XIII

One afternoon, about a week later, as Ann Boyd sat in her weaving-room

twisting bunches of carded wool into yarn on her old spinning-wheel, the

whir of which on her busy days could be heard by persons passing along

the road in front of her gate, a shadow fell on her floor, and, looking

up, she saw a tall, handsome young man in the doorway, holding his hat

in one hand, a valise in the other. He said nothing, but only stood

smiling, as if in hearty enjoyment of the surprise he was giving her.

"Luke King!" she exclaimed. "You, of all people on the face of the

earth!"

"Yes, Aunt Ann"--he had always addressed her in that way--"here I am,

like a bad coin, always turning up."

The yellow bunches of wool fell to the floor as she rose up and held out

her hand.

"You know I'm glad to see you, my boy," she said, "but I wasn't

expecting you; I don't know as I ever looked for you to come back here

again, where you've had such a hard time of it. When you wrote me you

was the chief editor of a paying paper out there, I said to myself that

you'd never care to work here in the mountains, where there is so little

to be made by a brainy man."

"If I were to tell you the main thing that brought me back you'd

certainly scold me," he laughed; "but I never hid a fault from you, Aunt

Ann. The truth is, good, old-fashioned home-sickness is at the bottom of

it."

"Homesickness, for _this_?" Ann sneered contemptuously, as she waved her

hand broadly--"homesick for the hard bed you had at your step-father's,

in a pine-pole cabin, with a mud chimney and windows without glass, when

you've been the equal, out there, of the highest and best in the land,

and among folks that could and would appreciate your talents and energy

and were able to pay cash for it at the highest market-price?"

"You don't understand, Aunt Ann." He flushed sensitively under her stare

of disapproval as he sat down in a chair near her wheel. "Maybe you

never did understand me thoroughly. I always had a big stock of

sentiment that I couldn't entirely kill. Aunt Ann, all my life away has

only made me love these old mountains, hills, and valleys more than

ever, and, finally, when a good opportunity presented itself, as--"

"Oh, you are just like the rest, after all. I'd hoped to the contrary,"

Ann sighed. "But don't think I'm not glad to see you, Luke." Her voice

shook slightly. "God knows I've prayed for a sight of the one face among

all these here in the mountains that seemed to respect me, but there was

another side to the matter. I wanted to feel, Luke, that I had done you

some actual good in the world--that the education I helped you to get

was going to lift you high above the average man. When you wrote about

all your good-luck out there, the big salary, the interest the

stockholders had given you in the paper that bid fair to make a pile of

money, and stood so high in political influence, I was delighted; but,

Luke, if a sentimental longing for these heartless red hills and their

narrow, hide-bound inhabitants has caused you actually to throw up--"

"Oh, it's really not so bad as that," King hastened to say. "The truth

is--though I really _was_ trying to keep from bragging about my

good-fortune before I'd had a chance to ask after your health--the truth

is, Aunt Ann, it's business that really brings me back, though I confess

it was partly for sentimental reasons that I decided on the change. It's

this way: A company has been formed in Atlanta to run a daily paper on

somewhat similar lines to the one we had in the West, and the promoters

of it, it seems, have been watching my work, and that sort of thing, and

so, only a few days ago, they wrote offering me a good salary to assume

chief charge and management of the new paper. At first I declined, in a

deliberate letter, but they wouldn't have it that way--they telegraphed

me that they would not listen to a refusal, and offered me the same

financial interest as the one I held."

"Ah, they did, eh?" Ann's eye for business was gleaming. "They offered

you as good as you had?"

"Better, as it has turned out, Aunt Ann," said King, modestly, "for when

my associates out there read the proposition, they said it was my duty

to myself to accept, and with that they took my stock off my hands. They

paid me ten thousand dollars in cash, Aunt Ann. I've got that much ready

money and a position that is likely to be even better than the one I

had. So, you see, all my home-sickness--"

"Ten thousand dollars!" Ann cried, her strong face full of

gratification. "Ten thousand dollars for my sturdy mountain-boy! Ah,

that will open the eyes of some of these indolent know-it-all louts who

said the money spent on your education was thrown in the fire. You are

all right, Luke. I'm a judge of human stock as well as cattle and

horses. If you'd been a light fellow you'd have dropped me when you

began to rise out there; but you didn't. Your letters have been about

the only solace I've had here in all my loneliness and strife, and here

you are to see me as soon as you come--that is, I reckon, you haven't

been here many days."

"I got to Darley at two o'clock to-day," King smiled, affectionately. "I

took the hack to Springtown and left my trunk there, to walk here. I

haven't seen mother yet, Aunt Ann. I had to see you first."

"You are a good boy, Luke," Ann said, with feeling, as was indicated by

her husky voice and the softening of her features. "So you _are_ going

to see your mother?"

"Yes, I'm going to see her, Aunt Ann. For several years I have felt

resentment about her marrying as she did, but, do you know, I think

success and good-fortune make one forgiving. Somehow, with all my joy

over my good-luck, I feel like I'd like to shake even lazy old Mark

Bruce by the hand and tell him I am willing to let by-gones be by-gones.

Then, if I could, I'd like to help him and my mother and step-brother

and step-sisters in some material way."

"Huh! I don't know about that," Ann frowned. "Help given to them sort is

certainly throwed away; besides, what's yours is yours, and if you

started in to distribute help you'll be ridden to death. No, go to see

them if you _have_ to, but don't let them wheedle your justly earned

money out of you. They don't deserve it, Luke."

"Oh, well, we'll see about it," King laughed, lightly. "You know old

Bruce may kick me out of the house, and if mother stood to him in it

again"--King's eyes were flashing, his lip was drawn tight--"I guess I'd

never go back any more, Aunt Ann."

"Old Mark would never send you away if he thought you had money," Ann

said, cynically. "If I was you I'd not let them know about that. You

see, you could keep them in the dark easily enough, for I've told them

absolutely nothing except that you were getting along fairly well."

King smiled. "They never would think I had much to judge by this suit of

clothes," he said. "It is an old knockabout rig I had to splash around

in the mud in while out hunting, and I put it on this morning--well,

just because I did not want to come back among all my poor relatives and

friends dressed up as I have been doing in the city, Aunt Ann," he

laughed, as if making sport of himself. "I've got a silk high-hat as

slick as goose-grease, and a long jimswinger coat, and pants that are

always ironed as sharp as a knife-blade in front. I took your advice and

decided that a good appearance went a long way, but I don't really think

I overdid it."

"I'm glad you didn't put on style in coming back, anyway," Ann said,

proudly. "It wouldn't have looked well in you; but you did right to

dress like the best where you were, and it had something--a lots, I

imagine--to do with your big success. If you want to go in and win in

any undertaking, don't think failure for one minute, and the trouble is

that shabby clothes are a continual reminder of poverty. Make folks

believe at the outset that you are of the best, and then _be_ the best."

King was looking down thoughtfully. "There is one trouble," he said, "in

making a good appearance, and that comes from the ideas of some as to

what sort of man or woman is the best. Before I left Seattle, Aunt Ann,

my associates gave me a big dinner at the club--a sort of good-bye

affair to drink to my future, you know--and some of the most

distinguished men in the state were there, men prominent in the business

and political world. And that night, Aunt Ann"--King had flushed

slightly and his voice faltered--"that night a well-meaning man, a sort

of society leader, in his toast to me plainly referred to me as a scion

of the old Southern aristocracy, and he did it in just such a way as to

make it appear to those who knew otherwise that I would be sailing under

false colors if I did not correct the impression. He had made a

beautiful talk about our old colonial homes, our slaves in livery, our

beautiful women, who invariably graced the courts of Europe, and

concluded by saying that it was no wonder I had succeeded where many

other men with fewer hereditary influences to back them had failed."

"Ah, you _were_ in a fix!" Ann said. "That is, it was awkward for you,

who I know to be almost too sincere for your own good."

"Well, I couldn't let it pass, Aunt Ann--I simply couldn't let all those

men leave that table under a wrong impression. I hardly know what I said

when I replied, but it seemed to be the right thing, for they all

applauded me. I told him I did not belong to what was generally

understood to be the old aristocracy of the South, but to what I

considered the new. I told them about our log-cabin aristocracy, Aunt

Ann, here in these blue mountains, for which my soul was famished. I

told them of the sturdy, hard-working, half-starved mountaineers and

their scratching, with dull tools, a bare existence out of this rocky

soil. I told them of my bleak and barren boyhood, my heart-burnings at

home, when my mother married again, the nights I'd spent at study in the

light of pine-knots that filled the house with smoke. Then I told them

about the grandest woman God ever brought to life. I told them about

you, Aunt Ann. I gave no names, went into no painful particulars, but I

talked about what you had done for me, and how you've been persecuted

and misunderstood, till I could hardly hold back the tears from my

eyes."

"Oh, hush, Luke," Ann said, huskily--"hush up!"

"Well, I may now, but I couldn't that night," said King. "I got started,

and it came out of me like a flood. I said things about you that night

that I've thought for years, but which you never would let me say to

you."

"Hush, Luke, hush--you are a good boy, but you mustn't--" Ann's voice

broke, and she placed her hand to her eyes.

"There was a celebrated novelist there," King went on, "and after dinner

he came over to me and held out his hand. He was old and white-haired,

and his face was full of tender, poetic emotion. 'If you ever meet your

benefactress again,' he said, 'tell her I'd give half my life to know

her. If I'd known her I could write a book that would be immortal.'"

There was a pause. Ann seemed to be trying to crush out some obstruction

to deliberate utterance in her big, throbbing throat.

"If he knew my life just as it has been," she said, finally--"if he knew

it all--all that I've been through, all I've thought through it all,

from the time I was an innocent, laughing girl 'till now, as an old

woman, I'm fighting a battle of hate with every living soul within miles

of me--if he knew all _that_, he could write a book, and it would be a

big one. But it wouldn't help humanity, Luke. My hate's mine, and the

devil's. It's not for folks born lucky and happy. Some folks seem put on

earth for love. I'm put here for hate and for joy over the misfortune of

my enemies."

"You know many things, Aunt Ann," King said, softly, "and you are older

than I am, but you can't see the end of it all as clearly as I do."

"You think not, my boy?"

"No, Aunt Ann; I have learned that nothing exists on earth except to

produce ultimate good. The vilest crime, indirectly, is productive of

good. I confidently expect to see the day that you will simply rise one

step higher in your remarkable life and learn to love your enemies. Then

you'll be understood by them all as I understand you, for they will then

look into your heart, your _real_ heart, as I've looked into it ever

since you took pity on the friendless, barefoot boy that I was and

lifted me out of my degradation and breathed the breath of hope into my

despondent body. And when that day comes--mark it as my prediction--you

will slay the ill-will of your enemies with a glance from your eye, and

they will fall conquered at your feet."

"Huh!" Ann muttered, "you say that because you are just looking at the

surface of things. You see, I know a lots that you don't. Things have

gone on here and are still going on that nothing earthly could stop."

"That's it, Aunt Ann," Luke King said, seriously--"it won't be anything

earthly. It will be _heavenly_, and when the bolt falls you will

acknowledge I am right. Now, I must go. It will be about dark when I get

to my step-father's."

Ann walked with him to the gate, and as she closed it after him she held

out her hand. It was quivering. "You are a good boy, Luke," she said,

"but you don't know one hundredth part of what they've said and done

since you left. I never wrote you."

"I don't care what they've done or said out of their shallow heads and

cramped lives," King laughed--"they won't be able to affect your greater

existence. You'll slay it all, Aunt Ann, with forgiveness--yes, and

pity. You'll see the day you'll pity them rather than hate them."

"I don't believe it, Luke," Ann said, her lips set firmly, and she

turned back into the house. Standing in the doorway, she watched him

trudge along the road, carrying his valise easily in his hand and

swinging it lightly to and fro.

"What a funny idea!" she mused. "Me forgive Jane Hemingway! The boy

talks that way because he's young and full of dreams, and don't know any

better. If he was going through what I am he'd hate the whole world and

every living thing in it."

She saw him pause, turn, and put his valise down on the side of the

road. He was coming back, and she went to meet him at the gate. He came

up with a smile.

"The thought's just struck me," he said, "that you'd be the best adviser

in the world as to what I ought to invest my ten thousand in. You never

have made a mistake in money matters that I ever heard of, Aunt Ann; but

maybe you'd rather not talk about my affairs."

"I don't know why," she said, as she leaned over the gate. "I'll bet

that money of yours will worry me some, for young folks these days have

no caution in such matters. Ten thousand dollars--why, that is exactly

the price--" She paused, her face full of sudden excitement.

"The price of what, Aunt Ann?" he asked, wonderingly.

"Why, the price of the Dickerson farm. It's up for sale. Jerry Dickerson

has been wanting to leave here for the last three years, and every year

he's been putting a lower and lower price on his big farm and

comfortable house and every improvement. His brother's gone in the

wholesale grocery business in Chattanooga, and he wants to join him. The

property is worth double the money. I wouldn't like to advise you, Luke,

but I'd rather see your money in that place than anything else. It would

be a guarantee of an income to you as long as you lived."

"I know the place, and it's a beauty," King said, "and I'll run over

there and look at it to-morrow, and if it's still to be had I may rake

it in. Think of me owning one of the best plantations in the

valley--_me_, Aunt Ann, your barefoot, adopted son."

Ann's head was hanging low as she walked back to the cottage door.

"'Adopted son,'" she repeated, tenderly. "As God is my Judge, I--I

believe he's the only creature alive on this broad earth that I love.

Yes, I love that boy. What strange, sweet ideas he has picked up! Well,

I hope he'll always be able to keep them. I had plenty of them away back

at his age. My unsullied faith in mankind was the tool that dug the

grave of my happiness. Poor, blind boy! he may be on the same road. He

may see the day that all he believes in now will crumble into bitter

powder at his touch. I wonder if God can really be _all_-powerful. It

seems strange that what is said to be the highest good in this life is

doing exactly what He, Himself, has failed to do--to keep His own

creatures from suffering. That really _is_ odd."