A CONFESSION
"Belle-Ann," Colonel Tennytown began gently, with a strange new
exultation noticeable in his tones, "I have come to ask you to do me a
favor--a very great kindness--do you deem me deserving of a kindness in
view of my grim shortcomings?"
"Isn't it singular, Colonel Tennytown," interjected Belle-Ann
laughingly, "that when I saw you coming down thah, I thought how happy
I'd be if I had the power to do you-all some kindness?"
"Ah!" rejoined the Colonel, "now we have it--happily, you possess a
naturally charitable spirit, Belle-Ann," he said. He had never called
her Belle-Ann before. His Southern chivalry had never permitted him to
diverge from the prefix of Miss to her surname. "As you now know all,
Belle-Ann," he continued, "I wish you, henceforth and onward, to call me
grandfather--I beg you to forgive me for my seeming tardiness in coming
to the front to acknowledge my granddaughter--my approach has doubtless
appeared to you masked in a form of deception, and now that I am here to
inflict the brazen audacity of a complete confession, you can plainly
see, Belle-Ann, that I am in need of your uttermost indulgence. The
truth is, I regret to say, that we never knew of your existence until
you came here to school when my esteemed friend, Reverend Peterson, made
me acquainted with the fact.
"Then, the moment I laid eyes on you my heart melted and my soul went
out to you--I instantly saw in you purity and beauty--indeed you are
even more beautiful than your mother was, Belle-Ann--your mother whose
sole offense was her stubborn refusal to marry the man whom we thought
best fitted for her; and then she ran away and married a mountaineer far
beneath her station, doubtless a good man--but practically a stranger,
and one to whom she gave her life, and her duty, but not her heart.
"We struggled for years to reconcile her, pledging absolute forgiveness,
but her blood told, Belle-Ann--the blood of her father--her high-bred
spirit met our pleadings with unbroken stoic silence. She lost herself
completely--the grand young man who had just been elected to the state
senate of Kentucky, and who loved her, declined from that day and died a
broken man. The remorse that gnawed at my heart for years, Belle-Ann,
has left its scars--is a skein of secret, silent woe, untold, my dear
little girl--a blight across the old man's life that no language is
sufficiently adequate to reveal.
"Bah!--what an awful lesson I have had--and then I found you. You were
sent by a kind Providence to assuage my great sorrow, Belle-Ann. You
see--my daughter--we wished to be certain that you inherited your
mother's lovable traits. I did not wish to take a step which might,
perforce, have to be retraced later; to be plain, we sought to make sure
that we liked you, and I can say to-night that we do like you,
Belle-Ann--we do more than that, we all love you--we do more than love
you; we idolize you; we worship you; we all adore you. Will you adopt
us? Will you take me with all my arrant failings and use me as best you
can for a grandfather?"
He dropped his hat on the grass and stood erect before her in the
moonlight the image of a southern nobleman, holding his hands out to
her. All throughout his earnest words she had been deeply and happily
moved. Her bosom rose and fell, riding the roses pinned over her heart.
Her star-like eyes were misty, and there was pathos in her sweet treble
utterance as she thrust her two hands into his waiting palms.
"Col--grandpa," she corrected, "it is a proud distinction to claim you
for my grandfather--I feel wholly unworthy. I feet almost like an
interloper--I owe you so much--I shall struggle with all my heart to
take and fill my mother's place."
The Colonel stooped and pressed his lips to her forehead and kissed the
curls near the little wreath of flowers.
"Belle-Ann," he went on, a new line of serious thought suggested to him,
"you must promise me one more thing--in fact, if you don't promise, it
will disrupt my plan of years--it will--well--it will place me in a very
unhappy position."
"What is it, grandpa?" she quizzed through her smiles.
"Well--you see--that is--of course it's a secret," he ended lamely, with
a furtive look toward a dim white figure beneath the trees. "As I said
before--it's like this----Oh!--plague--take it!--to-night I asked Miss
Worth to marry me, and she said she would if she could; but that she
couldn't unless you promised to come immediately with us to Lexington
and make your home with us--so you see where the whole thing hinges.
Will you do me this favor, Belle-Ann?" he pressed anxiously.
Belle-Ann could not restrain herself and laughed outright.
"Don't look so solemn, Grandpa--go tell Miss Worth I said to marry you
by all means--I'll do my part."
There was a boyish ring in the Colonel's laugh as he picked his hat up
off the grass and with Belle-Ann's arm through his, started toward the
porch.
"But--Grandpa," protested Belle-Ann, as her lovely face suddenly
sobered, and a grave note crept into her voice, "I must go up to Moon
mountain before I think of anything else--some hearts up thah are
beating against my return--but I'll promise to come back heah, in three
days, Grandpa."
Colonel Tennytown stopped short on the path.
"Ah!--now we have it," he exclaimed. "I know all about those folks. Tell
me, my dear, plainly--do you love that boy, Lem?"
Belle-Ann's cheeks turned visibly crimson in the moonlight as she looked
up quickly upon this unexpected query.
"I might--might learn to--Grandpa," she murmured grudgingly.
"Now," said the Colonel decisively, "you shall start up there Monday
morning--and you tell that Lem Lutts for me that I want a good, steady,
dependable man. I'll give him charge of my entire stock farm--seven
hundred acres--and three hundred head of the best horse-blood on the
face of the earth. I'll train Lem and make him manager. If he will, he
can go to school and polish himself up first. And that little Buddy
Lutts--you tell him I'll give him a pony all for his own, and keep him
in clothes and spending money if he'll come down to Lexington and go to
school once in awhile."
"Now, I want to ask you, Belle-Ann--about that old negro chap, Slab. Is
the lobe of his left ear missing?"
"Oh, yes--yes!" exclaimed the mystified girl.
"And is he a very long, narrow gentleman?"
"Surely--he's quite tall----"
"Did you ever hear him sing 'Kitty Wells'?"
Belle-Ann clapped her hands in childish glee.
"I've heard that song every night all my life, Grandpa; how did you-all
know Slab, Grandpa?"
"Ah! now we have it--when Miss Worth mentioned him, telling me things
about him as you had told her, I would always say that he is the same
old Slab--and I'll bet the best horse I've got that he is the same. He
belonged to my uncle who lived on the plantation adjoining my father's.
Slab was asleep in the shade of a porch one day when I, a boy of seven
years, meaning to startle him, slipped up and held a snapping turtle
close to his face. When I started to arouse him with one hand, the
turtle suddenly shot his neck out and gabbed old Slab by the ear. Then
Slab woke up. You ask him about that; and you ask him if he remembers
the time old Hickamohawk ran away with him--and you bring him down here
with you. Just tell him that Amos Tennytown wants him and he'll
come--bring the whole family--there's room for us all, Belle-Ann."
She had listened to his warm-hearted suggestions with growing enthusiasm
that sent her blood bounding, as she pictured the surprise and gladness
the Colonel's message would inspire in those lonely, isolated hearts up
on Hellsfork.
"Grandpa," observed the girl, out of her unutterable joy and gratitude,
"God made your heart awful big."
"And God made you the gentlest and most beautiful of all granddaughters,
my dear," he answered gallantly. "Monday I will have here the best
single-foot saddle beast in this country for you to ride, and I will
send a man to escort you, who will guarantee your safety."
"Oh, Grandpa! I don't wish him to go any further than Boon's Ford. He
can turn back thah. I feel sure Lem and Buddy and Slab will come back
with me."
"Just as you will, Belle-Ann," he agreed, and the two mingled their
mutual, uncontrollable outbursts of ecstasy as they joined the figure
lingering amid the mystic vacillating shadows of the rose-tree.