"Please, Gray," she pleaded; "for God's sake--for my sake."
That the boy could not withstand. He started for the gate with his hat
in hand--is head high, and, as he slowly passed through the gate and
turned, the old man reappeared, looked fiercely after him, and sank
into a chair sick with rage and trembling. As Mavis walked toward him
with his weapons he glared at her, but she passed him by as though she
did not see him, and put the Winchester and pistols in their accustomed
places. She came out with her bonnet in her hand, and already her
calmness and her silence had each had its effect--old Jason was still
trembling, but from his eyes the rage was gone.
"I'm goin' home, grandpap," she said quietly, "an' if it wasn't for
grandma I wouldn't come back. You've been bullyin' an' rough-ridin'
over men-folks and women-folks all your life, but you can't do it no
more with ME. An' you're not goin' to meddle in MY business any more.
You know I'm a good girl--why didn't you go after the folks who've been
talkin' instead o' pitchin' into Gray? You know he'd die before he'd
harm a hair o' my head or allow you or anybody else to say anything
against my good name. An' I tell you to your face"--her tone fiercened
suddenly--"if you hadn't 'a' been an old man an' my grandfather, he'd
'a' killed you right here. An' I'm goin' to tell you something more. He
ain't responsible for this talk--_I_ am. He didn't know it was goin'
on--_I_ did. I'm not goin' to marry him to please you an' the miserable
tattletales you've been listenin' to. I reckon _I_ ain't good
enough--but I KNOW my kinfolks ain't fit to be his--even by marriage.
My daddy ain't, an' YOU ain't, an' there ain't but one o' the whole o'
our tribe who is--an' that's little Jason Hawn. Now you let him alone
an' you let me alone."
She put her bonnet on, flashed to the gate, and disappeared in the dusk
down the road. The old man's shaggy head had dropped forward on his
chest, he had shrunk down in his chair bewildered, and he sat there a
helpless, unanswering heap. When the moon rose, Mavis was seated on the
porch with her chin in both hands. The old circuit rider and his wife
had gone to bed. A whippoorwill was crying with plaintive persistence
far up a ravine, and the night was deep and still about her, save for
the droning of insect life from the gloomy woods. Straight above her
stars glowed thickly, and in a gap of the hills beyond the river, where
the sun had gone down, the evening star still hung like a great jewel
on the velvety violet curtain of the night, and upon that her eyes were
fixed. On the spur above, her keen ears caught the soft thud of a foot
against a stone, and her heart answered. She heard a quick leap across
the branch, the sound of a familiar stride along the road, and saw the
quick coming of a familiar figure along the edge of the moonlight, but
she sat where she was and as she was until Gray, with hat in hand,
stood before her, and then only did she lift to him eyes that were dark
as the night but shining like that sinking star in the little gap. The
boy went down on one knee before her, and gently pulled both of her,
hands away from her face with both his own, and held them tightly.
"Mavis," he said, "I want you to marry me--won't you, Mavis?"
The girl showed no surprise, said nothing--she only disengaged her
hands, took his face into them, and looked with unwavering silence deep
into his eyes, looked until he saw that the truth was known in hers,
and then he dropped his face into her lap and she put her hands on his
head and bent over him, so that her heart beat with the throbbing at
his temples. For a moment she held him as though she were shielding him
from every threatening danger, and then she lifted his face again.
"No, Gray--it won't do--hush, now." She paused a moment to get
self-control, and then she went on rapidly, as though what she had to
say had been long prepared and repeated to herself many times:
"I knew you were coming to-night. I know why you were so late. I know
why you came. Hush, now--I know all that, too. Why, Gray, ever since I
saw you the first time--you remember?--why, it seems to me that ever
since then, even, I've been thinkin' o' this very hour. All the time I
was goin' to school when I first went to the Blue-grass, when I was
walkin' in the fields and workin' around the house and always lookin'
to the road to see you passin' by--I was thinkin', thinkin' all the
time. It seems to me every night of my life I went to sleep thinkin'--I
was alone so much and I was so lonely. It was all mighty puzzlin' to
me, but that time you didn't take me to that dance--hush now--I began
to understand. I told Jason an' he only got mad. He didn't understand,
for he was wilful and he was a man, and men don't somehow seem to see
and take things like women--they just want to go ahead and make them
the way they want them. But I understood right then. And then when I
come here the thinkin' started all over again differently when I was
goin' back and forwards from school and walkin' around in the woods and
listenin' to the wood-thrushes, and sittin' here in the porch at night
alone and lyin' up in the loft there lookin' out of the little window.
And when I heard you were comin' here I got to thinkin' differently,
because I got to hopin' differently and wonderin' if some miracle
mightn't yet happen in this world once more. But I watched you here,
and the more I watched you, the more I began to go back and think as I
used to think. Your people ain't mine, Gray, nor mine yours, and they
won't benot in our lifetime. I've seen you shrinkin' when you've been
with me in the houses of some of my own kin--shrinkin' at the table at
grandpap's and here, at the way folks eat an' live--shrinkin' at oaths
and loud voices and rough talk and liquor-drinkin' and all this talk
about killin' people, as though they were nothin' but hogs--shrinkin'
at everybody but me. If we stayed here, the time would come when you'd
be shrinkin' from me--don't now! But you ain't goin' to stay here,
Gray. I've heard Uncle Arch say you'd never make a business man. You're
too trustin', you've been a farmer and a gentleman for too many
generations. You're goin' back home--you've got to--some day--I know
that, and then the time would come when you'd be ashamed of me if I
went with you. It's the same way with Jason and Marjorie. Jason will
have to come back here--how do you suppose Marjorie would feel here,
bein' a woman, if you feel the way you do, bein' a man? Why, the time
would come when she'd be ashamed o' him--only worse. It won't do,
Gray." She turned his face toward the gap in the hills.
"You see that star there? Well, that's your star, Gray. I named it for
you, and every night I've been lookin' out at it from my window in the
loft. And that's what you've been to me and what Marjorie's been to
Jason--just a star--a dream. We're not really real to each other--you
an' me--and Marjorie and Jason ain't. Only Jason and I are real to each
other and only you and Marjorie, Jason and I have been worshippin'
stars, and they've looked down mighty kindly on us, so that they came
mighty nigh foolin' us and themselves. I read a book the other day that
said ideals were stars and were good to point the way, but that people
needed lamps to follow that way. It won't do, Gray. You are goin' back
home to carry a lamp for Marjorie, and maybe Jason'll come back to
these hills to carry a lantern for me."
Throughout the long speech the boy's eyes had never wavered from hers.
After one or two efforts to protest he had listened quite intensely,
marvelling at the startling revelation of such depths of mind and
heart-the startling penetration to the truth, for he knew it was the
truth. And when she rose he stayed where he was, clinging to her hand,
and kissing it reverently. He was speechless even when, obeying the
impulse of her hand, he rose in front of her and she smiled gently.
"You don't have to say one word, Gray--I understand, bless your dear,
dear heart, I understand. Good-by, now." She stretched out her hand,
but his trembling lips and the wounded helplessness in his eyes were
too much for her, and she put her arms around him, drew his head to her
breast, and a tear followed her kiss to his forehead. At the door she
paused a moment.
"And until he comes," she half-whispered, "I reckon I'll keep my lamp
burning." Then she was gone.
Slowly the boy climbed back to the little house on the spur, and to the
porch, on which he sank wearily. While he and Marjorie and Jason were
blundering into a hopeless snarl of all their lives, this mountain
girl, alone with the hills and the night and the stars, had alone found
the truth--and she had pointed the way. The camp lights twinkled below.
The moon swam in majestic splendor above. The evening star still hung
above the little western gap in the hills. It was his star; it was
sinking fast: and she would keep her lamp burning. When he climbed to
his room, the cry of the whippoorwill in the ravine came to him through
his window--futile, persistent, like a human wail for happiness. The
boy went to his knees at his bedside that night, and the prayer that
went on high from the depths of his heart was that God would bring the
wish of her heart to Mavis Hawn.