Under the strong pull on the curb, the young horse stood quivering in
every limb beneath the blossoming peach boughs that overhung the grassy
margin of the road. There seemed a reflection of their delicate roseate
tints in Alethea’s upturned face, as with one hand she still grasped the
bridle. Her old brown bonnet, falling back, showed her golden hair in its
dusky tunnel. The straight blooming wands of the volunteer peach sprouts,
that had sprung up outside the zigzag barriers of the rail fence,
clustered about the folds of her homespun dress, as she stood in their
midst.
All at once she was trembling violently. Her luminous brown eyes
suddenly faltered. In her every consideration she herself was always so
secondary—not with a sedulous effort of subordination, but yielding with
a fine and generous instinct to the interest of others—that until this
moment she had had no self-consciousness in regard to the jealousy which
had resulted in Gwinnan’s injuries. For this he had been struck down
and brought near to death. Some sense of a reciprocal consciousness, an
overwhelming deprecation of Mink’s folly in fancying him a rival, a vague
wonderment as to the effect of the idea upon Gwinnan, seized upon her for
the first time now in his presence, as if she had had no leisure hitherto
to think of these things. She could not speak. She could not meet his
serious, intent, expectant eye.
“Did you have something to say to me?” he asked, taking the initiative.
It was the same tone that had given her sympathetic encouragement in the
court-room, charged with a personal interest, a grave solicitude, all
unlike the superficial, unmeaning courtesy of the lawyers. She spoke
impetuously now as then, and with instant reliance upon him.
“I hearn, jedge,” she cried, looking up radiantly at him, “ez how ye hev
gin out ez ye never wanted Reuben Lorey ter be prosecuted fur tryin’ ter
kill ye, an’ axed fur him ter be let off, an’ I ’lowed ye hold no gredge
agin him. ’Pears ter me like ye war powerful good ’bout’n it.”
“But he was prosecuted,” the judge said quickly, fancying that she was
under a delusion.
“I know!” she cried, with a poignant accent. “I know! I hearn it all.”
She thought of his justification, his fancied provocation, and once more
timidity beset her. How could she have found courage to speak in his
behalf to Gwinnan? The judge himself was embarrassed; she knew it by the
way he turned the reins in his hands. She noted details which usually,
when her faculties were not so abnormally alert, would not have arrested
her attention: the sleek coat of the handsome young horse, which now
and then shook his head as if in disdain of her grasp; the super-fine
accoutrements of saddle and bridle; the smooth hands that held the reins;
the severely straight lineaments, shadowed by the brim of the hat; and
the searching, intent gray eyes, which saw, she felt, her inmost thought.
The postmaster, ploughing, came ever and anon down to the fence, pausing
there to turn, and sometimes to thrust with his foot the clinging mould
from the share. Occasionally he glanced at the incongruous couple, but
as if the colloquy between them were a very normal incident, and with
that courteous lack of curiosity and speculation characteristic of the
region. All the fowls of the place followed in the furrow, clucking
with gustatory satisfaction; now and then, with a gluttonous outcry,
they darted to certain clods upturned by the plough, and the pantomime
indicated much mortality among those poor troglodytes, the worms of the
earth.
“You wanted to speak to me about him,” said Gwinnan, with, it seemed to
her, wonderful divination.
“Ye know, jedge,” she said, more calmly, instantly reassured whenever he
spoke, “they hev fund out ez ’twarn’t him ez bust down the mill. A boy
seen it done, an’ he war feared ter tell afore. I reckon that war what
set Reuben off so awful onruly,—knowin’ he never done it, nor drownded
Tad nuther,—an’ the ’torney-gin’al makin’ folks ’low I seen a harnt.”
“I dare say,” remarked Gwinnan, dryly.
“An’ I ’lowed,” she continued, looking at him with beautiful, beseeching
eyes “ez ’twon’t do him much good ef he does git off at his nex’ trial,
’kase then he’ll be bound ter be in the prison arterward, ennyhow, fur
twenty years. An’ I ’lowed I’d ax ye, seein’ ez ye don’t hold no gredge
agin him,—I wonder at ye, too!—ef ye can’t do nuthin’ ez kin git him out
now.”
The wind waved the peach boughs above their heads, and the pink petals
were set a-drifting down the currents of the air. Among the blossoms bees
were booming, and on a budding spray a blue and crested jay was jauntily
pluming its wings. Gold flakes of sunshine shifted obliquely through
the rosy, inflorescent bower delicately imposed upon the blue sky. In
its fine azure cirrus clouds were vaguely limned. On the opposite side
of the road was the bluff end of a ridge, presenting a high escarpment
of grim splintered rocks; among the niches ferns grew and vines trailed
downward; there came from them a dank, refreshing odor, for moisture
continuously trickled from them, and a hidden spring in a cleft by the
wayside asserted its presence,—its tinkling distinctly heard in the pause
that ensued.
He looked meditatively at the jagged heights. Then suddenly he turned his
eyes upon her.
She was only a simple mountain girl, but it seemed to him that never
since the first spring bloomed had woman worn so noble and appealing a
face, so fine and delicate a personality. The crude dialect, familiar
enough to him accustomed to the region, significant of ignorance, of
poverty, of hopeless isolation from civilization, of uncouth manners, was
in her all that speech might be, a medium for her ideas; the coarseness
of her dress could hardly impinge upon the impression of her grace,—it
was merely a garb. Her embarrassment had ceased. She looked straight at
him; the unconscious dignity of her manner, the calmness of her grave
eyes, the fading flush in her cheek, betokened that she had made her
appeal to his generosity and that she had faith in it.
He was not a man who gave promises lightly. He was still silent. Again he
looked up the road, with an absorbed and knitted brow. He tipped his hat
further forward over his face; he shifted the reins uncertainly in his
hands; the horse impatiently shook his head and struck the ground with
his forefoot.
“It would be the worst thing I could do—for you,” Gwinnan said at last,
surprised himself at the tone he was taking.
She made no rejoinder; her face did not change; she only looked
expectantly at him.
“You ought not to marry a man like that,” he continued. “You are too good
for him; and that is not saying much for you either.”
“Oh,” she cried, renewing her hold upon the bridle, and looking up with
a face that coerced credence, “’tain’t fur myself I want him free! It
air jes’ fur him. He ’peared ter set mo’ store by another gal than me. I
ain’t thinkin’ ez we-uns would marry then. Like ez not he’d go straight
ter Elviry Crosby.”
Another man might have experienced an amusement, a sort of self-ridicule,
that he should remember the names of the infinitely insignificant,
uncouth and humble actors in the little drama played in the court-room.
But to Gwinnan people were people wherever he found them, and he had
more respect for their principles than for their clothes. He recollected
without effort the mention of Elvira in the testimony.
Nevertheless, with the many-sided view of the lawyer, he rejoined,
oblivious of the suggestion conveyed, “I think not. It was on your
account he attacked me.”
Her face crimsoned, but with that fine instinct of hers she steadfastly
met his gaze, intimating that she placed no foolish interpretation upon
his words or actions. She answered quietly enough, “Reuben air sometimes
gin ter reckless notions. I reckon he noticed ez ye tuk up fur me whenst
them lawyers war so besettin’. He warn’t used ter sech ez that in
Wild-Cat Hollow. Folks ginerally air sot agin me. Though I ain’t treated
mean, no-ways,” she added, hastily, lest she might decry her relatives.
“Only nobody thinks like me.”
A forlorn isolation she suggested,—away up in the Great Smoky Mountains,
thinking her unshared thoughts.
There was an increased attention in his face as he demanded, “Think
differently about what?”
He had an imperative eye, an insistent voice. It did not occur to
her that his interest was strange. And indeed he was not a man to be
questioned.
She paused for a moment, her eyes full of a dreamy retrospection. She was
not looking at him, but at the boughs of pink blossoms above his horse’s
head, and then she absently glanced at a black butterfly, bespangled with
orange and blue, flying across the road to the ferns about the spring. As
the fluttering wings disappeared she seemed to start from her reverie.
“Jedge,” she said, in a piteous deprecation, “things seem right ter me,
an’ other folks thinks ’em wrong. An’ I feel obleeged ter do what I ’low
air right, an’ it all turns out wrong. An’ then I’m besides myself with
blame! I reckon ye wouldn’t b’lieve it, but it’s all my fault ’bout’n
this trouble o’ Reuben Lorey’s. Ef it hedn’t been fur me, he wouldn’t hev
gone down ter Shaftesville ter gin up all he hed ter old man Griff—like
I tole him ter do ez soon ez I hed hearn ’bout bustin’ the mill down. I
tole him ter do it, an’ he done it. An’ look,—look!” She lifted her hand
as if she drew a veil from the disastrous sequences. Her voice choked,
her eyes were full of tears. “An’ then I told that thar moonshiner ez I
wouldn’t promise ter keep his secret, an’ they runned away fur fear o’
me, ’kase Tad went thar arter he got out o’ the ruver. I seen Sam Marvin
arterward, an’ he ’lowed ter me they s’posed he war a spy, an’ beat him,
an’—an’—I dunno _what_ else they done ter him. None o’ that would hev
happened ef I hed promised ter hold my tongue. But it didn’t ’pear right
ter me.”
“Then you were right not to promise,” he said, reassuringly. “No one
can do more than what seems right; that is,”—it behooves a man of his
profession to modify and qualify,—“within the limits of the law.”
She looked up at him a little wonderingly. Her latent faculties for
speculation were timorously developing in the first realization of
intelligent sympathy that had ever fallen to her lot. How strange that
such as he—and somehow she subtly appreciated in him that unification
of mental force, education, civilization, natural endowment, and moral
training, of the existence of which she was otherwise unconscious—should
tolerate her doctrine; nay, should revere and accept it as a creed!
“A heap o’ harm an’ wrong hev kem of it,” she said, submitting the logic
of Wild-Cat Hollow.
“That is not our lookout. The moral law is to do what seems right, no
matter what happens.”
A vague smile broke upon his face; his eyes were illumined with a new
light; he seemed suddenly young and very gentle.
“You need never be afraid of doing any harm; you may rely on it, you know
what is right.”
He was laughing at himself a moment later,—to gravely discuss these
elementary ethics with a weighty sense. And yet he was glad to reassure
her.
“Oh, jedge!” she cried, overcome with a sense of relief, with her happy
reliance on his superior knowledge,—was not he the judge?—“that ain’t
what folks tell me. They ’low I be like that thar harnt o’ a herder on
Thunderhead; ef I can’t kill ye, I jes’ withers yer time an’ spiles yer
prospects. Oh!”—she struggled for self-control,—“I hev studied on that
sayin’ till it ’peared ’twould kill me.”
“Whoever told you that was very cruel, and I dare say very worthless,”
said Gwinnan sharply. He was prompted by a vicarious resentment; he was
picturing to himself some harsh-faced mountain neighbor as he asked
sternly, “Who said it?”
She saw the indignation in his countenance and suddenly feared that she
was near to wrecking her lover’s interest with the powerful man whom she
sought to enlist.
“I—I can’t tell,” she faltered.
He waived the matter. “All right,” he said, hastily. His face had
hardened; he was laughing a little, cynically. Who it was he knew right
well. He had known right well, too, and many months ago, that she
was infatuated with this young fellow,—how dashing, how spirited the
scapegrace looked in his sudden recollection!—and only now he began
to definitely resent it. He glanced down at her with reprehensive,
reproachful eyes. He was but a man, for all that he sat upon the bench
and knew the law.
Alethea noted the subtle change in his face. It bewildered and
confused her, but the surprise of it was as naught to the amazement
that overpowered her to discover that the sky was reddening, the sun
was sinking low to the purple Chilhowee, all the intervenient levels
were suffused with a golden haze, and down the tawny, winding road she
discerned a moving speck, which she divined might be Jerry Price and
Bluff coming for her from the mill. Her rigorous conscience took her to
task that, beguiled by a word of sympathy, of comprehension, she should
have let the forlorn interests of her captive lover wait while she
listened.
“Oh, jedge,” she exclaimed, clinging to the bridle,—and it seemed he
heard for the first time the voice of supplication,—“I know ye ain’t one
ez medjures a gredge an’ pays it back. An’ I ’lowed I’d ax ye ter do
suthin’ fur him. He air a onruly boy, I know, but he never meant ter do
sech—no harm—leastwise he—He war harried by things turnin’ out so ez he
couldn’t git jestice. An’ leastwise, jedge”—
Poor Alethea was unskilled in argument, and even Harshaw had been fain to
let Mink’s moral worth pass without emblazonment.
“Oh, jedge,” she cried, “ef ye could do suthin’ fur him, ’twould be sech
a favior ter him,—all his life’s gone in that sentence,—an’—an’ ter me.”
He slowly shook his head.
“Not to you. It surprises me that you, who know so well what is right and
good, should care for a man like that. He has only two alternations: he
is either mischievous or malicious.”
She was once more helplessly feeling aloof from all the world; for here
his sympathy ended.
“It is a folly, and that is very wrong. You have mind enough, if you
would exert it, to be sensible, to be anything you like.”
And because he thought, with all the rest, that she was too good for the
man she loved, he would not help? Ah, what joys of liberty, what griefs
of long laborious years, what daily humiliation of that sturdy pride,
what inexorable tortures to break that elastic spirit,—for break at last
it must,—had Mink’s half-hearted affection cost him! Her face had grown
pale suddenly; the ebbing of her hope, that had rushed in upon her in a
strong, tumultuous tide, was like the ebbing of life. Her eyes filled
with tears, and her despair looked through them at him.
He had known much of the finalities of life. He dealt in conclusions.
Volition, circumstance, character, might all make vital play in the
varied causes that brought the event under his jurisdiction, but he
wielded the determining influence and affixed the result. All human
emotions had been unveiled to him: he could finely distinguish and
separate into its constituent elements hate, misery, despair, fear, rage,
envy; he even must needs seek to analyze the incomprehensible black heart
of the murderer. He was a man of ample learning, of high ambitions, of
excellent nerve, untouched by any morbid influence. He had pronounced the
death sentence without a tremor. He was deliberate, cautious, reserved.
And yet because her cheek paled, because her eyes looked at him with the
reproach of a dumb creature cruelly slain, because she said no word,
he was pierced with pity for her. He was definitely aware now of his
own generosity when he promised aught for her lover. He was amazed at
himself,—amazed at the pang that it gave him when he said,—
“But I’ll try,—I’ll see what can be done. I shall be in Nashville soon,
and I’ll talk to the governor, and make a strong effort to get a pardon.
Not at once, you understand, but after a little time.”
He gathered up the reins; the long horns of Bluff, approaching very near,
were affronting the tender sensibilities of the roan colt, who snorted
and stamped at the sight of them, and seemed likely to bolt. Alethea had,
perforce, moved back among the pink blossoms by the wayside; from amidst
them she looked up at Gwinnan with a rapture of gratitude, of admiration,
of benediction, for which she had no words. She felt that she did not
need them, for he understood so well, he understood so strangely, her
most secret thought. He nodded to her and to the staring Jerry, who sat
in the ox-cart. And then the restive roan bounded away into the golden
spring sunshine, his glossy coat and flying mane distinct against the
delicate green of the wayside, far, far up the road; and presently he was
but a dwindling atom, and anon lost to view.