irreverent, my friend. And about your generosity to the orphans. Here,
let me give the money back. I am in earnest in asking you to give it to
the Sisters with your own hands. When they see you and you see them, you
will both understand each other better than if I were to try ever so
long and hard to explain."
He looked at Tommy Dye for a moment with a returning smile, but the pity
of it all put the humor aside.
"The doctor will be coming along in a moment--ah, there he comes now! I
will ask him to go with you to see the Sisters. I am sorry that I cannot
turn back with you myself. I should be glad to."
It did not take long to state the case to the doctor, who readily agreed
to do what the priest asked. Tommy Dye was by this time so thoroughly
cowed by the situation in which he thus found himself that he no longer
resisted. There was one uncertain instant when, seeing the Sisters
appear in the door, he was undecided whether to run away or go on. But
he was afraid to flee, with the Sisters' eyes upon him, and the doctor
led him into the house. The ladies had been frightened by the doctor's
unexpected and speedy return; but he soon quieted their fears, and made
them happy by telling them the reason of his turning back. Sister
Teresa, the Lady Superior, keenly touched, quickly turned to Tommy Dye
and he handed her the money in awkward haste.
"How good of you! How generous--how noble! Ah, you don't know how much
good this will do," she said, with her eyes full of tears. "We thank you
with all our hearts for ourselves and for the children."
"Thank _you_,--ma'am," stammered Tommy Dye, scarlet, and almost dumb.
None of the many sins of which he had been suspected had ever made him
feel nearly so uncomfortable as he felt now. None of the many sins of
which he had been convicted had ever made him look half so guilty as he
looked now.
"You mustn't call me 'ma'am,'" said Sister Teresa. "You must call me
Sister, and Sister Elizabeth and Sister Angela are your sisters, too.
You must always think of us as your real sisters, and the little ones
belong to you after this, as much as they do to us. You must always
remember that. Will you come into the other room and see them? Or I will
fetch--"
But Tommy Dye could not endure any more. He turned with hardly a word,
and fled in desperate haste. The Sisters gazed after him in surprise,
and with a good deal of alarm, until Paul Colbert told them about him,
who and what he was, of his meeting with Father Orin, and the whole
story of the money.
"The poor fellow," said Sister Teresa, softly. "We will pray that the
gift may bring him some of the good that it will do the children. Yes,
we will hereafter remember him, also, in the prayers for our
benefactors," turning her gentle, smiling gaze on the young doctor.
And then he reddened almost as suddenly as Tommy Dye had done, and he
likewise was hastening to make his escape when Sister Teresa called him
back, to ask if he would not be passing Cedar House on the way home. He
said that he would, reddening again. Whereupon the Sister begged as a
favor, that he would stop at the door and tell Ruth to come on the next
day, if possible, to look at the sewing which Sister Angela was doing
for her.
"Sister Angela is a wonderful needle-woman," Sister Teresa could not
help adding with modest pride. "She learned to sew and to do the finest
embroidery while she was studying in a convent in France. She could earn
a great deal of money for the little ones if we were where there were
more patrons who wished to have such fine sewing done. But nobody in
this wild country ever wants it except Mr. Alston for Ruth."
"Mr. Alston for Ruth," Paul Colbert repeated, wonderingly.
"Oh, yes. He thinks nothing is fine enough for Ruth," said Sister
Teresa, simply. "And he pays anything that Sister Angela asks. He never
says a word about the price. Sometimes I fear we ask too much. But then,
the children need so many things, and we have so few ways of earning
money. You won't mind stopping to tell Ruth, doctor? Ask her to come
early to-morrow morning, please. And another thing, if it isn't too much
trouble. Tell her to bring more of the finest thread lace."
This was the first time that Paul Colbert had heard Philip Alston's name
associated with Ruth. It was a shock to hear the names called in the
same breath, for he already knew as much of Philip Alston as any one was
permitted to know. He was aware of the suspicion which blackened his
reputation. He had learned this on first coming to the country. Father
Orin, when asked, had told him something of the reasons for the general
distrust and fear of the man. But the doctor himself had never seen him,
and, naturally enough, thought of him as the usual coarse leader of
lawlessness, only more daring and cunning, perhaps, than the rest of his
kind. Thus it was that trying to understand only bewildered the young
man more and more, so that he was still filled with shocked wonder when
he came within sight of Ruth's home.
The day was nearing its close. In the forest bordering the bridle-path,
dark shades were noiselessly marshalling beneath the great trees. But
the sunset still reddened the river, and the reflected light shone on
the windows of Cedar House. He glanced at her chamber window before
seeing that she stood on the grass by the front door, giving the swan
bits of bread from her fingers while the jealous birds, forgetting to go
to roost, watched and scolded from the low branches overhead. But she
had seen him a long way off and looked up as he approached.
"Isn't he a bold buccaneer?" she said, with a smile, meaning the swan.
"We thought at first that he couldn't be tamed--Mr. Audubon, too,
thought he couldn't--and we clipped his wings to keep him from flying
away. And now he wouldn't go. See! He is the most daring creature. Why,
he will go in the great room before everybody and walk right up to aunt
Penelope when she's making the coffee, without turning a feather!"
It was not till he was leaving that Paul remembered the Sister's message
which had served him as a pretext for stopping. And he was sorry when he
had given it, for a shadow instantly came over the brightness of Ruth's
beautiful face. Riding on to his cabin he wondered what could have cast
the shadow.
XI
THE DANCE IN THE FOREST
She did not go on the next morning. That day had been chosen for the
dance in the forest, one of the two merrymakings dearest to the hearts
of those earliest Kentuckians. The May party came first, with its
crowning of the queen of love and beauty and its dance round the
May-pole; and after that this festival of dancing and feasting under the
golden trees.
Both of these were held as regularly as the opening of the spring
flowers and the tinting of the autumn leaves. No one ever asked why or
when they were first begun; it was never the way of the Kentuckians to
ask any questions about anything that they had always been used to. And
indeed, had they tried ever so hard, they could hardly have found in
their own history the origin of these ancient customs. Those must have
been sought much farther back than the coming of those first settlers
into the wilderness,--as far back, perhaps, as the oldest traditions of
the purest stock of the old English yeomanry from which these people
were sprung. For in their veins throbbed the same warm red blood,
which, having little to do with the tilling of the soil or the building
trade, had everything to do with the fighting of battles and the making
of homes. For in their strong simple hearts was the same love of country
that bore England's flag to victory, and the same love of the fireside
that made peace as welcome as conquest.
And as these old English fighters had danced with their sweethearts on
the greensward in the intervals between wars, so these fighters of the
wilderness now went on with the dance in the forest just as if there had
been no fierce conflict at hand. They might be called to fight to-morrow
and they would be ready, but they would dance to-day, just as their
forefathers had done. To go elsewhere than to the dance on the morning
selected for it was, therefore, not to be thought of by any young person
of the neighborhood. Ruth had asked David to take her, explaining that
William Pressley could not accompany her quite so early as she wished to
go. He had business which would detain him, she explained with a painful
blush. And then, when she had said this with a troubled look, she
flashed round on the boy, demanding to know why William should not do
whatever he thought best.
"William always has a good reason for everything he does, or doesn't do.
He is never neglectful of any duty. Never!" with her blue eyes, which
were usually like turquoises, flashing into sapphires. "He takes time to
think--time to be sure that he is right. He isn't forever rushing into
mistakes and being sorry, like you and me!"
In another moment she laughed and coaxed, patting his arm.
"Do be ready, David, dear, and wear your nicest clothes," she said, in
her sweetest way. "And no girl there will have a handsomer gallant than
mine, than my Knight of the Oracle, my--"
The boy teased but smiling ran away to do her bidding, as he always did.
He had no clothes besides the worn suit of homespun which he was then
wearing, except one other of buckskin, gayly fringed on the sleeves and
on the outer seam of the breeches. This had been his pride till of late.
But he now took it down from its peg behind his cabin door and eyed it
with new dissatisfaction. Fashions were changing in the wilderness.
Gentlemen no longer clothed themselves in the skins of wild beasts, nor
even in the coarse homespun. Not many, to be sure, were dressed like
Philip Alston; but David had lately seen Mr. Audubon hunting in velvet
knee-breeches and white silk stockings, with fine ruffles over his
hands. That gentleman had laughed at himself for doing it, but the sight
had pleased the boy's taste and gratified his craving for everything
refined and beautiful. It humiliated him to have no choice between the
shabby homespun and the fantastic buckskin. But he tried to find comfort
in thinking that he would have a boughten suit before very long. The
judge had given him a calf. The master of Cedar House was always kind
when he did not forget, as has already been said, and he was most
generous at all times. The calf was now ready for sale to the first
passing buyer of cattle. Nevertheless, David sighed as he put on the
buckskin suit, wishing, as only the young can wish for what they desire,
that he had the boughten suit then to wear to the dance in the forest.
Yet Ruth smiled at him as if she were well pleased with his looks. There
were, to be sure, certain tangles in the gay fringes for her deft
fingers to untangle. There were, of course, many swift little touches to
be given here and there, the caressing touches that no true woman can
withhold from the dress of a man whom she is fond of. So that David's
buckskin suit suddenly seemed to him just what it should be--as all that
a man wears or has or is always does seem, when a woman's caressing
touches have convinced him that everything is right. Indeed, David
forgot to think any more of his own clothes or of himself. Looking at
Ruth he thought only of her.
He did not know what it was that she wore. He did not know that the
muslin of her dress had cost an hundred francs the yard. He did not know
how charmingly odd the mode of its make was, since Ruth's little hands
had planned it out of her own pretty head in enchanting ignorance of the
fashion. He knew nothing of the value of the three-cornered kerchief of
white lace which tied down her gypsy hat. He did not notice that the
flowers on her hat were primroses, or that the long gloves meeting the
short sleeves and the slender little slippers peeping from beneath her
skirt, were both of the finest primrose kid. He saw only the beauty of
her face smiling at him from under the gypsy hat, the sweetness of her
red lips, and the charm of her blue eyes. And she seeing only the look
that she had seen in every man's eyes ever since she could remember, was
not made vain thereby, as a less beautiful girl might have been. She
took it all for granted and thought no more about it. Rising on the tips
of her toes, she put back an unruly lock of David's hair with a last
loving little pat.
"There now! We are all ready," she said, with a happy sigh.
"Yes, the coffee is the first thing on the top of the basket," said Miss
Penelope, coming in from the kitchen. "That's it in the biggest bottle.
You can have it warmed over the campfire. I shouldn't like to drink
warmed-over coffee, myself. But then nobody in this house ever thinks
as I do about anything. It isn't my notion of what's right and
proper--to say nothing of Christian--to be a-dancing when everybody
ought to be a-praying. Not a day passes without something in the way of
a warning. Now there is the big hole that they've just found in the
earth right over yonder--a hollowness without end or bottom, and as dark
as the bottomless pit. That's what it ought to be called, too--instead
of the Mammoth Cave. For if that don't show that there is nothing but a
dreadful, empty shell left of this awful world, I don't know what any
true sign is. But all the same, I know very well that nobody in this
house pays any attention to what I say. Howsomever, the works of the
light-minded who are a-dancing on the edge of perdition don't make any
difference in my plain duty. And I am a-going to do it as near as I can
so long as I breathe the breath of life. When my cold, stiff hands are
crossed under the coffin-lid, nobody left 'pon top of this mournful
earth ever can say that I sat by, like a bump on a log, and never said a
word when I saw all these awful calamities a-coming."
Thus voicing these vague alarms in her sweetest tones, Miss Penelope
turned nervously and glanced at her half-sister. She was always afraid
of her, as very talkative, restless people often are of those who say
little and watch a great deal. But the widow Broadnax seemed to be
dozing among her cushions, and Miss Penelope felt it quite safe to go
on with the softly uttered threats which scattered the small dark
servitors, who were still flying about her like a flock of frightened
blackbirds, although the basket was packed.
"No," said Miss Penelope, "it don't make any difference in my duty. If
folks won't listen to what I am bound to say, that is no fault of mine.
My duty is to give warning when I see true signs of what's a-going to
happen. For a true sign is as plain as daylight to me. I never had a
caul, and I don't lay any claim to second sight. But I know what it
means when I hear the dogs a-baying the midnight moon. I know, too,
what's a-coming to pass when the death-watch goes thump, thump, thumping
in the wall right over my head the whole blessed night. And more than
that, I was a-looking for both these true signs of bad luck before I
heard 'em. That big black ring round the comet's head that I've seen for
a night or two back told me plain enough what to expect. And look at the
things that have already happened--all over the country. Nobody in this
world of trouble surely ever saw the like. Just look at the twins!"
This was the chance that the widow Broadnax had been waiting and
watching for in motionless silence. She seized it as suddenly as a
seemingly sleepy cat seizes an unwary mouse.
"I don't see any sign of bad luck in twins, or triplets either, for my
part," she said hoarsely and loudly. "They are every one of 'em bound to
be whole brothers and sisters. To my mind, it don't make any difference
how big a family is so long as it ain't mixed up."
Ruth and David seized the basket, and escaped--laughing and
running--carrying it between them.
The spot chosen for this Indian Summer dance in the forest was near
Cedar House. It was one of the natural open spaces, of which there were
many in the wilderness, and it overlooked the river. High walls of thick
green leaves enfolded it upon three sides, and it had a broad level
floor of greener sward. It was sun-lit when the shadowed woods were
dark. In the spring the greensward was gay with wild flowers; for it was
in these open spaces between the trees that Nature displayed her most
brilliant floral treasures which would not bloom in the shade. In the
fall the leafy walls were more brilliant than the flowery sward, and
they now rose toward the azure dome, gorgeously hung with bronzed and
golden vines, blossoming here and there with vivid scarlet leaves. Below
ran a dazzling border of shrubs--the sumac, which does not wait for the
coming of the frost king to put on its royal livery; the sassafras
already gleaming with touches of fire; the wild grape as red as the
reddest wine, and rioting over all the rich green; the bright wahoo with
its graceful clusters of flame-colored berries overrunning its soberer
neighbors; the hazel, the pawpaw, the dog-wood, the red-bud, the
spice-wood, the sweet-strife, the angelica. On the west the velvet turf
began to unroll gently downward toward the river. The quiet stream ran
with molten silver on that flawless October day, and deep shadows of
royal purple hung curtains of wondrous beauty above the water. Back
under the trees the shadows were darkly blue, bluer even than the
cloudless sky arching so high above the tall tree-tops.
Nature indeed always made more preparations and much finer ones, for the
dance in the woods than the simple people of the wilderness ever thought
of making. The word merely went from one log house to another, fixing
the day for the dance. The hunters' daughters with the help of their
mothers, filled the big baskets with simple good things on the night
before; for the young hunters came very early to go with their
sweethearts to the festival, and there was no time to spare on the
morning of the dance. The dancing sometimes began at nine o'clock in the
morning. The three black men from Cedar House who played for the dancing
were in their places long before that hour, with their instruments
already in tune. One had an old fiddle, another the remnant of a guitar,
and the third a clumsy iron triangle which he had made himself.
Nevertheless they were famous for their dance music and known
throughout the wilderness to all the dancers. Those old-time country
fiddlers--all of them, black or white--how wonderful they were! They
have always been the wonder and the despair of all musicians who have
played by rule and note. The very way that the country fiddler held his
fiddle against his chest and never against his shoulder like the trained
musician! The very way that the country fiddler grasped his bow, firmly
and squarely in the middle, and never lightly at the end like a trained
musician! The very way that he let go and went off and kept on--the
amazing, inimitable spirit, the gayety, the rhythm, the swing! No
trained musician ever heard the music of the country fiddler without
wondering at its power, and longing in vain to know the secret of its
charm. It would be worth a good deal to know where and how they learned
the tunes that they played. Possibly these were handed down by ear from
one to another; some perhaps have never been pent up in notes, and
others may have been given to the note reader under other names than
those by which the country fiddlers knew them. This is said to have been
the case with "Old Zip Coon," and the names of many of them would seem
to prove that they belonged to the time and the country. But there is a
delightful uncertainty about the origin and the history of almost all of
them--about "Leather Breeches" and "Sugar in the Gourd" and "Wagoner"
and "Cotton-eyed Joe," and so on through a long list.
On this day the musicians sat in a row on a fallen tree, and the grass
beside it was very soon worn away, and the earth before it beaten as
hard as any ballroom floor under the gay and ceaseless patting of their
feet. On the other side of the wide level space was a green bower made
of freshly cut boughs. This was a retiring room, intended for the use of
any fair dancer whose hair might fall into disorder or whose skirt might
be torn in the dancing. The baskets were all put out of sight till
wanted, hidden beneath the bushes that bordered the open space. But now
and then, when the soft warm breeze swayed the leafy screen of green and
gold and crimson, there were tantalizing glimpses of the folded
table-cloths covering the baskets, like much belated or very early
snowdrifts.
Most of the hunters' daughters came to the dance riding behind their
sweethearts, after the pleasant custom of the country. They were fine
girls for their station in life, and well fitted for the hardships which
must be their portion. They were large, strong, brave, simple,
good--healthy in body and mind, warm in heart, and cool in courage, with
pleasing faces roughened by exposure, and capable hands hardened by
work. They were dressed in homespun as became their looks, their means,
and manner of living. In all things these future mothers of a great
state were the natural and suitable mates for the gallant young
state-makers. And each one of the young hunters now standing beside
them, held his head high as he led out the girl of his choice, feeling
his own right to be prouder and happier than any of his fellows.
The dancing had begun before Ruth and David came, although they were so
early. The spot being near, they had walked through the forest swinging
the basket between them like two happy children, and coming to the open
space, they stopped for a moment and looked on, thinking what a pleasing
scene it was. The girls, tripping through the dance, smiled at Ruth as
they passed. They knew her very well, and had seen her so often that
they no longer looked at her as plump brown partridges might look at an
exquisite bird of paradise. And then, they felt that Ruth was
unconscious of any difference between herself and them. There was a
sweet, cordial friendliness about her, an innate warm-hearted, magnetic
charm which won women as well as men. The hunters' daughters liked her
because they knew that she liked them for, after all, most of us get
what we give in our larger relation to humanity--seldom, if ever,
anything else, either more or less. Those who truly love their kind can
never be really hated: those who hate their kind can never be really
loved. The balance may waver one way or the other at times, but it
cannot fail to weigh truly at last.
Ruth danced first with David and then with one of the bashful young
hunters. But all the while she was looking toward the opening in the
undergrowth, expecting to see Paul Colbert. He had said that he would be
there, and presently she saw him standing in the opening between the
trees, with the shining river at his back. He was wearing his best and
Ruth thought with a leap of her heart, that she had not known till now
how handsome he was. His hair was fairer than she had thought, as fair
as hers was dark, and she liked it all the better for that. His eyes
were gray and clear and steady and fearless. He had a proud way, too, of
throwing up his head, as if he tossed away all petty thoughts. She saw
him do this as he crossed the greensward, coming straight to her side.
It pleased her that he did not stop for a single glance round. She felt
his unlikeness to another man, when she saw that he had no thought of
any eyes that might be upon himself. And because of this comparison, and
the pang of uneasiness and self-reproach which it brought, she blushed
when her eyes met his as she had not done heretofore.
There is little use in trying to put into words what he thought of her,
or what any true lover thinks of the beloved. The rose of the dawn, and
the breath of the zephyr were not glowing or delicate enough to portray
Ruth as she was to Paul that day. The beauty of her face under the gypsy
hat; the witchery of her dark blue eyes smiling up at him; the pink
roses blooming on her fair cheeks; the red rose of her perfect
mouth--all this gave him at a glance a likeness of her to lay away in
his memory: a vivid flashing, imperishable treasure to keep forever.
* * * * *