[Illustration]
Kentucky! God's country!
It was as if Seth had dropped out of a wind-blown cloud into a quiet
garden, sweetly fenced about and away from the jar and fret of the
world.
Placid, content, tranquil, standing stock-still in the delicacy of its
old-fashioned beauty, as if the world outside and beyond had never
progressed.
He wandered by old and rich plantations, carved by necessity into
smaller farms, past big white stone gates opening to wide avenues
which led up to them, looking wistfully in, still content to wander a
space before he should experience the rapture of seeing Celia's face,
loitering, the white happiness of that within his reach, half fearing
to hold out his hand for it, fearing it might vanish, escape
phantasmagorically, turn out to be a will-o'-the-wisp.
Whip-poor-wills accompanied him in his wanderings, Bob Whites,
Nightingales; and lazy ebon negroes, musical as birds, sang lilting
Southern songs on the way to the tinkle of banjo and guitar.
The negroes were not so kind as the birds. From them he suffered
humiliation.
More than once he was dubbed "Po' white!" by some haughty ebon
creature from whose mouth he was supposedly taking the bread.
But here, as in Missouri, he looked for consolation to the wet woods,
to the still, soft, straight rain, to the sighing trees that softly
soughed him welcome.
After weary days and nights, working by day on rock-pile or in field,
sleeping by night in the corner of a friendly fence of worm-eaten
rails, fanned by the delicate hair of the pale blue grasses, he came
to Burgin.
The driver of the bus that conveyed passengers to Harrodsburg looked
down upon him from the height of his perch. He was strange to Seth,
but he recognized a something of the kinship of country in his face
and manner.
"Have a lif'?" he asked.
Seth refused. It was bright daylight. He wished to steal into his old
home under the covering of the twilight, he was so footsore and
bedraggled.
"I'll walk," he smiled, "but thank you just the same."
Four miles, then, over hill, down dale, past dusty undergrowth, the
brilliant blue of the skies above him, passing negroes who looked
strangely at him out of rolling eyes, who jerked black thumbs in his
direction over shoulders, saying:
"See de po' white trash man, walkin' home!"
But there were some Bob Whites singing in the bushes over the rail
fences, singing, singing!
A bird at the side of the road rested momentarily on a long, keen
switch of a blackberry bush, the switch bent earthward, the bird flew
off and the twig bent back again.
At sight of him ground squirrels sped into the underbrush.
Somewhere on the other side of the rail fences little negroes sang.
They were too young yet to jerk their thumbs at him and say:
"Po' white!"
Now that he was so near to Celia his heart misgave him. How would she
receive him, coming home to her a tramp, a dusty, tired, footsore
tramp, wet, chilled to the bone, footsore and tired! So tired!
He forged ahead, trying hard to throw off these thoughts. It was the
scornful negroes who had engendered them.
A mile from Harrodsburg he came to the toll gate. A woman whose yellow
hair showed streaks of gray, raised the pole for him, smiling at him.
"That man had eyes like Seth Lawsons," she said to her husband, who
smoked his pipe on the porch while she raised and lowered the poles
and so supported the family.
She was the girl who had called good-by after Celia years before, when
she left for her journey to the West and the Magic City.
* * * * *
It was twilight when Seth came to Celia's gate.
A woman sat alone on the step of the portico, looking out down the
pike.
Seth paused, his hand on the latch, seeing which the woman shook her
head negatively.
Seth raised the latch, whereupon she suddenly stood, frowning.
"I have nothing for you," she called out raspingly. "There is not a
thing in the house to eat. Go away! Go away!"
"Celia!" Seth cried out, stabbed to the heart. "I am not a beggar for
bread, but give me a crust of kindness for the love of God! I am
Seth."