June, tired though she was, tossed restlessly that night. The one look
she had seen in Hale's face when she met him in the car, told her the
truth as far as he was concerned. He was unchanged, she could give him
no chance to withdraw from their long understanding, for it was plain
to her quick instinct that he wanted none. And so she had asked him
no question about his failure to meet her, for she knew now that his
reason, no matter what, was good. He had startled her in the car, for
her mind was heavy with memories of the poor little cabins she had
passed on the train, of the mountain men and women in the wedding-party,
and Hale himself was to the eye so much like one of them--had so
startled her that, though she knew that his instinct, too, was at work,
she could not gather herself together to combat her own feelings, for
every little happening in the dummy but drew her back to her previous
train of painful thought. And in that helplessness she had told Hale
good-night. She remembered now how she had looked upon Lonesome Cove
after she went to the Gap; how she had looked upon the Gap after her
year in the Bluegrass, and how she had looked back even on the first big
city she had seen there from the lofty vantage ground of New York. What
was the use of it all? Why laboriously climb a hill merely to see and
yearn for things that you cannot have, if you must go back and live in
the hollow again? Well, she thought rebelliously, she would not go back
to the hollow again--that was all. She knew what was coming and her
cousin Dave's perpetual sneer sprang suddenly from the past to cut
through her again and the old pride rose within her once more. She was
good enough now for Hale, oh, yes, she thought bitterly, good enough
NOW; and then, remembering his life-long kindness and thinking what she
might have been but for him, she burst into tears at the unworthiness of
her own thought. Ah, what should she do--what should she do? Repeating
that question over and over again, she fell toward morning into troubled
sleep. She did not wake until nearly noon, for already she had formed
the habit of sleeping late--late at least, for that part of the
world--and she was glad when the negro boy brought her word that Mr.
Hale had been called up the valley and would not be back until the
afternoon. She dreaded to meet him, for she knew that he had seen
the trouble within her and she knew he was not the kind of man to let
matters drag vaguely, if they could be cleared up and settled by open
frankness of discussion, no matter how blunt he must be. She had to wait
until mid-day dinner time for something to eat, so she lay abed, picked
a breakfast from the menu, which was spotted, dirty and meagre in
offerings, and had it brought to her room. Early in the afternoon she
issued forth into the sunlight, and started toward Imboden Hill. It was
very beautiful and soul-comforting--the warm air, the luxuriantly wooded
hills, with their shades of green that told her where poplar and oak and
beech and maple grew, the delicate haze of blue that overlay them and
deepened as her eyes followed the still mountain piles north-eastward
to meet the big range that shut her in from the outer world. The changes
had been many. One part of the town had been wiped out by fire and a few
buildings of stone had risen up. On the street she saw strange faces,
but now and then she stopped to shake hands with somebody whom she knew,
and who recognized her always with surprise and spoke but few words, and
then, as she thought, with some embarrassment. Half unconsciously
she turned toward the old mill. There it was, dusty and gray, and the
dripping old wheel creaked with its weight of shining water, and the
muffled roar of the unseen dam started an answering stream of memories
surging within her. She could see the window of her room in the old
brick boarding-house, and as she passed the gate, she almost stopped
to go in, but the face of a strange man who stood in the door with a
proprietary air deterred her. There was Hale's little frame cottage and
his name, half washed out, was over the wing that was still his office.
Past that she went, with a passing temptation to look within, and toward
the old school-house. A massive new one was half built, of gray stone,
to the left, but the old one, with its shingles on the outside that had
once caused her such wonder, still lay warm in the sun, but closed and
deserted. There was the playground where she had been caught in
“Ring around the Rosy,” and Hale and that girl teacher had heard her
confession. She flushed again when she thought of that day, but the
flush was now for another reason. Over the roof of the schoolhouse she
could see the beech tree where she had built her playhouse, and memory
led her from the path toward it. She had not climbed a hill for a long
time and she was panting when she reached it. There was the scattered
playhouse--it might have lain there untouched for a quarter of a
century--just as her angry feet had kicked it to pieces. On a root of
the beech she sat down and the broad rim of her hat scratched the trunk
of it and annoyed her, so she took it off and leaned her head against
the tree, looking up into the underworld of leaves through which
a sunbeam filtered here and there--one striking her hair which had
darkened to a duller gold--striking it eagerly, unerringly, as though
it had started for just such a shining mark. Below her was outspread
the little town--the straggling, wretched little town--crude, lonely,
lifeless! She could not be happy in Lonesome Cove after she had known
the Gap, and now her horizon had so broadened that she felt now toward
the Gap and its people as she had then felt toward the mountaineers: for
the standards of living in the Cove--so it seemed--were no farther
below the standards in the Gap than they in turn were lower than the new
standards to which she had adapted herself while away. Indeed, even that
Bluegrass world where she had spent a year was too narrow now for her
vaulting ambition, and with that thought she looked down again on the
little town, a lonely island in a sea of mountains and as far from
the world for which she had been training herself as though it were in
mid-ocean. Live down there? She shuddered at the thought and straightway
was very miserable. The clear piping of a wood-thrush rose far away, a
tear started between her half-closed lashes and she might have gone to
weeping silently, had her ear not caught the sound of something moving
below her. Some one was coming that way, so she brushed her eyes swiftly
with her handkerchief and stood upright against the tree. And there
again Hale found her, tense, upright, bareheaded again and her hands
behind her; only her face was not uplifted and dreaming--it was turned
toward him, unstartled and expectant. He stopped below her and leaned
one shoulder against a tree.
“I saw you pass the office,” he said, “and I thought I should find you
here.”
His eyes dropped to the scattered playhouse of long ago--and a faint
smile that was full of submerged sadness passed over his face. It was
his playhouse, after all, that she had kicked to pieces. But he did not
mention it--nor her attitude--nor did he try, in any way, to arouse her
memories of that other time at this same place.
“I want to talk with you, June--and I want to talk now.”
“Yes, Jack,” she said tremulously.
For a moment he stood in silence, his face half-turned, his teeth hard
on his indrawn lip--thinking. There was nothing of the mountaineer about
him now. He was clean-shaven and dressed with care--June saw that--but
he looked quite old, his face seemed harried with worries and ravaged by
suffering, and June had suddenly to swallow a quick surging of pity for
him. He spoke slowly and without looking at her:
“June, if it hadn't been for me, you would be over in Lonesome Cove and
happily married by this time, or at least contented with your life, for
you wouldn't have known any other.”
“I don't know, Jack.”
“I took you out--and it rests with you whether I shall be sorry I
did--sorry wholly on your account, I mean,” he added hastily.
She knew what he meant and she said nothing--she only turned her head
away slightly, with her eyes upturned a little toward the leaves that
were shaking like her own heart.
“I think I see it all very clearly,” he went on, in a low and perfectly
even voice. “You can't be happy over there now--you can't be happy over
here now. You've got other wishes, ambitions, dreams, now, and I want
you to realize them, and I want to help you to realize them all I
can--that's all.”
“Jack!--” she helplessly, protestingly spoke his name in a whisper, but
that was all she could do, and he went on:
“It isn't so strange. What is strange is that I--that I didn't foresee
it all. But if I had,” he added firmly, “I'd have done it just the
same--unless by doing it I've really done you more harm than good.”
“No--no--Jack!”
“I came into your world--you went into mine. What I had grown
indifferent about--you grew to care about. You grew sensitive while I
was growing callous to certain--” he was about to say “surface things,”
but he checked himself--“certain things in life that mean more to a
woman than to a man. I would not have married you as you were--I've got
to be honest now--at least I thought it necessary that you should be
otherwise--and now you have gone beyond me, and now you do not want to
marry me as I am. And it is all very natural and very just.” Very
slowly her head had dropped until her chin rested hard above the little
jewelled cross on her breast.
“You must tell me if I am wrong. You don't love me now--well enough to
be happy with me here”--he waved one hand toward the straggling little
town below them and then toward the lonely mountains--“I did not
know that we would have to live here--but I know it now--” he checked
himself, and afterward she recalled the tone of those last words, but
then they had no especial significance.
“Am I wrong?” he repeated, and then he said hurriedly, for her face
was so piteous--“No, you needn't give yourself the pain of saying it in
words. I want you to know that I understand that there is nothing in the
world I blame you for--nothing--nothing. If there is any blame at all,
it rests on me alone.” She broke toward him with a cry then.
“No--no, Jack,” she said brokenly, and she caught his hand in both her
own and tried to raise it to her lips, but he held her back and she
put her face on his breast and sobbed heart-brokenly. He waited for the
paroxysm to pass, stroking her hair gently.
“You mustn't feel that way, little girl. You can't help it--I can't help
it--and these things happen all the time, everywhere. You don't have to
stay here. You can go away and study, and when I can, I'll come to see
you and cheer you up; and when you are a great singer, I'll send you
flowers and be so proud of you, and I'll say to myself, 'I helped do
that.' Dry your eyes, now. You must go back to the hotel. Your father
will be there by this time and you'll have to be starting home pretty
soon.”
Like a child she obeyed him, but she was so weak and trembling that
he put his arm about her to help her down the hill. At the edge of the
woods she stopped and turned full toward him.
“You are so good,” she said tremulously, “so GOOD. Why, you haven't even
asked me if there was another--”
Hale interrupted her, shaking his head.
“If there is, I don't want to know.”
“But there isn't, there isn't!” she cried, “I don't know what is the
matter with me. I hate--” the tears started again, and again she was on
the point of breaking down, but Hale checked her.
“Now, now,” he said soothingly, “you mustn't, now--that's all right. You
mustn't.” Her anger at herself helped now.
“Why, I stood like a silly fool, tongue-tied, and I wanted to say so
much. I--”
“You don't need to,” Hale said gently, “I understand it all. I
understand.”
“I believe you do,” she said with a sob, “better than I do.”
“Well, it's all right, little girl. Come on.”
They issued forth into the sunlight and Hale walked rapidly. The strain
was getting too much for him and he was anxious to be alone. Without
a word more they passed the old school-house, the massive new one, and
went on, in silence, down the street. Hitched to a post, near the hotel,
were two gaunt horses with drooping heads, and on one of them was a
side-saddle. Sitting on the steps of the hotel, with a pipe in his
mouth, was the mighty figure of Devil Judd Tolliver. He saw them
coming--at least he saw Hale coming, and that far away Hale saw his
bushy eyebrows lift in wonder at June. A moment later he rose to his
great height without a word.
“Dad,” said June in a trembling voice, “don't you know me?” The old man
stared at her silently and a doubtful smile played about his bearded
lips.
“Hardly, but I reckon hit's June.”
She knew that the world to which Hale belonged would expect her to kiss
him, and she made a movement as though she would, but the habit of a
lifetime is not broken so easily. She held out her hand, and with the
other patted him on the arm as she looked up into his face.
“Time to be goin', June, if we want to get home afore dark!”
“All right, Dad.”
The old man turned to his horse.
“Hurry up, little gal.”
In a few minutes they were ready, and the girl looked long into Hale's
face when he took her hand.
“You are coming over soon?”
“Just as soon as I can.” Her lips trembled.
“Good-by,” she faltered.
“Good-by, June,” said Hale.
From the steps he watched them--the giant father slouching in his
saddle and the trim figure of the now sadly misplaced girl, erect on the
awkward-pacing mountain beast--as incongruous, the two, as a fairy on
some prehistoric monster. A horseman was coming up the street behind him
and a voice called:
“Who's that?” Hale turned--it was the Honourable Samuel Budd, coming
home from Court.
“June Tolliver.”
“June Taliaferro,” corrected the Hon. Sam with emphasis.
“The same.” The Hon. Sam silently followed the pair for a moment through
his big goggles.
“What do you think of my theory of the latent possibilities of the
mountaineer--now?”
“I think I know how true it is better than you do,” said Hale calmly,
and with a grunt the Hon. Sam rode on. Hale watched them as they rode
across the plateau--watched them until the Gap swallowed them up and his
heart ached for June. Then he went to his room and there, stretched out
on his bed and with his hands clenched behind his head, he lay staring
upward.
Devil Judd Tolliver had lost none of his taciturnity. Stolidly,
silently, he went ahead, as is the custom of lordly man in the
mountains--horseback or afoot--asking no questions, answering June's in
the fewest words possible. Uncle Billy, the miller, had been complaining
a good deal that spring, and old Hon had rheumatism. Uncle Billy's
old-maid sister, who lived on Devil's Fork, had been cooking for him at
home since the last taking to bed of June's step-mother. Bub had “growed
up” like a hickory sapling. Her cousin Loretta hadn't married, and some
folks allowed she'd run away some day yet with young Buck Falin. Her
cousin Dave had gone off to school that year, had come back a month
before, and been shot through the shoulder. He was in Lonesome Cove now.
This fact was mentioned in the same matter-of-fact way as the other
happenings. Hale had been raising Cain in Lonesome Cove--“A-cuttin'
things down an' tearin' 'em up an' playin' hell ginerally.”
The feud had broken out again and maybe June couldn't stay at home long.
He didn't want her there with the fighting going on--whereat June's
heart gave a start of gladness that the way would be easy for her to
leave when she wished to leave. Things over at the Gap “was agoin' to
perdition,” the old man had been told, while he was waiting for June and
Hale that day, and Hale had not only lost a lot of money, but if things
didn't take a rise, he would be left head over heels in debt, if that
mine over in Lonesome Cove didn't pull him out.
They were approaching the big Pine now, and June was beginning to ache
and get sore from the climb. So Hale was in trouble--that was what he
meant when he said that, though she could leave the mountains when she
pleased, he must stay there, perhaps for good.
“I'm mighty glad you come home, gal,” said the old man, “an' that ye air
goin' to put an end to all this spendin' o' so much money. Jack says
you got some money left, but I don't understand it. He says he made a
'investment' fer ye and tribbled the money. I haint never axed him no
questions. Hit was betwixt you an' him, an' 'twant none o' my business
long as you an' him air goin' to marry. He said you was goin' to marry
this summer an' I wish you'd git tied up right away whilst I'm livin',
fer I don't know when a Winchester might take me off an' I'd die a sight
easier if I knowed you was tied up with a good man like him.”
“Yes, Dad,” was all she said, for she had not the heart to tell him the
truth, and she knew that Hale never would until the last moment he must,
when he learned that she had failed.
Half an hour later, she could see the stone chimney of the little cabin
in Lonesome Cove. A little farther down several spirals of smoke were
visible--rising from unseen houses which were more miners' shacks, her
father said, that Hale had put up while she was gone. The water of the
creek was jet black now. A row of rough wooden houses ran along its
edge. The geese cackled a doubtful welcome. A new dog leaped barking
from the porch and a tall boy sprang after him--both running for the
gate.
“Why, Bub,” cried June, sliding from her horse and kissing him, and then
holding him off at arms' length to look into his steady gray eyes and
his blushing face.
“Take the horses, Bub,” said old Judd, and June entered the gate while
Bub stood with the reins in his hand, still speechlessly staring her
over from head to foot. There was her garden, thank God--with all her
flowers planted, a new bed of pansies and one of violets and the border
of laurel in bloom--unchanged and weedless.
“One o' Jack Hale's men takes keer of it,” explained old Judd, and
again, with shame, June felt the hurt of her lover's thoughtfulness.
When she entered the cabin, the same old rasping petulant voice called
her from a bed in one corner, and when June took the shrivelled old hand
that was limply thrust from the bed-clothes, the old hag's keen eyes
swept her from head to foot with disapproval.
“My, but you air wearin' mighty fine clothes,” she croaked enviously.
“I ain't had a new dress fer more'n five year;” and that was the welcome
she got.
“No?” said June appeasingly. “Well, I'll get one for you myself.”
“I'm much obleeged,” she whined, “but I reckon I can git along.”
A cough came from the bed in the other corner of the room.
“That's Dave,” said the old woman, and June walked over to where her
cousin's black eyes shone hostile at her from the dark.
“I'm sorry, Dave,” she said, but Dave answered nothing but a sullen
“howdye” and did not put out a hand--he only stared at her in sulky
bewilderment, and June went back to listen to the torrent of the old
woman's plaints until Bub came in. Then as she turned, she noticed for
the first time that a new door had been cut in one side of the cabin,
and Bub was following the direction of her eyes.
“Why, haint nobody told ye?” he said delightedly.
“Told me what, Bub?”
With a whoop Bud leaped for the side of the door and, reaching up,
pulled a shining key from between the logs and thrust it into her hands.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Hit's yourn.”
“Some more o' Jack Hale's fool doin's,” said the old woman. “Go on, gal,
and see whut he's done.”
With eager hands she put the key in the lock and when she pushed open
the door, she gasped. Another room had been added to the cabin--and the
fragrant smell of cedar made her nostrils dilate. Bub pushed by her and
threw open the shutters of a window to the low sunlight, and June stood
with both hands to her head. It was a room for her--with a dresser, a
long mirror, a modern bed in one corner, a work-table with a student's
lamp on it, a wash-stand and a chest of drawers and a piano! On the
walls were pictures and over the mantel stood the one she had first
learned to love--two lovers clasped in each other's arms and under them
the words “Enfin Seul.”
“Oh-oh,” was all she could say, and choking, she motioned Bub from the
room. When the door closed, she threw herself sobbing across the bed.
Over at the Gap that night Hale sat in his office with a piece of white
paper and a lump of black coal on the table in front of him. His foreman
had brought the coal to him that day at dusk. He lifted the lump to the
light of his lamp, and from the centre of it a mocking evil eye leered
back at him. The eye was a piece of shining black flint and told him
that his mine in Lonesome Cove was but a pocket of cannel coal and worth
no more than the smouldering lumps in his grate. Then he lifted the
piece of white paper--it was his license to marry June.