her weeping ringing in his ears. His eyes were hot, and his angry
heart was heavy. He had schemed and waited for his revenge with
persistent patience. Fortune had favored him, but now that it had
fully come, strangely enough it failed to satisfy him. The deed in
his breast-pocket weighed like a stone, and as he rode on through
the clouds that lay upon the mountain top, the sense of its pressure
became almost unendurable. And yet, with a perplexing contrariety of
emotion, he felt more bitterly toward her than ever, and experienced
a delight almost savage in holding the possessions for which she had
been so willing to resign him. "Jes' kicked me out 'n the way like I
war nuthin' more 'n that thar branch o' pisen-oak, fur a passel o'
cattle an' sech like critters, an' a house an' land,--'kase I don't
count Josiah in. 'Twar the house an' land an' sech she war a-studyin'
'bout." And every moment the weight of the deed grew heavier. He took
scant notice of external objects as he went, keeping mechanically
along the path, closed in twenty yards ahead of him by the opaque
curtain of mist. The trees at the greatest distance visible stood
shadow-like and colorless in their curious, unreal atmosphere; but now
and then the faintest flake of a pale rose tint would appear in the
pearly haze, deepening and deepening, till at the vanishing point of
the perspective a gorgeous scarlet-oak tree would rise, red enough to
make a respectable appearance on the planet Mars. There was an audible
stir breaking upon the silence of the solemn woods, the leaves were
rustling together, and drops of moisture began to patter down upon
the ground. The perspective grew gradually longer and longer, as the
rising wind cleared the forest aisles; and when he reached the road
that ran between the precipice and the steep ascent above, the clouds
were falling apart, the mist had broken into thousands of fleecy white
wreaths, clinging to the fantastically tinted foliage, and the sunlight
was striking deep into the valley. The woods about the Settlement were
all aglow with color, and sparkling with the tremulous drops that
shimmered in the sun.
There was an unwonted air of animation and activity pervading the
place. To the court-house fence were hitched several lean, forlorn
horses, with shabby old saddles, or sometimes merely blankets; two or
three wagons were standing among the stumps in the clearing. The door
of the store was occupied by a coterie of mountaineers, talking with
unusual vivacity of the most startling event that had agitated the
whole country-side for a score of years,--the winning of Josiah Tait's
house and land at Old Sledge. The same subject was rife among the
choice spirits congregated in the court-house yard and about the portal
of that temple of justice, and Wray's approach was watched with the
keenest interest.
He dismounted, and walked slowly to the door, paused, and turning as
with a sudden thought threw himself hastily upon his horse; he dashed
across the clearing, galloped heedlessly down the long, steep slope,
and the astounded loiterers heard the thunder of the hoofs as they beat
at a break-neck speed upon the frail, rotten timbers of the bridge
below.
Josiah Tait had put his troubles in to soak at the still-house, and
this circumstance did not tend to improve the cheerfulness of his
little, home when he returned in the afternoon. The few necessities
left to the victims of Old Sledge had been packed together, and were in
readiness to be transported with him, his wife, and mother-in-law to
Melinda's old home on Scrub-Oak Ridge, when her brother should drive
his wagon over for them the next morning.
They never knew how to account for it. While the forlorn family were
sitting before the smoking fire, as the day waned, the door was
suddenly burst open, and Budd Wray strode in impetuously. A brilliant
flame shot up the chimney, and the deed which Josiah Tait had that
day executed was a cinder among the logs. He went as he came, and the
mystery was never explained.
There was, however, "a sayin' goin' 'bout the mounting ez how Josiah
an' Melindy jes' 'ticed him, somehow 'nother, ter thar house, an' held
him, an' tuk the deed away from him tergether. An' they made him send
back the critters an' the corn what he done won away from 'em." This
version came to his ears, and was never denied. He was more ashamed of
relenting in his vengeance than of the wild legend that he had been
worsted in a tussle with Melinda and Josiah.
And since the night of Budd Wray's barren success the playing of Old
Sledge has become a lost art at the Settlement.
THE STAR IN THE VALLEY.
He first saw it in the twilight of a clear October evening. As the
earliest planet sprang into the sky, an answering gleam shone red
amid the glooms in the valley. A star too it seemed. And later, when
the myriads of the fairer, whiter lights of a moonless night were all
athrob in the great concave vault bending to the hills, there was
something very impressive in that solitary star of earth, changeless
and motionless beneath the ever-changing skies.
Chevis never tired of looking at it. Somehow it broke the spell that
draws all eyes heavenward on starry nights. He often strolled with
his cigar at dusk down to the verge of the crag, and sat for hours
gazing at it and vaguely speculating about it. That spark seemed to
have kindled all the soul and imagination within him, although he knew
well enough its prosaic source, for he had once questioned the gawky
mountaineer whose services he had secured as guide through the forest
solitudes during this hunting expedition.
"That thar spark in the valley?" Hi Bates had replied, removing the
pipe from his lips and emitting a cloud of strong tobacco smoke.
"'Tain't nuthin' but the light in Jerry Shaw's house, 'bout haffen mile
from the foot of the mounting. Ye pass that thar house when ye goes
on the Christel road, what leads down the mounting off the Backbone.
That's Jerry Shaw's house,--that's what it is. He's a blacksmith, an'
he kin shoe a horse toler'ble well when he ain't drunk, ez he mos'ly
is."
"Perhaps that is the light from the forge," suggested Chevis.
"That thar forge ain't run more 'n half the day, let 'lone o' nights.
I hev never hearn tell on Jerry Shaw a-workin' o' nights,--nor in the
daytime nuther, ef he kin git shet of it. No sech no 'count critter
'twixt hyar an' the Settlemint."
So spake Chevis's astronomer. Seeing the star even through the prosaic
lens of stern reality did not detract from its poetic aspect. Chevis
never failed to watch for it. The first faint glinting in the azure
evening sky sent his eyes to that red reflection suddenly aglow in
the valley; even when the mists rose above it and hid it from him, he
gazed at the spot where it had disappeared, feeling a calm satisfaction
to know that it was still shining beneath the cloud-curtain. He
encouraged himself in this bit of sentimentality. These unique eventide
effects seemed a fitting sequel to the picturesque day, passed in
hunting deer, with horn and hounds, through the gorgeous autumnal
forest; or perchance in the more exciting sport in some rocky gorge
with a bear at bay and the frenzied pack around him; or in the idyllic
pleasures of bird-shooting with a thoroughly-trained dog; and coming
back in the crimson sunset to a well-appointed tent and a smoking
supper of venison or wild turkey,--the trophies of his skill. The vague
dreaminess of his cigar and the charm of that bright bit of color
in the night-shrouded valley added a sort of romantic zest to these
primitive enjoyments, and ministered to that keen susceptibility of
impressions which Reginald Chevis considered eminently characteristic
of a highly wrought mind and nature.
He said nothing of his fancies, however, to his fellow sportsman,
Ned Varney, nor to the mountaineer. Infinite as was the difference
between these two in mind and cultivation, his observation of both
had convinced him that they were alike incapable of appreciating and
comprehending his delicate and dainty musings. Varney was essentially a
man of this world; his mental and moral conclusions had been adopted in
a calm, mercantile spirit, as giving the best return for the outlay,
and the market was not liable to fluctuations. And the mountaineer
could go no further than the prosaic fact of the light in Jerry Shaw's
house. Thus Reginald Chevis was wont to sit in contemplative silence
on the crag until his cigar was burnt out, and afterward to lie awake
deep in the night, listening to the majestic lyric welling up from the
thousand nocturnal voices of these mountain wilds.
During the day, in place of the red light a gauzy little curl of smoke
was barely visible, the only sign or suggestion of human habitation
to be seen from the crag in all the many miles of long, narrow valley
and parallel tiers of ranges. Sometimes Chevis and Varney caught
sight of it from lower down on the mountain side, whence was faintly
distinguishable the little log-house and certain vague lines marking
a rectangular inclosure; near at hand, too, the forge, silent and
smokeless. But it did not immediately occur to either of them to
theorize concerning its inmates and their lives in this lonely place;
for a time, not even to the speculative Chevis. As to Varney, he gave
his whole mind to the matter in hand,--his gun, his dog, his game,--and
his note-book was as systematic and as romantic as the ledger at home.
It might be accounted an event in the history of that log-hut when
Reginald Chevis, after riding past it eighty yards or so, chanced one
day to meet a country girl walking toward the house. She did not look
up, and he caught only an indistinct glimpse of her face. She spoke to
him, however, as she went by, which is the invariable custom with the
inhabitants of the sequestered nooks among the encompassing mountains,
whether meeting stranger or acquaintance. He lifted his hat in return,
with that punctilious courtesy which he made a point of according to
persons of low degree. In another moment she had passed down the narrow
sandy road, overhung with gigantic trees, and, at a deft, even pace,
hardly slackened as she traversed the great log extending across the
rushing stream, she made her way up the opposite hill, and disappeared
gradually over its brow.
The expression of her face, half-seen though it was, had attracted his
attention. He rode slowly along, meditating. "Did she go into Shaw's
house, just around the curve of the road?" he wondered. "Is she Shaw's
daughter, or some visiting neighbor?"
That night he looked with a new interest at the red star, set like a
jewel in the floating mists of the valley.
"Do you know," he asked of Hi Bates, when the three men were seated,
after supper, around the camp-fire, which sent lurid tongues of
flame and a thousand bright sparks leaping high in the darkness, and
illumined the vistas of the woods on every side, save where the sudden
crag jutted over the valley,--"Do you know whether Jerry Shaw has a
daughter,--a young girl?"
"Ye-es," drawled Hi Bates, disparagingly, "he hev."
A pause ensued. The star in the valley was blotted from sight;
the rising mists had crept to the verge of the crag; nay, in the
undergrowth fringing the mountain's brink, there were softly clinging
white wreaths.
"Is she pretty?" asked Chevis.
"Waal, no, she ain't," said Hi Bates, decisively. "She's a pore,
no 'count critter." Then he added, as if he were afraid of being
misapprehended, "Not ez thar is any harm in the gal, ye onderstand.
She's a mighty good, saft-spoken, quiet sort o' gal, but she's a pore,
white-faced, slim little critter. She looks like she hain't got no
sort'n grit in her. She makes me think o' one o' them slim little slips
o' willow every time nor I sees her. She hain't got long ter live, I
reckon," he concluded, dismally.
Reginald Chevis asked him no more questions about Jerry Shaw's daughter.
Not long afterward, when Chevis was hunting through the deep woods
about the base of the mountain near the Christel road, his horse
happened to cast a shoe. He congratulated himself upon his proximity
to the forge, for there was a possibility that the blacksmith might be
at work; according to the account which Hi Bates had given of Jerry
Shaw's habits, there were half a dozen chances against it. But the shop
was at no great distance, and he set out to find his way back to the
Christel road, guided by sundry well-known landmarks on the mountain
side: certain great crags hanging above the tree-tops, showing in
grander sublimity through the thinning foliage, or beetling bare and
grim; a dismantled and deserted hovel, the red-berried vines twining
amongst the rotting logs; the full flow of a tumultuous stream making
its last leap down a precipice eighty feet high, with yeasty, maddening
waves below and a rainbow-crowned crystal sheet above. And here again
the curves of the woodland road. As the sound of the falling water
grew softer and softer in the distance, till it was hardly more than
a drowsy murmur, the faint vibrations of a far-off anvil rang upon
the air. Welcome indeed to Chevis, for however enticing might be the
long rambles through the redolent October woods with dog and gun, he
had no mind to tramp up the mountain to his tent, five miles distant,
leading the resisting horse all the way. The afternoon was so clear
and so still that the metallic sound penetrated far through the quiet
forest. At every curve of the road he expected to see the log-cabin
with its rail fence, and beyond the low-hanging chestnut-tree, half its
branches resting upon the roof of the little shanty of a blacksmith's
shop. After many windings a sharp turn brought him full upon the humble
dwelling, with its background of primeval woods and the purpling
splendors of the western hills. The chickens were going to roost in
a stunted cedar-tree just without the door; an incredibly old man,
feeble and bent, sat dozing in the lingering sunshine on the porch; a
girl, with a pail on her head, was crossing the road and going down a
declivity toward a spring which bubbled up in a cleft of the gigantic
rocks that were piled one above another, rising to a great height. A
mingled breath of cool, dripping water, sweet-scented fern, and pungent
mint greeted him as he passed it. He did not see the girl's face, for
she had left the road before he went by, but he recognized the slight
figure, with that graceful poise acquired by the prosaic habit of
carrying weights upon the head, and its lithe, swaying beauty reminded
him of the mountaineer's comparison,--a slip of willow.
And now, under the chestnut-tree, in anxious converse with Jerry Shaw,
who came out hammer in hand from the anvil, concerning the shoe to
be put on Strathspey's left fore-foot, and the problematic damage
sustained since the accident. Chevis's own theory occupied some minutes
in expounding, and so absorbed his attention that he did not observe,
until the horse was fairly under the blacksmith's hands, that, despite
Jerry Shaw's unaccustomed industry, this was by no means a red-letter
day in his habitual dissipation. He trembled for Strathspey, but it was
too late now to interfere. Jerry Shaw was in that stage of drunkenness
which is greatly accented by an elaborate affectation of sobriety. His
desire that Chevis should consider him perfectly sober was abundantly
manifest in his rigidly steady gait, the preternatural gravity in his
bloodshot eyes, his sparingness of speech, and the earnestness with
which he enunciated the acquiescent formulæ which had constituted his
share of the conversation. Now and then, controlling his faculties
by a great effort, he looked hard at Chevis to discover what doubts
might be expressed in his face concerning the genuineness of this
staid deportment; and Chevis presently found it best to affect too.
Believing that the blacksmith's histrionic attempts in the _rôle_ of
sober artisan were occupying his attention more than the paring of
Strathspey's hoof, which he held between his knees on his leather
apron, while the horse danced an animated measure on the other three
feet, Chevis assumed an appearance of indifference, and strolled away
into the shop. He looked about him, carelessly, at the horseshoes
hanging on a rod in the rude aperture that served as window, at the
wagon-tires, the plowshares, the glowing fire of the forge. The air
within was unpleasantly close, and he soon found himself again in the
door-way.
"Can I get some water here?" he asked, as Jerry Shaw reëntered, and
began hammering vigorously at the shoe destined for Strathspey.
The resonant music ceased for a moment. The solemn, drunken eyes were
slowly turned upon the visitor, and the elaborate affectation of
sobriety was again obtrusively apparent in the blacksmith's manner. He
rolled up more closely the blue-checked homespun sleeve from his corded
hammer-arm, twitched nervously at the single suspender that supported
his copper-colored jeans trousers, readjusted his leather apron hanging
about his neck, and, casting upon Chevis another glance, replete with
a challenging gravity, fell to work upon the anvil, every heavy and
well-directed blow telling with the precision of machinery.
The question had hardly been heard before forgotten. At the next
interval, when he was going out to fit the horse, Chevis repeated his
request.
"Water, did ye say?" asked Jerry Shaw, looking at him with narrowing
eyelids, as if to shut out all other contemplation that he might
grapple with this problem. "Thar's no fraish water hyar, but ye kin
go yander ter the house and ax fur some; or," he added, shading his
eyes from the sunlight with his broad, blackened hand, and looking at
the huge wall of stone beyond the road, "ye kin go down yander ter the
spring, an' ax that thar gal fur a drink."
Chevis took his way, in the last rays of sunshine, across the road
and down the declivity in the direction indicated by the blacksmith.
A cool gray shadow fell upon him from the heights of the great rocks,
as he neared them; the narrow path leading from the road grew dank
and moist, and presently his feet were sunk in the still green and
odorous water-loving weeds, the clumps of fern, and the pungent
mint. He did not notice the soft verdure; he did not even see the
beautiful vines that hung from earth-filled niches among the rocks,
and lent to their forbidding aspect something of a smiling grace;
their picturesque grouping, where they had fallen apart to show this
sparkling fountain of bright up-springing water, was all lost upon his
artistic perceptions. His eyes were fixed on the girl standing beside
the spring, her pail filled, but waiting, with a calm, expectant look
on her face, as she saw him approaching.
No creature could have been more coarsely habited: a green cotton
dress, faded to the faintest hue; rough shoes, just visible beneath her
skirts; a dappled gray and brown calico sun-bonnet, thrown aside on a
moss-grown bowlder near at hand. But it seemed as if the wild nature
about her had been generous to this being toward whom life and fortune
had played the niggard. There were opaline lights in her dreamy eyes
which one sees nowhere save in sunset clouds that brood above dark
hills; the golden sunbeams, all faded from the landscape, had left a
perpetual reflection in her bronze hair; there was a subtle affinity
between her and other pliant, swaying, graceful young things, waving in
the mountain breezes, fed by the rain and the dew. She was hardly more
human to Chevis than certain lissome little woodland flowers, the very
names of which he did not know,--pure white, star-shaped, with a faint
green line threading its way through each of the five delicate petals;
he had seen them embellishing the banks of lonely pools, or growing
in dank, marshy places in the middle of the unfrequented road, where
perhaps it had been mended in a primitive way with a few rotting rails.
"May I trouble you to give me some water?" asked Chevis, prosaically
enough. She neither smiled nor replied. She took the gourd from the
pail, dipped it into the lucent depths of the spring, handed it to him,
and stood awaiting its return when he should have finished. The cool,
delicious water was drained, and he gave the gourd back. "I am much
obliged," he said.
"Ye're welcome," she replied, in a slow, singing monotone. Had the
autumn winds taught her voice that melancholy cadence?
Chevis would have liked to hear her speak again, but the gulf between
his station and hers--so undreamed of by her (for the differences
of caste are absolutely unknown to the independent mountaineers),
so patent to him--could be bridged by few ideas. They had so little
in common that for a moment he could think of nothing to say. His
cogitation suggested only the inquiry, "Do you live here?" indicating
the little house on the other side of the road.
"Yes," she chanted in the same monotone, "I lives hyar."
She turned to lift the brimming pail. Chevis spoke again: "Do you
always stay at home? Do you never go anywhere?"
Her eyes rested upon him, with a slight surprise looking out from among
their changing lights. "No," she said, after a pause; "I hev no call to
go nowhar ez I knows on."
She placed the pail on her head, took the dappled sun-bonnet in her
hand, and went along the path with the assured, steady gait and the
graceful backward poise of the figure that precluded the possibility of
spilling a drop from the vessel.
He had been touched in a highly romantic way by the sweet beauty of
this little woodland flower. It seemed hard that so perfect a thing of
its kind should be wasted here, unseen by more appreciative eyes than
those of bird, or rabbit, or the equally uncultured human beings about
her; and it gave him a baffling sense of the mysterious injustice of
life to reflect upon the difference in her lot and that of others of
her age in higher spheres. He went thoughtfully through the closing
shadows to the shop, mounted the re-shod Strathspey, and rode along
the rugged ascent of the mountain, gravely pondering on worldly
inequalities.
He saw her often afterward, although he spoke to her again but once.
He sometimes stopped as he came and went on the Christel road, and sat
chatting with the old man, her grandfather, on the porch, sunshiny
days, or lounged in the barn-like door of Jerry Shaw's shop talking to
the half-drunken blacksmith. He piqued himself on the readiness with
which he became interested in these people, entered into their thoughts
and feelings, obtained a comprehensive idea of the machinery of life
in this wilderness,--more complicated than one could readily believe,
looking upon the changeless face of the wide, unpopulated expanse of
mountain ranges stretching so far beneath that infinite sky. They
appealed to him from the basis of their common humanity, he thought,
and the pleasure of watching the development of the common human
attributes in this peculiar and primitive state of society never palled
upon him. He regarded with contempt Varney's frivolous displeasure and
annoyance because of Hi Bates's utter insensibility to the difference
in their social position, and the necessity of either acquiescing in
the supposititious equality or dispensing with the invaluable services
of the proud and independent mountaineer; because of the _patois_ of
the untutored people, to hear which, Varney was wont to declare, set
his teeth on edge; because of their narrow prejudices, their mental
poverty, their idle shiftlessness, their uncouth dress and appearance.
Chevis flattered himself that he entertained a broader view. He had
not even a subacute idea that he looked upon these people and their
inner life only as picturesque bits of the mental and moral landscape;
that it was an æsthetic and theoretical pleasure their contemplation
afforded him; that he was as far as ever from the basis of common
humanity.
Sometimes while he talked to the old man on the sunlit porch, the "slip
o' willow" sat in the door-way, listening too, but never speaking.
Sometimes he would find her with her father at the forge, her fair,
ethereal face illumined with an alien and fluctuating brilliancy,
shining and fading as the breath of the fire rose and fell. He came to
remember that face so well that in a sorry sketch-book, where nothing
else was finished, there were several laborious pages lighted up with a
faint reflection of its beauty. But he was as much interested perhaps,
though less poetically, in that massive figure, the idle blacksmith. He
looked at it all from an ideal point of view. The star in the valley
was only a brilliant, set in the night landscape, and suggested a
unique and pleasing experience.
How should he imagine what luminous and wistful eyes were turned
upward to where another star burned,--the light of his camp-fire on
the crag; what pathetic, beautiful eyes had learned to watch and wait
for that red gleam high on the mountain's brow,--hardly below the
stars in heaven it seemed! How could he dream of the strange, vague,
unreasoning trouble with which his idle comings and goings had clouded
that young life, a trouble as strange, as vague, as vast, as the
limitless sky above her.
She understood him as little. As she sat in the open door-way, with the
flare of the fire behind her, and gazed at the red light shining on
the crag, she had no idea of the heights of worldly differences that
divided them, more insurmountable than precipices and flying chutes of
mountain torrents, and chasms and fissures of the wild ravine: she knew
nothing of the life he had left, and of its rigorous artificialities
and gradations of wealth and estimation. And with a heart full of
pitiable unrealities she looked up at the glittering simulacrum of a
star on the crag, while he gazed down on the ideal star in the valley.