KNOW YE THE TRUTH
That night Belle-Ann indited a letter to her father, dwelling upon the
kindness of Miss Worth, who had proposed to give her a higher education.
She told of her delightful visit to Lexington and of the beautiful
present Colonel Tennytown had given to her. She asked again, as she
always did, if he had heard anything from Lem.
She also ventured another letter to Lem. During the past winter she had
written several letters to him; as yet, she had received no answer to
these. However, she supposed they were still uncalled for. She knew that
Lem could write sufficiently legible for her to decipher it, but she
also remembered the fact that the nearest post-office was thirty miles
distant from Moon mountain. Moreover, she knew Lem was not accustomed to
visiting Junction City, because he never received any mail, and because
the denizens of Junction City were rank sympathizers with the McGill
faction.
And always she yearned for sight of Lem's honest face. Not a day passed
but what she cherished thoughts of home. When she was apparently in her
gayest mood, Lem's tall shadow stood in the background waiting for
her--always waiting. While occupied in her tensest study hours, down in
her subconsciousness lay a memory that stirred like a thing having life.
And ever more overshadowing this dominating vision of Lem Lutts was the
haunting presence of the revenuer. From her waking hours these thoughts
trailed into the night to pollute her dreams and, not infrequently,
pilfer her sleep away.
Oft times, in the presence of others, she would abruptly lower her book
or suspend anything at hand, only to come out of an ill reverie, to find
her eyes fixed blankly at nothing, and her lip in the grip of her upper
teeth. These uncontrollable abstractions had caused her many
embarrassments and had grown upon her, as the months slipped by, instead
of diminishing.
Now that she stood on the threshold of a new life, a mystic, fascinating
world, the vague dreams of which had gesticulated and beckoned to her
childish fancy in the hills, foretelling its beautiful emoluments of
which she now had dazzling, palpitating glimpses--she was dismayed at
her own disquietude. She had made very many dear friends. She had an
array of beautiful clothes. She was forgivably conscious, without
vanity, that she was an unusually beautiful girl. The refinements of
education for which she had an inbred craving were filtering into her
brain with the mellow, rich residue of a rare wine. The whole atmosphere
that enveloped her was charged with all the pedagogic influences and
wholesome blithesomeness calculated to inspire a girl of her temperament
to utter happiness.
But Belle-Ann was not happy. The fear that had eroded its path into her
being stood over her young life to menace and alloy every new-born
pleasure. Her soul trembled now lest the revenuer had killed Lem
instead. Then her life would not only be broken, but the revenuer would
still live on to project his hated shadow across her heart, and her
agony would go on and on with another and more potential impetus.
When the human heart throbs against the barbs of an eating agony through
a measure of years, there comes a time when the soul staggers and cries
out.
One night Miss Worth awoke and following a habit, she got up and slipped
across the hall, bent on seeing if Belle-Ann were sitting up in bed with
her books, as was her wont.
She opened the door softly. As there was no light in the girl's room,
she was about to close the door and go to bed when she caught a sound
that half startled her. Quickly and noiselessly she stepped over the
threshold. A shaft of moonlight fell athwart the bed. It was empty. She
cast a searching glance about the room. At the window-seat she saw a
mass of black curls above the white of a night robe.
Crouching on the floor, her face buried in her arms, alone in this small
hour, Belle-Ann was crying in the half gloom. Alone with some great
grief that was undoing her. Her shoulders shook with its racking
on-coming. Then again, its vortex of agony swept across her lips in
piteous supplicatory sobs, vibrating in the stillness like the bleating
of a dazed, lost creature enmeshed in the tentacles of some merciless
destroyer.
Motionless, Miss Worth stood for a minute, her mind divided by two
opposing conjectures. One, a deplorable apprehension that this girl she
had come to love so dearly was assailed by some new sudden visitation of
suffering. The other, a keen, pungent joy that perhaps that for which
she herself had striven and labored for months was coming to pass. Maybe
after all the blighting soul-fistula she had so deftly and tirelessly
probed for had burst and its poisonous feculence was now eddying away.
Until a month ago Belle-Ann had, with the natural reluctance and
reserved suspicion of the mountain-born, withstood and parried all of
Miss Worth's gentle approaches to discover her secret woe. The mountain
spirit nurtures a bitter antipathy for revelations. Then a day came when
this dear friend broke through the barrier, and Belle-Ann poured out her
whole life to Miss Worth. There was no detail or memory that she did not
vividly picture before Miss Worth's understanding. Then Miss Worth,
knowing where to look, reached out with all the potent power of her
subjugating diplomacy to extirpate the roots of this melancholy plant
that grew and threatened to overrun a beautiful soul.
Miss Worth hurried across the room and spoke her name. With distress
undisguised, Belle-Ann lifted her tear-wet face.
"Oh!--I can't--I cannot endure it longer," she declared between the
tremulous sobs that convulsed her.
Miss Worth knelt beside the girl and with her arms around her, she
talked in soothing undertones. For almost an hour the two sat clinging
together. Not a minute had Miss Worth's voice ceased. As the girl
huddled, listening tensely, the tears ceased and dried on her distressed
face. Presently, she arose and walked aimlessly around the room.
"But you-all don't believe as we do," she said. "Our people are shot
down in their own yards, and when we call upon the law, the law only
turns the assassin loose. Then the law itself comes to kill. Oh--Oh,
dear Miss Worth--you can never understand--you can never know what this
is. Only we up thah who suffer these things know its sting. Who could go
on and live without redress and not strike back? If you had suffered
this as I have--if you could see what I have--if you could see now--this
minute--what I see--thah--thah----" she ended in stifling utterances, as
she stared at a spot of moonlight that had strayed across the floor.
Now, totally oblivious to her whereabouts, and utterly unconscious of
Miss Worth's presence, she fell to her knees on the floor, stretching
her arms out over the pallid beam, in benediction, and lowered her hands
to fondle the face that her fevered fancy held there; and to touch the
still, immobile bosom with its bullet-spot. And again her grief broke
loose beyond restraint and she sobbed aloud. A great lump had brought an
ache into Miss Worth's throat, and she, too, was crying. She lifted the
girl up and led her back to the window-seat. Here she whispered solace
to her for a time.
Finally, Miss Worth arose and left Belle-Ann at the window. When she
reached the door she turned back.
"Remember, dearest," she said, "Know ye the truth and the truth shall
make ye free. I'll be waiting up for you--I shall not retire until you
come. If you see the light--come to me--I'll be waiting and praying,
too."