Jason Hawn's last examination was over, and he stepped into the first
June sunlight and drew it into his lungs with deep relief. Looking
upward from the pavement below, the old president saw his confident
face.
"It seems you are not at all uneasy," he said, and his keen old eyes
smiled humorously.
Jason reddened a little.
"No, sir--I'm not."
"Nor am I," said the old gentleman, "nor will you forget that this
little end is only the big beginning."
"Thank you, sir."
"You are going back home? You will be needed there."
"Yes, sir."
"Good!"
It was the longest talk Jason had ever had with the man he all but
worshipped, and while it was going on the old scholar was painfully
climbing the steps--so that the last word was flung back with the
sharp, soldier-like quality of a command given by an officer who turned
his back with perfect trust that it would be obeyed, and in answer to
that trust the boy's body straightened and his very much about changing
his ways, that he no longer had any resentment against Colonel
Pendleton, and wanted now to live a better life. His talk might have
fooled Jason but for the fact that he shrewdly noted the little effect
it all had on his mother. Entering the mouth of the lane, Jason saw
Steve going from the yard gate to the house, and his brows wrinkled
angrily--Steve was staggering. He came to the door and glared at Jason.
"Whut you doin' out hyeh?"
"I'm goin' to see Gray through his troubles," said Jason quietly.
"I kind o' thought you had troubles enough o' yo' own," sneered the man.
Jason did not answer. His mother was seated within with her back to the
door, and when she turned Jason saw that she had been weeping, and,
catching sight of a red welt on her temple, he walked over to her.
"How'd that happen, mammy?"
She hesitated and Jason whirled with such fury that his mother caught
him with both arms, and Steve lost no time reaching for his gun.
"I jammed it agin the kitchen door, Jasie."
He looked at her, knew that she was lying, and when he turned to go,
halted at the door.
"If you ever touch my mother again," he said with terrifying quiet,
"I'll kill you as sure as there is a God in heaven to forgive me."
Across the midsummer fields Jason went swiftly. On his right, half of a
magnificent woodland was being laid low--on his left, another was all
gone--and with Colonel Pendleton both, he knew, had been heart-breaking
deeds of necessity, for his first duty, that gentleman claimed, was to
his family and to his creditors, and nobody could rob him of his right
to do what he pleased, much less what he ought, with his own land. And
so the colonel still stood out against friend and neighbor, and open
and secret foes. His tobacco beds had been raided, one of his barns had
been burned, his cattle had been poisoned, and, sick as he was, threats
were yet coming in that the night riders would burn his house and take
his life. Across the turnpike were the fields and untouched woodlands
of Marjorie, and it looked as though the hand of Providence had blessed
one side of the road and withered the other with a curse. On top of the
orchard fence, to the western side of the house, Jason sat a while. The
curse was descending on Gray's innocent head and he had had the
weakness and the folly to lift his eyes to the blessing across the way.
As Mavis had pointed out the way to Gray, so Marjorie, without knowing
it, had pointed the way for him. When long ago he had been helpless
before her by the snow-fringed willows at the edge of the pond in the
old college yard, she had been frightened and had shrunk away. When he
gained his self-control, she had lost hers, and in her loneliness had
come trailing toward him almost like a broken-winged young bird looking
for mother help--and he had not misunderstood, though his heart ached
for her suffering as it ached for her. And Marjorie had been quite
right--he had never come back after that one quarrel, and he would
never come. The old colonel had gone to him, but he had hardly more
than opened his lips when he had both hands on the boy's shoulders with
broken words of sympathy and then had turned away--so quickly had he
seen that Jason fully understood the situation and had disposed of it
firmly, proudly, and finally--for himself. The mountains were for
Jason--there were his duty and the work of his life. Under June apples
turning golden, and amid the buzzing of bees, the boy went across the
orchard, and at the fence he paused again. Marjorie and her mother were
coming out of the house with Gray, and Jason watched them walk to the
stile. Gray was tanned, and even his blonde head had been turned copper
by the mountain sun, while the girl looked like a great golden-hearted
lily. But it was Gray's face as he looked at her that caught the boy's
eyes and held them fast, for the face was tense, eager, and worshipping.
He saw Marjorie and her mother drive away, saw Gray wave to them and
turn back to the house, and then he was so shocked at the quick change
to haggard worry that draped his friend like a cloak from head to foot
that he could hardly call to him. And so Jason waited till Gray had
passed within, and then he leaped the fence and made for the portico.
Gray himself answered his ring and with a flashing smile hurried
forward when he saw Jason in the doorway. The two clasped hands and for
one swift instant searched each other's eyes with questions too deep
and delicate to be put into words--each wondering how much the other
might know, each silent if the other did not know. For Gray had learned
from his father about Steve Hawn, and Jason's suspicions of Steve he
had kept to himself.
"My father would like to have you as our guest, Jason, while I am
here," Gray said with some embarrassment, "but he doesn't feel like
letting you take the risk."
Jason threw back the lapel of his coat that covered his badge as deputy.
"That's what I'm here for," he said with a smile, "but I think I'd
better stay at home. I'll be on hand when the trouble comes."
Gray, too, smiled.
"You don't have to tell me that."
"How is the colonel?"
"He's pretty bad. He wants to see you."
Jason lowered his voice when they entered the hallway. "The soldiers
have reached town to-day. If there's anything going to be done, it will
probably be done to-night."
"I know."
"We won't tell the colonel."
"No."
Then Gray led the way to the sick-room and softly opened the door. In a
great canopied bed lay Colonel Pendleton with his face turned toward
the window, through which came the sun and air, the odors and
bird-songs of spring-time, and when that face turned, Jason was shocked
by its waste and whiteness and by the thinness of the hand that was
weakly thrust out to him. But the fire of the brilliant eyes burned as
ever; there was with him, prone in bed, still the same demeanor of
stately courtesy; and Jason felt his heart melt and then fill as always
with admiration for the man, the gentleman, who unconsciously had
played such a part in the moulding of his own life, and as always with
the recognition of the unbridgable chasm between them--between even him
and Gray. The bitter resentment he had first felt against this chasm
was gone now, for now he understood and accepted. As men the three were
equal, but father and son had three generations the start of him. He
could see in them what he lacked himself, and what they were without
thought he could only consciously try to be--and he would keep on
trying. The sick man turned his face again to the window and the
morning air. When he turned again he was smiling faintly and his voice
was friendly and affectionate:
"Jason, I know why you are here. I'm not going to thank you, but
I--Gray"--he paused ever so little, and Jason sadly knew what it
meant--"will never forget it. I want you two boys to be friends as long
as you live. I'm sorry, but it looks as though you would both have to
give up yourselves to business--particularly sorry about Gray, for that
is my fault. For the good of our State I wish you both were going to
sit side by side at Frankfort, in Congress, and the Senate, and fight
it out"--he smiled whimsically--"some day for the nomination for the
Presidency. The poor old commonwealth is in a bad way, and it needs
just such boys as you two are. The war started us downhill, but we
might have done better--I know I might. The earth was too rich--it made
life too easy. The horse, the bottle of whiskey, and the plug of
tobacco were all too easily the best--and the pistol always too ready.
We've been cartooned through the world with a fearsome,
half-contemptuous slap on the back. Our living has been made out of
luxuries. Agriculturally, socially, politically, we have gone wrong,
and but for the American sense of humor the State would be in a just,
nation-wide contempt. The Ku-Klux, the burning of toll-gates, the
Goebel troubles, and the night rider are all links in the same chain of
lawlessness, and but for the first the others might not have been. But
we are, in spite of all this, a law-abiding people, and the old manhood
of the State is still here. Don't forget that--THE OLD MANHOOD IS HERE."
Jason had sat eager-eyed and listening hard. Bewildered Gray felt his
tears welling, for never had he heard in all his life his father talk
this way. Again Colonel Pendleton turned his face to the window and
went on as though to the world outside.
"I wouldn't let anybody out there say this about us, nor would you, and
maybe if I thought I was going to live many years longer I might not be
saying it now, for some Kentuckian might yet make me eat my words."
At this the eyes of the two boys crossed and both smiled faintly, for
though the sick man had been a generous liver, his palate could never
have known the taste of one of his own words.
"I don't know--but our ambition is either dying or sinking to a lower
plane, and what a pity, for the capacity is still here to keep the old
giants still alive if the young men could only see, feel, and try. And
if I were as young as one of you two boys, I'd try to find and make the
appeal."
He turned his brilliant eyes to Jason and looked for a moment silently.
"The death-knell of me and mine has been sounded unless boys like Gray
here keep us alive after death, but the light of your hills is only
dawning. It's a case of the least shall be first, for your pauper
counties are going to be the richest in the State. The Easterners are
buying up our farms as they would buy a yacht or a motor-car, the
tobacco tenants are getting their mites of land here and there, and
even you mountaineers, when you sell your coal lands, are taking up
Blue-grass acres. Don't let the Easterner swallow you, too. Go home,
and, while you are getting rich, enrich your citizenship, and you and
Gray help land-locked, primitive old Kentucky take her place among the
modern sisterhood that is making the nation. To use a phrase of your
own--get busy, boys, get busy after I am gone."
And then Colonel Pendleton laughed.
"I am hardly the one to say all this, or rather I am just the one
because I am a--failure."
"Father."
The word came like a sob from Gray.
"Oh, yes, I am--but I have never lied except for others, and I have not
been afraid."
Again his face went toward the window.
"Even now," he added in a solemn whisper that was all to himself, "I
believe, and am not afraid."
Presently he lifted himself on one elbow and with Gray's assistance got
to a sitting posture. Then he pulled a paper from beneath his pillow.
"I want to tell you something, Jason. That was all true, every word you
said the first time Gray and I saw you at your grandfather's house, and
I want you to know now that your land was bought over my protest and
without my knowledge. My own interest in the general purchase was in
the form of stock, and here it is."
Jason's heart began to beat violently.
"Whatever happens to me, this farm will have to be sold, but there will
be something left for Gray. This stock is in Gray's name, and it is
worth now just about what would have been a fair price for your land
five years after it was bought. It is Gray's, and I am going to give it
to him." He handed the paper to bewildered Gray, who looked at it
dazedly, went with it to the window, and stood there looking out--his
father watching him closely.
"You might win in a suit, Jason, I know, but I also know that you could
never collect even damages."
At these words Gray wheeled.
"Then this belongs to you, Jason."
The father smiled and nodded approval and assent.
That night there was a fusillade of shots, and Jason and Gray rushed
out with a Winchester in hand to see one barn in flames and a tall
figure with a firebrand sneaking toward the other. Both fired and the
man dropped, rose to his feet, limped back to the edge of the woods,
and they let him disappear. But all the night, fighting the fire and on
guard against another attack, Jason was possessed with apprehension and
fear--that limping figure looked like Steve Hawn. So at the first
streak of dawn he started for his mother's home, and when that early he
saw her from afar standing on the porch and apparently looking for him,
he went toward her on a run. She looked wild-eyed, white, and
sleepless, but she showed no signs of tears.
"Where's Steve, mammy?" called Jason in a panting whisper, and when she
nodded back through the open door his throat eased and he gulped his
relief.
"Is he all right?"
She looked at him queerly, tried to speak, and began to tremble so
violently that he stepped quickly past her and stopped on the
threshold--shuddering. A human shape lay hidden under a brilliantly
colored quilt on his mother's bed, and the rigidity of death had
moulded its every outline.
"I reckon you've done it at last, Jasie," said a dead, mechanical voice
behind him.
"Good God, mammy--it must have been Gray or me."
"One of you, shore. He said he saw you shoot at the same time, and only
one of you hit him. I hope hit was you."
Jason turned--horrified, but she was calm and steady now.
"Hit was fitten fer you to be the one. Babe never killed yo' daddy,
Jasie--hit was Steve."