In June, Gray Pendleton closed his college career as he had gone
through it--like a meteor--and Jason went for the summer to the
mountains, while Mavis stayed with his mother, for again Steve Hawn had
been tried and convicted and returned to jail to await a new trial. In
the mountains Jason got employment at some mines below the county-seat,
and there he watched the incoming of the real "furriners," Italians,
"Hunks," and Slavs, and the uprising of a mining town. He worked, too,
in every capacity that was open to him, and he kept his keen eyes and
keen mind busy that he might know as much as possible of the great
machine that old Morton Sanders would build and set to work on his
mother's land. And more than ever that summer he warmed to his uncle
Arch Hawn for the fight that Arch was making to protect native titles
to mountain lands--a fight that would help the achievement of the
purpose that, though faltering at last, was still deep in the boy's
heart.
In the autumn, when he went back to college, Gray had set off to some
Northern college for a post-graduate course in engineering and Marjorie
had gone to some fashionable school in the great city of the nation for
the finishing touches of hats and gowns, painting and music, and for a
wider knowledge of her own social world. That autumn the tobacco
trouble was already pointing to a crisis for Colonel Pendleton. The
whip and lash and the destruction of seed-beds had been ineffective,
and as the trust had got control of the trade, the raisers must now get
control of the raw leaf in the field and in the barn. That autumn Jason
himself drifted into a mass-meeting of growers in the court-house one
day on his way home from college. An orator from the Far West with a
shock of black hair and gloomy black brows and eyes urged a general and
permanent alliance of the tillers of the soil. An old white-bearded man
with cane and spectacles and a heavy goatee working under a chew of
tobacco tremulously pleaded for a pooling of the crops. The answer was
that all would not pool, and the question was how to get all in. A
great-shouldered, red-faced man and a bull-necked fellow with gray,
fearless eyes, both from the southern part of the State, openly urged
the incendiary methods that they were practising at home--the tearing
up of tobacco-beds, burning of barns, and the whipping of growers who
refused to go into the pool. And then Colonel Pendleton rose, his face
as white as his snowy shirt, and bowed courteously to the chairman.
"These gentlemen, I think, are beside themselves," he said quietly,
"and I must ask your permission to withdraw."
Jason followed him out to the court-house door and watched him, erect
as a soldier, march down the street, and he knew the trouble that was
in store for the old gentleman, for already he had heard similar
incendiary talk from the small farmers around his mother's home.
The following June Marjorie and Gray Pendleton brought back finishing
touches of dress, manner, and atmosphere to the dazzled envy of the
less fortunate, in spite of the fact that both bore their new claims to
distinction with a modesty that would have kept a stranger from knowing
that they had ever been away from home. Jason and Mavis were still at
the old university when the two arrived. To the mountaineers all four
had once seemed almost on the same level, such had once been the
comradeship between them, but now the old chasm seemed to yawn wider
than ever between them, and there was no time for it to close, if
closing were possible, for again Jason went back to the hills--this
time to Morton Sanders' opening mines--and, this time, Mavis went with
him to teach Hawns and Honeycutts in a summer school on the outskirts
of the little mining town. Again for Jason the summer was one of
unflagging work and learning--learning all he could, all the time. He
had discovered that to get his land back through the law, he must prove
that Arch Hawn or Colonel Pendleton not only must have known about the
big seam of coal, not only must have concealed the fact of their
knowledge from his mother and Steve Hawn, but, in addition, must have
told one or both, with the purpose of fraud, that the land was worth no
more than was visible to the eye in timber and seams of coal that were
known to all. That Colonel Pendleton could have been guilty of such
underhandedness was absurd. Moreover, Jason's mother said that no such
statement had been made to her by either, though Steve had sworn
readily that Arch had said just that thing to him. But Jason began to
believe that Steve had lied, and Arch Hawn laughed when he heard of
Jason's investigations.
"Son, if you want that land back, or, ruther, the money it's worth, you
git right down to work, learn the business, and DIG it back in another
way."
And that was what Jason, half unconsciously, was doing. And yet, with
all the ambition that was in him, his interest in the work, his love
for the hills, his sense of duty to his people and his wish to help
them, the boy was sorely depressed that summer, for the talons with
which the fate of birth and environment clutched him seemed to be
tightening now again.
The trials of Steve Hawn and of Hiram Honeycutt for the death of the
autocrat were bringing back the old friction. Charges and
counter-charges of perjury among witnesses had freshened the old enmity
between the Hawns and the Honeycutts. Jason himself had once to go back
to the Blue-grass as witness, and when he returned he learned that the
charge whispered against him, particularly by little Aaron, was that he
had sworn falsely for Steve Hawn and falsely against Hiram Honeycutt.
Again Babe Honeycutt had come back from the West and had quietly
slipped out of the mountains again, and Jason was led to believe it was
on his account. So once more the old oath began to weigh heavily upon
him, for everybody seemed to take it as much for granted that he would
some day fulfil that oath as that, after the dark of the moon, that
moon would rise again. Moreover, fate was inexorably pushing him and
little Aaron into the same channels that their fathers had followed and
putting on each the duty and responsibility of leadership. And Jason,
though shirking nothing, turned sick and faint of heart and was glad
when the summer neared its close.
Through all his vacation he and Mavis had seen but little of each
other, though Mavis lived with the old circuit rider and Jason in a
little shack on the spur above her, for the boy was on the night shift
and through most of the day was asleep. Moreover, both were rather
morose and brooding, each felt the deep trouble of the other, and to it
each paid the mutual respect of silence. How much Mavis knew, Jason
little guessed, though he was always vaguely uneasy under the constant
search of her dark eyes, and often he would turn toward her expecting
her to speak. But not until the autumn was at hand and they were both
making ready to go back to the Blue-grass did she break her silence.
The news had just reached them that Steve Hawn had come clear at last
and was at home--and Mavis heard it with little elation and no comment.
Next day she announced calmly that she was not going back with Jason,
but would stay in the hills and go on with her school. Jason stared
questioningly, but she would not explain--she only became more brooding
and silent than ever, and only when they parted one drowsy day in
September was the thought within her betrayed:
"I reckon maybe you won't come back again."
Jason was startled. She knew then--knew his discontent, his new longing
to break the fetters of the hills, knew even that in his dreams
Marjorie's face was still shining like a star. "Course I'm comin'
back," he said, with a little return of his old boyish roughness, but
his eyes fell before hers as he turned hurriedly away. He was rolling
away from the hills, and his mind had gone back to her seated with
folded hands and unseeing eyes in the old circuit rider's porch,
dreaming, thinking--thinking, dreaming--before he began fully to
understand. He remembered his mother telling him how unhappy Mavis had
been the summer the two were alone in the Blue-grass, and how she had
kept away from Marjorie and Gray and all to herself. He recalled Mavis
telling him bitterly how she had once overheard some girl student speak
of her as the daughter of a jail-bird. He began to see that she had
stayed in the Blue-grass that summer on his mother's account and on her
account would have gone back with him again. He knew that there was no
disloyalty to her father in her decision, for he knew that she would
stick to him, jail-bird or whatever he was, till the end of time. But
now neither her father nor Jason's mother needed her. Through eyes that
had gained a new vision in the Blue-grass Mavis had long ago come to
see herself as she was seen there; and now to escape wounds that any
malicious tongue could inflict she would stay where the sins of fathers
rested less heavily on the innocent. There was, to be sure, good reason
for Jason to feel as Mavis felt--he had been a jail-bird himself--but
not to act like her--no. And then as he rolled along he began to wonder
what part Gray might be playing in her mind and heart. The vision of
her seated in the porch thinking--thinking--would not leave him, and a
pang of undefined remorse for leaving her behind started within him.
She, too, had outgrown his and her people as he had--perhaps she was as
rebellious against her fate as he was against his own, but, unlike him,
utterly helpless. And suddenly the boy's remorse merged into a
sympathetic terror for the loneliness that was hers.