Bitter Parting
In the sickly yellow flare of the kerosene lamps around the Garyville
station Judith got her first sight of Creed's face: sunken, the blood
drained from it till it was colourless as paper, the eyes wild, purple
rimmed, haggard--it frightened her. She was off of Selim in a moment,
begging him to get down and sit on the edge of the platform with her,
here on the dark side where nobody would notice them, and they could
decide what was to be done next.
He dismounted slowly, stumblingly, gained the edge of the platform, and
there sat with drooping head. Judith tied the two animals and ran to sit
beside him.
"Ye ain't goin' to faint air ye?" she asked anxiously. "Lean on me,
Creed. I wish't I knew what to do for ye!"
The young fellow, half unconscious indeed, put his head down upon her
shoulder with a great shuddering sigh.
"I'll be better in a minute, dear," he whispered. "I reckon I got a
little tired--riding so far."
For some time Judith sat there, Creed's head on her shoulder, the black
night all about them, the little lighted station empty save for the
clicking of the telegraph instrument, and the footsteps of the station
master who had opened up for the midnight train. She was desperately
anxious and at a loss which way to turn. And yet through all her being
there rolled a mighty undernote of joy. As to the dweller on the coast
the voice of the sea is the undertone to all the sounds of man's
activities, so beneath all her virginal hesitancies, her half terror of
what she had done, surged and sang the knowledge that Creed was hers, her
avowed lover. She, Judith, had him here safe; she had brought him away
out of the mountains, from those who would have harmed him--and those who
would have loved him too well. In all her plannings up to this time she
had never quite been able to see clearly what should come after getting
Creed down into the valley. Over her stormily beating heart now there
rose and fell a little packet of bills, savings above necessary
expenditures on the farm, and her own modest expenses, savings which had
been accumulating since Uncle Jephthah rented the place, and now amounted
to some hundreds of dollars. These she had put in the bosom of her frock
when she set out on this enterprise, with, as she now realised, the
vaguest expectation of ever returning to her uncle's house.
"Creed," she whispered, "air ye better?"
"Yes," responded her charge, "yes--I'm better." But he made no movement
to raise his head, and with eyes long accustomed to darkness she was able
to see that his lids were still closed.
"Creed," she began again, "what shall I do for you now? Must I go ask at
the hotel will they give you a room? Have you--have you got money with
you?"
Bonbright roused himself.
"I'm all right now," he said in a strained tone. "Yes, dear, I've got
some money with me, and a little more in the bank at Hepzibah. I can get
hold of that any time I want to. I don't know just what I'll do," he
looked around him bewildered. This had not been his plan, and the long
ride down the mountain, and above all the happiness of being with Judith,
of her avowals had made him forgetful of its exigencies. "I reckon I'll
make out. You needn't worry about me any more, Judith. I'm safe down
here."
These words sounded dreadfully like a dismissal to the girl. She locked
her hands hard together in her lap and fought for composure. An older or
a more worldly woman would have said to him promptly that she could not
leave him in this case, and that if they were ever to be married it must
be now. But all the traditions of the mountain girl's life and upbringing
were against such a course. She gazed at him helplessly.
"I ain't got but one friend on this earth, looks like," began Creed
wearily, as he got to his feet, "and now I'm obliged to send her away
from me."
It was more than Judith could bear. She lifted her swimming eyes to him
in the dusk; he was recovering self command and strength, but he was
still white, shaken, the bandaged head and shoulder showing how close he
had been to death. Her love overbore virgin timidity and tradition.
"Don't send me away then," she said in the deepest tones of that rich,
passionate voice of hers. "Ef hit's me you're namin' when you speak of
having but one friend--don't send me away, Creed."
He came close and caught her hand, looking into her face with wondering
half comprehension of her words. That face was dyed with sudden, burning
red. She hoped and expected that he would make the proffer which must
come from him. When he did not, she burst out in a vehement, tense
whisper,
"If--if you love me like you said you did----"
Creed hesitated, bewildered. He was too ill to judge matters aright, but
he knew one thing.
"I do love you," he said with mounting firmness. "I may be a mighty poor
sort of a fellow--I've begun to think so of late--but I love you."
Judith put out both hands blindly toward him whispering,
"And I love you. I don't want nothin' but to be with you an' help you,
an' take keer of you. I'll never leave you."
For a moment the young fellow felt only the dizzy rapture of her frank
confession. In that instant he saw himself accepting her sacrifice,
taking her in his arms; in anticipation he tasted the sweetness of her
lips. Then pure reason, that shrew who had always ruled his days, spoke
loud, as the bitterness of his situation rolled back upon him.
"No--no!" he cried. "Judith--honey--I can't do that. Why, I'd be robbing
you of everything in the world. Your kin would turn against you. Your
farm would be lost to you, I reckon--I don't know when I'll be able to go
back and claim mine."
In the moment of strained silence that followed this speech, with a sense
of violent painful revulsion the girl pushed him back when he would
timidly have clung to her. What woman ever appreciated prudence in a
lover? It is not a lover's virtue. Her farm--her farm! He could listen to
her confession of love for him, and speculate upon the chances of her
losing her farm by it! She had one shamed, desperate instant when she
would have been glad to deny the words she had spoken. Then Creed,
reading her anger and despair by the light of his own sorrows, said
brokenly:
"You feel--you're offended at me now--but Judith, you wouldn't love me if
I had taken you at your word, and ruined all your chances in life.
I--Judith--dear--I'll make this thing right yet. I'll come back--and
you'll forgive me then."
With a sudden flaring up of strength he took quiet mastery of the
situation. He kissed her tenderly, but sadly, not such a kiss as either
could ever have imagined their first would be.
"I love you too well to let you wed a man that's fixed like I am--a man
that's made such a failure of life--a fugitive--a fellow that has nothing
to offer you, and no more standing with your people than a hound dog. I
love you better than I do myself or my comfort--or even my life."
In anguished silence Judith received the caress; dumb with misery she got
to her horse. Creed stood looking up at her for their last words, when,
with a rattle and clang, the train from the North swept in and halted.
Selim jibed and fought the bit as any sensible mountain horse feels
himself entitled to do under similar circumstances; but Judith heeded him
almost not at all.
"My Lord--who's that?" she cried, staring toward the lighted train where
the figure of a man mounted the platform.
"What is it?" queried Creed.
"Hit looked like Blatch," whispered the girl; "but I reckon it couldn't
a-been."
"Blatch!" echoed Creed, all on fire in an instant--where now was her poor
invalid whose head she had pillowed, of whom she had thought to take
care? "Blatch Turrentine!--Good-bye, honey--you mustn't be seen with me.
If Blatch is here I've got to find and face him. You see that, don't
you?--You understand."
And he turned and left her so. Oh, these men, with their quarrels and
their nice points of honour--while a woman's heart bleeds under the
scuffling feet!
She watched him hurry to the train, his staggering step advertising how
unfit he was for any such attempt, watched him mount the platform where
she had seen the man that looked like Blatch; and then the conductor
swung his lantern, the wheels began to revolve, she half cried out, and
Selim at the end of his patience, bolted with her and never stopped
running till he had topped the rise above the village.
Here, with some ado, she got him quieted, brought to a standstill, got
off and tightened the girth, for the saddle was slipping dangerously. She
climbed on once more, mounting from a fallen tree, and was moving again
up the trail when, down toward Garyville, someone called her name.
"Judith!"
She did not turn her head. She knew to whom the voice belonged. As he
rode up to her:
"What you doin' here, Blatch Turrentine?" she demanded fiercely, "an'
what'll the boys say to you for slippin' away from 'em to-night?"
He took her inferred knowledge of all his enterprises without a word of
comment. Bringing his mule up closer to her where she sat on Selim he
answered:
"The boys know whar I'm at. We got word last evenin' that the man I sell
to was waitin' for me in Garyville. He don't know nobody but me in the
business, and nobody but me could do the arrent. I hauled a load down,
an' I would have been back in plenty time, ef I hadn't met you and
Bonbright right thar whar that old Cherokee trail comes into the
Garyville road."
Judith started, her face burned in the darkness, but she said nothing.
Blatch peered curiously at her as he went on:
"I reckon you never took notice of the waggon that was under the bluff
thar by the turn, but that was my waggon, and I was a-settin' on it. I
wheeled myse'f round, when I seed 'twas Bonbright, and follered you two
down to Garyville, and put up my mules."
Again he peered sharply at her.
"Jude," as she still sat silent, "I won't tell the boys what kept me--I
won't tell them nary thing about you. I'll just let on that I happened to
see Bonbright at Garyville."
"You tell what you're a mind to," said Judith bitterly. "I don't keer
what you say."
Blatchley took the retort coolly. But his light grey eyes narrowed under
the black brows.
"Bonbright seemed mightily upsot," he commented. "Went off on the train
an' left his mule a-standin'."
_Went off on the train!_ Judith's heart leaped, then stood still.
"Ye needn't werry about it--I had Scomp put it up, 'long o' my other 'n.
He'll send 'em both up a Wednesday. I reckon it ain't to be wondered at
Bonbright was flustered. Who do you 'low he went with on the railroad
train? Jude, air you so easy fooled as to think it was a new notion for
him to go to Garyville? Didn't he name it to you that it was a better
place than Double Springs?"
Leaning close and watching her face, he saw in it confirmation.
"Shore. They was a little somebody on the railroad train waitin' to go on
with him--after he'd done kissed you good-bye--and _left_ you!"
Judith sat, head up, staring at him. Her less worthy nature was always
instantly roused by this man's approach. Savage resentment, jealousy,
hate, stirred in her crushed spirit; they raised their heads; their
movement crowded out grief and humiliation. It must be true--she had
proposed Double Springs, and he had said Garyville would be better. He
had refused in so many words her offer of herself. He had kissed her----
"No!--no!--no!" she cried to the man before her, "don't you look at
me--don't you speak to me."
"Why, Judith," he protested, hanging on Selim's flank and talking to her
as she whirled the sorrel into the road and put him at the slope at a
pace which that petted animal very much resented, "why Judith, ef one
feller goes back on you thataway you be mad at him--he's the one to be
mad at. Here's me, I stand willin' to make it up. Creed Bonbright has
shamed you--he's left you; but you could make him look like a fool if you
would only say the word--and you and me would----"
"Now you go back!" Judith turned upon him as one speaks to a dog who is
determined to follow. "I ain't nary 'nother word to say to you. Leave me
alone!"
"But Judith, hit ain't safe for you to be ridin' up here in the night
time, thisaway," Blatch insisted. "Lemme jest go along with you----"
"I'll be a mighty heap safer alone than I'd be with you," Judith told
him, urging Selim ahead, "and anybody that knows you well will say so.
You--go--back."