St. Hilda herself took Jason back to the Blue-grass, took him to the
gray frowning prison at the capital, and with streaming eyes watched
the iron gates close between them. Then she went home, sent for John
Burnham, and within an hour both started working for the boy's freedom,
for Jason must keep on with his studies, and, with Steve Hawn in jail,
must help his mother. Through Gray's influence Colonel Pendleton, and
through Marjorie's, Mrs. Pendleton as well, offered to go sponsors for
the boy's appearance at his trial. The man from the Pennyroyal who sat
in the governor's chair, and even the successor to the autocrat who was
trying to pre-empt that seat, gave letters to help, and before any
prison pallor could touch the boy's sun-tanned face he was out in the
open air once more on bail. And when old Jason Hawn in the mountains
heard what had happened, he laughed.
"Well, I reckon if he's indicted only fer HELPIN' Steve, he ain't in
much danger, fer they can't git him onless they git Steve, an' if thar
IS one man no money can ketch--that man is slick Steve Hawn. An' lemme
tell ye: if the right feller was from the mountains an' only mountain
folks knows it, they hain't NUVER goin' to find him out. Mebbe I was a
leetle hasty--mebbe I was."
After one talk with John Burnham, the old president suggested that
Jason drop down into the "kitchen" and go on with his books, but
against this plan Jason shook his head. He was going to raise Steve
Hawn's tobacco crop on shares with Colonel Pendleton, he would study at
home, and John Burnham saw, moreover, that the boy shrank from the
ordeal of college associations and any further hurt to his pride.
The pores of the earth were beginning to open now to the warm breath of
spring. Already Martha Hawn and Mavis had burnt brush on the soil to
kill the grass, and Jason ploughed the soil and harrowed it with minute
care, and sowed the seed broadcast by hand. Within two weeks
lettuce-like leaves were peeping through the ground, and Jason and
Mavis stretched canvas over the beds to hold in the heat of day and
hold off the frost of night. Three weeks later came the first
ploughing; then there was ploughing and ploughing and ploughing again,
and weeding and weeding and weeding again. Just before ripening, the
blooms came--blooms that were for all the word like the blooms of
purple rhododendron back in the hills, and then the task of suckering
began. Sometimes Mavis would help and the mother started in to work
like a man, but the boy had absorbed from his environment its higher
ideal of woman and, all he could, he kept both of them out of the
tobacco field. This made it all the harder for him and there was no
let-up to his toil. Just the same, Jason put in every spare moment on
his books, and in Mavis's little room, which had been turned over to
him, his lamp burned far into every night. When he struck a knotty
point or problem, he would walk over to John Burnham's for help, or the
school-master, as he went to and fro from his college duties, would
find the boy on a fence by the roadside waiting with his question for
him. All the summer Jason toiled. When there was no hard labor, always
he had to fight the tobacco worms with spray, and hand, and boot-heel,
until the rich dark-green of the leaves took on a furry, velvety
sheen--until at ripening they turned to a bright gold and were ready
for the chisel-bladed, double-edged knife with which the plants are cut
close to the ground. Then they must be hung on upright tobacco sticks,
stalks upward, to wilt under the August sun, and then on to be housed
in Colonel Pendleton's great barns to dry within their slitted walls.
Several times during the summer Arch Hawn came by and looked at the
boy's work with keen, approving eye and in turn won a falling-off in
Jason's old prejudice against him; for Arch had built a church in the
county-seat in the mountains, had helped the county schools, was making
ready to help the mountain people fight unjust claims to their lands,
and, himself charged with helping to bring the mountain army down to
the capital, stood boldly ready to surrender to the call of the law--he
even meant to help Steve Hawn in his trouble, for Steve, after an
examining trial, had been remanded back to prison without bail: and he
was going to help Jason in his trial, which would closely follow
Steve's.
All summer, too, Gray and Marjorie were riding or driving past the
tobacco field, and Jason and Mavis, when they saw either or both
coming, would move to the end of the field that was farthest from the
turnpike and, turning their backs, would pretend not to see. Sometimes
the two mountaineers would be caught where avoidance was impossible,
and then Marjorie and Gray would call out cheerily and with a smile--to
get in return from the children of the soil a grave, silent nod of the
head and a grave, answering glance of the eye--for neither knew the
part the Blue-grass boy and girl had played in the getting of Jason's
freedom, until one late afternoon of the closing summer days, for John
Burnham had been asked to keep the matter a secret. But Steve Hawn had
learned from his lawyer and had told his wife Martha when she came to
visit him in prison; and that late afternoon she was in the tobacco
field when Mavis and Jason moved to the other end and turned their
backs as Marjorie rode by on her way home and Gray an hour later
galloped past the other way.
"I reckon," she said quietly to Jason, "ef you knowed whut that boy an'
gal has been a-doin' fer ye, you wouldn't be a-actin' that-a-way."
And then she explained and started for home. Both stood still--silent
and dumfounded--and only Mavis spoke at last.
"BOTH of us beholden to BOTH of 'em."
Jason made no answer, but bent to his work. When Mavis, too, started
for home he stayed behind without explanation, and when she was out of
sight he climbed the fence at the edge of the woods, and sat there
looking toward the sunset fading behind Marjorie's home.