there was a movement in almost every part of the room as though
there were many there who were on the lookout for her entrance. The head
waiter, a portly darky, lost his imperturbable majesty for a moment in
surprise at the vision and then with a lordly yet obsequious wave of his
hand, led her to a table over in a corner where no one was sitting. Four
young men came in rather boisterously and made for her table. She lifted
her calm eyes at them so haughtily that the one in front halted with
sudden embarrassment and they all swerved to another table from which
they stared at her surreptitiously. Perhaps she was mistaken for the
comic-opera star whose brilliant picture she had seen on a bill board in
front of the “opera house.” Well, she had the voice and she might
have been and she might yet be--and if she were, this would be the
distinction that would be shown her. And, still as it was she was
greatly pleased.
At four o'clock she started for the hills. In half an hour she was
dropping down a winding ravine along a rock-lashing stream with those
hills so close to the car on either side that only now and then could
she see the tops of them. Through the window the keen air came from the
very lungs of them, freighted with the coolness of shadows, the scent of
damp earth and the faint fragrance of wild flowers, and her soul leaped
to meet them. The mountain sides were showered with pink and white
laurel (she used to call it “ivy”) and the rhododendrons (she used to
call them “laurel”) were just beginning to blossom--they were her old
and fast friends--mountain, shadow, the wet earth and its pure breath,
and tree, plant and flower; she had not forgotten them, and it was good
to come back to them. Once she saw an overshot water-wheel on the bank
of the rushing little stream and she thought of Uncle Billy; she smiled
and the smile stopped short--she was going back to other things as well.
The train had creaked by a log-cabin set in the hillside and then past
another and another; and always there were two or three ragged children
in the door and a haggard unkempt woman peering over their shoulders.
How lonely those cabins looked and how desolate the life they suggested
to her now--NOW! The first station she came to after the train had
wound down the long ravine to the valley level again was crowded with
mountaineers. There a wedding party got aboard with a great deal of
laughter, chaffing and noise, and all three went on within and without
the train while it was waiting. A sudden thought stunned her like a
lightning stroke. They were HER people out there on the platform and
inside the car ahead--those rough men in slouch hats, jeans and cowhide
boots, their mouths stained with tobacco juice, their cheeks and eyes
on fire with moonshine, and those women in poke-bonnets with their sad,
worn, patient faces on which the sympathetic good cheer and joy of
the moment sat so strangely. She noticed their rough shoes and their
homespun gowns that made their figures all alike and shapeless, with
a vivid awakening of early memories. She might have been one of those
narrow-lived girls outside, or that bride within had it not been for
Jack--Hale. She finished the name in her own mind and she was conscious
that she had. Ah, well, that was a long time ago and she was nothing but
a child and she had thrown herself at his head. Perhaps it was different
with him now and if it was, she would give him the chance to withdraw
from everything. It would be right and fair and then life was so full
for her now. She was dependent on nobody--on nothing. A rainbow spanned
the heaven above her and the other end of it was not in the hills. But
one end was and to that end she was on her way. She was going to just
such people as she had seen at the station. Her father and her kinsmen
were just such men--her step-mother and kinswomen were just such women.
Her home was little more than just such a cabin as the desolate ones
that stirred her pity when she swept by them. She thought of how she
felt when she had first gone to Lonesome Cove after a few months at the
Gap, and she shuddered to think how she would feel now. She was getting
restless by this time and aimlessly she got up and walked to the front
of the car and back again to her seat, hardly noticing that the other
occupants were staring at her with some wonder. She sat down for a few
minutes and then she went to the rear and stood outside on the platform,
clutching a brass rod of the railing and looking back on the dropping
darkness in which the hills seemed to be rushing together far behind as
the train crashed on with its wake of spark-lit rolling smoke. A cinder
stung her face, and when she lifted her hand to the spot, she saw that
her glove was black with grime. With a little shiver of disgust she went
back to her seat and with her face to the blackness rushing past her
window she sat brooding--brooding. Why had Hale not met her? He had said
he would and she had written him when she was coming and had telegraphed
him at the station in New York when she started. Perhaps he HAD changed.
She recalled that even his letters had grown less frequent, shorter,
more hurried the past year--well, he should have his chance. Always,
however, her mind kept going back to the people at the station and to
her people in the mountains. They were the same, she kept repeating
to herself--the very same and she was one of them. And always she kept
thinking of her first trip to Lonesome Cove after her awakening and of
what her next would be. That first time Hale had made her go back as
she had left, in home-spun, sun-bonnet and brogans. There was the same
reason why she should go back that way now as then--would Hale insist
that she should now? She almost laughed aloud at the thought. She knew
that she would refuse and she knew that his reason would not appeal to
her now--she no longer cared what her neighbours and kinspeople might
think and say. The porter paused at her seat.
“How much longer is it?” she asked.
“Half an hour, Miss.”
June went to wash her face and hands, and when she came back to her seat
a great glare shone through the windows on the other side of the car. It
was the furnace, a “run” was on and she could see the streams of white
molten metal racing down the narrow channels of sand to their narrow
beds on either side. The whistle shrieked ahead for the Gap and she
nerved herself with a prophetic sense of vague trouble at hand.
* * * * * * *
At the station Hale had paced the platform. He looked at his watch to
see whether he might have time to run up to the furnace, half a mile
away, and board the train there. He thought he had and he was about to
start when the shriek of the coming engine rose beyond the low hills in
Wild Cat Valley, echoed along Powell's Mountain and broke against the
wrinkled breast of the Cumberland. On it came, and in plain sight it
stopped suddenly to take water, and Hale cursed it silently and
recalled viciously that when he was in a hurry to arrive anywhere,
the water-tower was always on the wrong side of the station. He got so
restless that he started for it on a run and he had gone hardly fifty
yards before the train came on again and he had to run back to beat it
to the station--where he sprang to the steps of the Pullman before it
stopped--pushing the porter aside to find himself checked by the crowded
passengers at the door. June was not among them and straightway he ran
for the rear of the car.
June had risen. The other occupants of the car had crowded forward and
she was the last of them. She had stood, during an irritating wait, at
the water-tower, and now as she moved slowly forward again she heard
the hurry of feet behind her and she turned to look into the eager,
wondering eyes of John Hale.
“June!” he cried in amazement, but his face lighted with joy and he
impulsively stretched out his arms as though he meant to take her in
them, but as suddenly he dropped them before the startled look in her
eyes, which, with one swift glance, searched him from head to foot. They
shook hands almost gravely.