Breaking up a home is not an easy matter, even when the home has little in it; nor is it a happy thing—no, not even when the home has been a sad one. Moreover, it cannot be done in an hour, even under the easiest conditions.
“We’ll come back some day, I reckon,” said Mrs. Panther to Miss Pace, looking about her at the bare room with its broken fireplace and dingy walls. “Seems like I wouldn’t know how to live nowhere else.”
“If Mr. Panther gets well, maybe you’ll be glad to come back,” faltered Aunt Zillah, trying to say the kind thing, but thinking in her wise heart that these people were perishing, soul and body, for lack of mixing with their kind. But there was really too much to do to spend time sighing over the breaking up. Even the one remaining hog and the thirty odd chickens had to be planned for. It was decided finally that Paralee was to drive the hog, and that such ofthe chickens as were not eaten that night for supper, were to be put in panniers fastened to the saddles and carried to the McEvoys for safe keeping.
Miss Zillah wanted to help Mrs. Panther pack her clothes, but she was not quite sure that there was anything to pack; and indeed there was no more than could be put in a couple of old melon-shaped baskets.
“Clothes ain’t come into my reckoning,” said Mrs. Panther quaintly, growing more sociable as she felt the influence of Miss Zillah’s genial atmosphere. “And, anyway, there wa’n’t nobody to see what we had on.”
Meantime, Mr. Thompson and Keefe had, with the aid of Paralee, been giving their attention to the hammock in which the sick man was to be carried. The house contained one good blanket of wool homespun, strong yet flexible. This, doubled, was stretched upon poles, and since no stout rope could be found about the place, heavy braided warp was fastened to these poles. This improvised rope was to be slung over the shoulders of the carriers. Azalea and Carin braided the rope and found it a pleasant task. Indeed, they both were very happy.
“It warms me all up,” said Azalea, “to think of getting this poor man out of here and giving him a chance, and I’m just as glad for his wife as I am for him. Talk of paralysis; Mrs. Panther has paralysis of the soul, don’t you think?”
“Isn’t Paralee changed?” Carin cried, not bothering to answer Azalea’s question. “She’s actually tidying up things. I saw her straightening out the mess under the house with her one poor hand. She wants the Panther house to fall to ruins decently. That’s going a good way—for Paralee.”
“Oh, you never can tell a thing about these mountain people,” said Azalea. “Very likely, a few generations back these silly Panthers, who ought to have called themselves Marr, had no end of self-respect. Many, many generations back, they may have been fine people. Marr certainly is the name of one of the greatest of families.”
“Perhaps it meant the same as Panther in the beginning,” surmised Carin. “Mars is the god of war, and maybe the Marrs and the Panthers all got their names because they were such good fighters.”
The sick man had been carried out of doorsby Mr. Thompson and Keefe, and placed where he could watch the preparations that were being made for his journey. And while he looked, not more than half-understanding, his great wild eyes rolling in their sockets, his wife mixed hoe-cake, using the last meal she possessed, and cooked it on the coals. Chickens had been prepared with dispatch, and were boiling in the pot, and Aunt Zillah, having given all necessary attention to affairs within the house, was now gathering dewberries and getting a fine bowl of them.
Presently the hammock was completed and supper was served. Miss Zillah had persuaded Mrs. Panther to let them eat it in the open, and they sat together, that strangely mingled company, in the clear light of the long-lingering day, enjoying their homely repast. The lovely evening, the wild spot, her friends—so various, but so dear—the awakening light in Paralee’s eyes, the sense of being, somehow, on the right road of the world, brought to Azalea’s heart a sense of dancing delight. She insisted on serving the chicken, the hoecake and the hot decoction which Mrs. Panther was pleased to call tea, making the others sit still while she waited onthem. She could only be contented when she was doing something, it seemed.
It was well on into the evening before the company was ready for rest; for the last preparations for moving had to be made that night if the company was to have an early morning start. The horses had to be cared for, Mr. Panther made as fit for civilization as possible, some sort of garments contrived for Mrs. Panther, and the house and yard “put straight.” Everyone, save, of course, the helpless, silent man upon his couch, turned in to help, Carin with the rest. Once Azalea whispered to her friend:
“Did you hear that noise? It’s Paralee laughing!”
“Do you think so?” asked Carin skeptically. “It sounded to me rather like a frog.”
“It was Paralee,” declared Azalea seriously. “It did sound a little like a frog, didn’t it, but just you wait a month or two, Carin Carson, and then hear how it sounds!”
Carin gave a tired little laugh.
“I can’t take another step, Zalie,” she declared. “No matter what the rest of you do, I’ve got to go to bed.”
Going to bed on this night meant rolling one’sself in a raincoat, covering one’s self with some coarse handmade sheeting, and lying straight upon a bed of pine needles with one’s face to the stars.
“You don’t seem nearly so tired and sleepy as I am, Zalie dear. Sit by me and hold my hand,” pleaded Carin. “You’ll lie next me, won’t you—quite close? The mountain seems huge, doesn’t it? Like a kind beast. Isn’t it breathing? I feel as if it were breathing. Deep breaths. Where do you suppose my own, own father and mother are to-night? It was queer that I didn’t want to go with them, wasn’t it? I wonder if it was because I didn’t wish to leave you, ‘honey-bird’—as Mr. Thompson calls you. Why didn’t he bring his fiddle? He doesn’t look right to me without his fiddle. Oh—h, how tired I am. Sing, Azalea: ‘Now the day is over.’”
Carin hummed the first line; Azalea took it up at the second, and the soft silence of the night was broken by the harmony of their voices. Azalea remembered the evening, long ago, when she had heard Carin and her father and mother singing that far down the trail. That was the night they had come to ask her to be Carin’sadopted sister—the night she had weighed her love for Ma McBirney in the balance with riches and opportunity, and had decided in favor of the mountain cabin and Ma McBirney’s love.
Carin slept quickly, but she was over-tired; her slender shoulders twitched spasmodically, and the hand Azalea held would clutch and then as suddenly relax.
“Oh, me,” thought Azalea, suddenly anxious, “are we forgetting how delicate and tender she is? What if she should be ill, with her mother so far away! We aren’t looking after her the way we ought. She can’t stand the things the rest of us can. I must have a talk with Aunt Zillah at once.”
She drew her hand softly from Carin’s grasp and looked about her for Aunt Zillah. Someone paced slowly up and down beneath the trees at no great distance, and Azalea ran to see who it was.
“It’s only Keefe,” said a voice in answer to her low inquiry. “Not the person you’re looking for, I’m sure.”
“I happened to be looking for Aunt Zillah,” said Azalea; “but why shouldn’t I be looking for you, Keefe O’Connor?”
“Because you never do—you never have—never will. Nobody looks for me. Nobody worries about me. I come and go as I please—and don’t like it. I had some hope at the beginning of the season that Mrs. Rowantree would worry about me—she seemed so nice. But she hasn’t a speck of worry to spare from Himself and the children. Then I thought maybe Miss Pace would devote at least ten minutes a day to worrying about me, butshehasn’t shown a sign of it. She never asks me where I come from or who I am, or why I am, or—”
“Why, Keefe O’Connor, you’re as unjust as you can be. She hasn’t asked you—none of us has asked you—because we thought that for some reason you didn’t want to tell.”
Keefe stopped short in his pacing, and standing twenty feet from the girl, let one cold word drop between them.
“Oh!”
“What a horrid way of saying ‘Oh!’” cried Azalea. “I meant just what I said and not anything more. You know very well that we’ve liked you from the first, Keefe, and that it never would occur to us to think anything about you that—that wasn’t nice. What’s the matter withyou to-night, anyway? I feel as if, whatever I said, you’d put some meaning into it that I didn’t want put there.”
“What’s the matter with me?” he asked. “Why, I’m homesick—for a home I never had. I want to see the kin I haven’t got. I want to know my own name. I want to understand—” he broke off and let the words rest quivering upon the air. Azalea drew a little nearer in the gloom.
“Don’t you know any of those things, Keefe?” Her voice sounded awed.
“No, Azalea, I don’t. I have, I believe, the strangest story in the world. I’ve wanted and wanted to tell it to you, but I’ve been afraid that you—well, that you wouldn’t believe it, or perhaps that you wouldn’t like me so well after you knew it.”
“Oh, Keefe, tell me now! I should love to hear a strange story to-night. I love to live under the sky, don’t you? When I was a little girl I often slept out like this with my poor mamma. Oh, Keefe, how I wish you had known my poor little mother! Where shall we sit while you tell me the story? Or would you rather we walked back and forth?”
But before Keefe could reply, Miss Zillah, with Paralee and her mother, came from the house and joined them.
“Paralee wishes to sleep out here with us, Azalea,” said Miss Pace. “That will be very nice, won’t it? Mrs. Panther has come to say good night, my dear. I tell her she must get to bed. To-morrow will be a trying day, though, I hope, a happy one, too.”
Keefe and Azalea stood silent for a moment. Their little moment of enchantment was shattered and it was hard for them to hide their disappointment. Then Azalea tried to say what was expected of her, but Mrs. Panther broke in:
“I’ve got it on my mind,” she said slowly, “to say how I feel about you-all coming away out here to help me and my man. It’s hard for me to say, for I ain’t used to strangers. What’s more, it’s a good while since I had call to thank anyone. Things has been against me and folks has been against me. My own children has been against me.”
“No, they hain’t, ma. No, they hain’t,” cried Paralee excitedly. “You’ll see it hain’t so—”
“What I can’t get clear in my mind,” went on the woman, paying no heed to Paralee’s wistfultug at her sleeve, “is why you-all should trouble yourselves to come up here on something that ain’t no concern of yourn—”
“You would have done just the same, wouldn’t you, Mrs. Panther,” said Azalea in her light, almost gay little way, “if you had heard we were in trouble and had known you could help us out?”
“Who, me?” gasped Mrs. Panther. “I never helped nobody. Never had the chanct.” Again the bitterness came into her voice.
“I’m going to give you the chance sometime, Mrs. Panther,” said Azalea, laughing softly. “Then you’ll help me the very best you know how; won’t she, Aunt Zillah?”
On that they parted. Keefe and Mr. Thompson slept at some distance, guarding the path—though indeed there was no one to guard it against. Aunt Zillah and her girls lay beneath a hemlock tree. Beside them, Paralee watched the slow roll of the stars till far into the night, unable to sleep for the thoughts that beset her.
“I couldn’t stay in the house,” she whispered to Azalea. “It made me think of the dark days.”
“The dark days?”
“Before I went away—when I thought we was forgot by all on the world.”
The night was good to them; the wind was low and kind; the dew softer than fairy fingers; the stars softly bright. Even the dawn did not come blazing upon them. In pink and gray, delicately it smiled from the farther hills. True, all night long the whippoorwill teased the air with his foolish song, but all there were too used to the notes of his voice to heed.
An hour after sunup, the procession was on its way. Mrs. Panther and Paralee rode the horses which had carried Keefe and Haystack Thompson the day before. In the panniers by their side cackled the excited and displeased chickens, and following them came the equally surprised and disgusted pig, for whom Keefe had constructed a harness by means of which Paralee led him. Last of all came Keefe and Haystack, carrying the paralyzed man in his hammock.
The little house looked wretchedly deserted when Paralee had closed its shutters and Keefe nailed up its door. He noticed that Mrs. Panther kept her head turned away from it and he wondered if she had, after all, some strange,irrational love for this grim place, where she had suffered so much, and known such bitter solitude.
Well, he reflected, the wrench would soon be over. Ten minutes took them out of sight of the house. They presently were out of the clearing and picking their way along the most terrible road in a country of bad roads. The drag of the sick man’s weight, half-skeleton though he was, was more of a burden than Keefe thought it would be. At the end of the first mile it seemed to him that he could not go on; but oddly enough, the second mile found him getting accustomed to the task. With Haystack Thompson, however, the carrying of this dead weight seemed to be but a small hardship. Though making the best baskets in the country and playing the violin with the touch of wild genius were not occupations to strengthen muscles, still Thompson was capable of great exertion. Keefe, who walked behind him, looked at his great shoulders with envy.
Miss Pace, with Azalea and Carin, had ridden on ahead as fast as they could push their horses, in order to send the McEvoy wagon to the point where the rough trail met the wagon road. Theyhad no fear of losing their way, for the marks their horses had made the previous day were their sure guide. So if they were anxious, it was not for themselves. Their fear was for the two burden-bearers. Azalea had seen from the first that Keefe was finding the task a very difficult one. He was not strong in the way her good Haystack was, and he never would be. She thought of his delicate, long, “clever” hands, that could handle the sketching pencil or the painter’s brush so deftly, of all his quick, kind, charming ways, and wondered again what the story could be that he wanted to tell her, and how it was that he seemed so alone in the world.
The day was proving itself a surprisingly hot one for that altitude. Azalea was glad to remember the canteens of cold water that the men carried with them, and hoped Haystack would tell Keefe to put green leaves in his hat to keep his head cool. She wondered if there was danger of sunstroke away up on the mountains and wanted to ask Miss Pace, but for some reason didn’t quite like to. Too much anxiety about Keefe might bring out Carin’s little teasing smile. Anyway, it was no time for asking questions. She urged Paprika ahead of theothers, and rode him over the stubble, through the bushes, across the fords, until at last she reached the well-traveled road. Here she watered him lightly, and breathed him for a few minutes. Then she flicked the reins on his neck.
“Go home, pony,” she called sharply. Paprika gave a little sniff as much as to say that he had supposed that was what hewasdoing, and reaching out with his tough little legs, he fairly flew over the ground. Carin set her pretty Mustard at the same pace. The ponies had been bred together and were equally matched, yet to-day Mustard did not seem quite the equal of Paprika, and Mustard’s mistress wondered why. But Aunt Zillah knew. The difference lay, not in the ponies, but in the riders. It was Azalea whose aching sympathy with those she had left behind her, diffused itself through the heart and lungs and legs of her staunch little mount, giving him a speed he seldom had known before.
Indeed, it was an all but fainting pony that was drawn up at last by the McEvoy steps. Azalea had slipped from her saddle as the little creature swayed, and guessing at his trouble, had snatched up a pail of water which stood upon the house steps and dashed it over his face.Miles McEvoy, placidly smoking his pipe in the shade of a sweet gum tree, came to her aid, but she waved him away.
“Hitch the horses to the wagon,” she said, “and please ask Mrs. McEvoy to come here.”
McEvoy, the leisurely, stared for one second. Then, putting a question or two, and receiving Azalea’s clear answers, he strode away to do her bidding. Azalea got the saddle off her weary little mount and ran to get the necessaries for the relief wagon, explaining as she worked. A few moments later, Miss Zillah and Carin arrived, Carin too jaded to be of much service just then, but Aunt Zillah full of expedients.
So in less than an hour, McEvoy, with his wife beside him, was on his way, and the three who were left behind were making free in the bedroom of the many bottles, getting all in readiness for Mr. Panther.
At midnight they laid the sick man on Mrs. McEvoy’s best feather bed. Very deep and soft and sweet it was, and very kindly and safe looked the homely room. Miss Zillah’s soup was hot and savory, and her tea had comfort in it for the weary. Azalea and Carin, swift-footed and eager, rendered all the service in theirpower, and at length, when every task was performed, with their lanterns in their hands, they, with Miss Zillah, started for their home.
Keefe O’Connor was sitting without the door waiting for them.
“I want to see you safe, please,” he said in rather a curious voice. Azalea looked at him to see what was the matter, but the lantern revealed nothing more than a white and strained face. She noticed that he was unusually silent as they made their way over the path of pine needles to the Oriole’s Nest, but for the matter of that, none of them felt talkative. She certainly was not prepared to see him, when he had unlocked the cabin door for them, reel suddenly and fall unconscious across the threshold.
Miss Zillah laid a hand on Azalea’s arm.
“Don’t be so frightened,” she said. “He’s overstrained his heart, no doubt. Find a match. Light the lamps. Carin, help me lift him—well, drag him then. We’ll get him to the lounge. No hurry.”
Azalea, fumbling for the matches and missing them, wondered why Miss Zillah had spoken to her. How had she known that her heart stopped beating at the sight of Keefe prone across the doorstep? And if she was more frightened than the others, how had she shown it—and why, indeed,shouldshe care more than they?
Then she knew. She was only a young girl, but she knew. Somehow, mysteriously and beautifully in this lonely old world, we are able to pick out our own. We know, as we eye them, those who will make us feel befriended and comfortable and safe. At least, we think weknow, and even when we find we have been mistaken, we have had the sweetness of the hour of apparent discovery. Yes, it was true; Azalea admitted it as with trembling hands she lighted the lamps, shuddering at the sound of that body being dragged across the floor. Keefe O’Connor, who had said that he did not know his own right name, who admitted that his life had been strange and sad and unsettled, had seemed to her, from the first, like some one she always had known—some one it would be a wicked folly to lose out of her life.
Pa McBirney had warned her that she was too impulsive. He had told her that she must watch out for this very thing, and she had promised him that she would try to put a guard upon herself. Yet by a swift understanding which she could not explain, she had felt from the first that she could trust this lad; could forgive him when he needed forgiveness, and take life as it came, with poverty or plenty, with good or ill luck, if he were near to praise her for the long day’s work, or to laugh with her when play-time came. And now perhaps he was dying!
There, the lamps were lighted at last! Shehad touched a match to the kindling in the fireplace; she had tossed on a log. She was willing to do anything rather than turn her face and look upon that white one on the couch where Aunt Zillah and Carin, breathing hard, had managed to lift the inert body of her friend.
“Make some black coffee, quick, Azalea,” she heard Aunt Zillah saying. “Make it very strong. Carin, come hold the light while I look in my medicine case.”
Black coffee, very strong! How did one make that? Azalea could not think. “Quick, quick,” Aunt Zillah had said. Azalea gave up thinking, because her hands were doing the work. She found that she could trust them, that some faithful servant in her confused house of thought was doing the work for her. The coffee was ground, the fire was lighted, the pot set on—all as it should be—and still it was not of coffee that she was thinking, but of that white face which she would not look at; that fluttering breath that seemed to cease.
She could hear Miss Zillah slapping the cold hands of the boy there on the couch; could hear her speaking to him and getting no answer. She wondered why Carin didn’t come to her to saysomething—to tell her how he was faring. Did they expect her to think of nothing but coffee, coffee, coffee—particularly when it seemed never to boil, never to get where it would be of any use?
When she carried the coffee into the living room, he was breathing heavily. His eyes were partly opened, and Miss Zillah had loosened his shirt at the neck, and had poured water over his face and hair. It made him look so strange—so different from the way he usually looked. And yet, though he looked so different, he seemed familiar, too, in a new way.
“It’s not of himself that he reminds me,” thought Azalea, “but of some one else.” The resemblance was pleasant to her, as if the person he made her think of was some one she liked, though she could not think who it was.
Miss Zillah lifted him up and held him steady while Azalea fed him from the spoon with the strong black coffee.
“Don’t let your hand tremble,” said Miss Zillah rather sharply. “Don’t think about your fears, Azalea. He’s got to have the coffee. His heart needs stimulating. Give it to him and stop trembling.”
Azalea wouldn’t have supposed it possible that by the mere exercise of will she could stop the shaking of her hand, but when Miss Zillah spoke to her that way, she steadied herself.
Did the moments go fast or slow? She could not tell. She gave him the full cup of coffee and went for more. Carin had heated some hot water and had put it in rubber bags at his hands and feet. He had been wrapped warm, and now, little by little, the horrid purple of his lips began to turn into something more like their usual color. His lids opened with a flutter and he saw those about him. He smiled piteously, like a little boy, and closed his eyes again.
“Perfect rest is what he needs now,” said Miss Zillah. “He may have to be quiet for days. It takes much longer to rest a heart than it does to tire it. Go to bed now, girls. What a day you’ve had! Mercy, what would your people think, Carin, if they knew all you have been through? Don’t think of getting up in the morning, or of going to school. The very thought of your falling ill distresses me.”
It seemed outrageous to leave the gentle Miss Zillah there, her face all drawn with anxiety,alone with that almost unconscious boy, but she insisted upon having her way.
“I’ll call you,” she assured the girls, “if there’s anything you can do.”
“Any least thing—” begged Azalea.
Miss Zillah nodded. So the two crept away to their bed behind the great chimney and the screens, but they did not undress; only lay down in their wrappers and with the light burning beside them. Carin dropped into a heavy sleep and lay there so sunken in the bed that Azalea had her to worry about too. Being of knightly spirit and rescuing folk in distress was rather an expensive business, it appeared. If anything happened to Carin or to Keefe, would the rescue of the Panthers have been worth it? It was not a pleasant question to dwell upon, and Azalea tried not to think of the answer.
She was not sure whether she slept or not. The wall between sleeping and waking was transparent, like glass, and she could see through it. So it was a relief when morning came and she could get out of bed. She was stiff and half sick, but when she had taken her cold bath in the little dressing room they had contrived inthe shed, and had got into her clean clothes, she began to feel better. Carin tried in vain to shake her sleepiness off, but she was so wan and worn-looking that Azalea sternly commanded her to keep her bed. In the front room Miss Zillah slept wearily in the arm chair, and Keefe, his eyes wide open, lay watching her. He held up his finger for silence as Azalea drew near, and she slipped out again, comforted at his appearance, to get the breakfast.
In the midst of it, she saw some one coming down the path. It was Paralee, swinging along with her great stride. She still wore her hideous, outgrown, ragged dress, but for all that she looked changed from what she had been. Her hair was smoothly combed, her face properly washed, and there was hope in her eye and decision in her step.
Azalea slipped out of the door to speak to her.
“How be you all?” she asked.
Azalea told her, hastily.
“Ain’t that a pity, now?” sighed Paralee. “I knew that boy wasn’t peart enough for such a long tug. I wanted him to let me carry pa part of the way, but he wouldn’t hear to it. He’s jest beat out; that’s what ails him. Lying quietis the best thing he can do, I reckon.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Azalea anxiously. “And, oh, Paralee, how ever am I to get over to school to-day? I’m so stiff I can hardly move; and there’s so much to be done here at the house that I don’t believe I ought to leave.”
“Ain’t it a pity,” said Paralee, kicking viciously at a stone, “that I ain’t got my eddication yet! I would jest love to do that thar teaching for you-all.”
“I wish to goodness you could,” sighed Azalea fervently. “But you seem to be the only person around here who even wants to do such a thing—”
She broke off her sentence suddenly, remembering that she had heard Mr. Rowantree say that teaching was the one thing in the way of work that he actually enjoyed. She told Paralee.
“He’d do it,” she cried, “if only I had some way of getting word to him. It seems such a pity to break up school just when we’re getting it so nicely started, doesn’t it? And this is little Skully Simms’ first day, too! I couldn’t really answer for what might happen if he got there and met the Coulters and their friends face to face.”
“Oh, that thar Bud Coulter’ll keep his word about not tetching the little cuss,” said Paralee placidly. (She was a Coulter in her sympathies.) “But I’ll tell you what, Miss Azalea, you jest say the word and I’ll run shortcuts over to the Rowantrees and tell them what’s doing.”
“Oh, will you, Paralee? Dare you? Oughtn’t you to be with your father and mother?”
“Nope. They’re all right, I reckon. Mr. Thompson, he’s to take ’em down to the afternoon train. Pa ain’t looking very peart, but it warn’t to be expected that he would. Ma acts like she was scared to death, but Mis’ McEvoy’s fixing her out in proper clothes. Mr. McEvoy, he’s gone down to Bee Tree to do some telegraphing about the hospital pa’s to go in. My, ain’t they rich!”
“Rich!” cried Azalea aghast. “Who?”
“Oh, the McEvoys and Mr. Thompson.”
“Rich!” repeated Azalea. But the words died on her lips. So Paralee thought the McEvoys in their two-roomed cabin, and good old Haystack with his fiddle, rich! She only said:
“Have you had breakfast, Paralee?”
The girl shook her head.
“Come in then. Things are cooked now, and you can eat and then run to Rowantree’s. But youareobliging, Paralee!”
Paralee looked at her with something akin to impatience.
“Say,” she said deep in her throat, “don’t you thank me for nothing, you hear? If I was to crawl on my hands and knees around this here mountain, it wouldn’t even up with what you’re doing for me. Why, Miss Azalea, I thought I’d go crazy thinking about my pa and ma in that thar place—plumb crazy, that’s what I thought I’d go. Ma laid it up against Pete for running away. I tell you, he had to. It got so awful he just had to.”
“I suppose he did,” said Azalea sympathetically. She knew very well—for she was still a child—that there are troubles so dark and hopeless that children cannot endure them.
A few moments later, standing by the door, she saw Paralee striding along the old, overgrown road that ran toward Rowantree Hall.
She had confidence, somehow, that Mr. Rowantree would not fail her. Indolent he might be, odd and proud and vexatious he undeniably was, yet he had a reverence for the seekingmind, and she felt he would not let these mountain children ask in vain.
She was quite right. An hour before school time she saw him mounted on a sorry nag, which he rode magnificently and as if it were the most dashing of horse flesh, coming toward her door. He dismounted with a splendid gesture, and riding crop in hand, came forward toward the Oriole’s Nest. By this time Aunt Zillah was sleeping properly in her bed, and Keefe, wide-eyed and restless, lay on the sofa with instructions neither to move nor talk. So Azalea met Mr. Rowantree outside the door and hurriedly told him all the story of the past two days. As he stood there on the little porch, he, being tall, could look well over her head at the figure of Keefe lying stretched upon the sofa. It was a sight to make him sorry, but not one, it would seem, to hold him fascinated. Yet he gazed and gazed; then, trying to look away, looked in again.
“Who is it that boy looks like, Miss Azalea?” he asked. “Somebody—”
“I know,” replied Azalea under her breath. “Somebody—but who?”
They could not decide, and let it pass. Azaleawent over to the schoolhouse with Mr. Rowantree and introduced the pupils to him, and gave him an idea of what was to be studied for the day. Mr. Rowantree looked somewhat out of place in the little schoolhouse, to tell the truth; he was so tall, so fine, so altogether magnificent with his reddish brown hair and whiskers and his snowy suit of frayed linen. The children seemed rather awed by him, but Azalea noticed that little Skully Simms kept close to him, preferring him, with all his strangeness, to the Coulters, although the warlike Bud had given bond for good behavior.
When she got back home, the house was very still. Carin was lying in the hammock asleep. There were circles under her eyes, and the lovely wild rose bloom was gone from her cheek.
“I must take better care of her,” thought Azalea for the twentieth time, stealing past her into the house. Aunt Zillah was giving Keefe some milk, and treating him as gently as if he were glass and might break.
“Remember,” she said as she left the room, “he’s not to talk. Two or three days of perfect rest will, in my opinion, make him all right. It isn’t anything unusual for a young man to overstrainhis heart. He might have done it in school athletics and then he wouldn’t have been a hero at all. Mr. Thompson was looking for you, Zalie. He starts in a short time for Bee Tree, so that Mr. Panther may have a little rest between his wagon ride and his train journey. Mr. Thompson is going with him straight to the hospital. Carin gave him the money—except for a little—a very little—addition which I made. So now, all is well again, or on the way to be well, and you must go and lie down. Take a glass of milk first and sleep as long as you can. I’m going out to see to the chickens. They’ve been sadly neglected, poor things.”
Azalea stood in the cool, tidy little room vaguely regarding the lad on the sofa. He looked amazingly long as he lay stretched out, all relaxed and pallid like that. The “sad-glad” look which Azalea so often had noticed on his face, was there now. He held out his hand for her to come nearer and when she was close enough he whispered:
“I oughtn’t to be staying here, Miss Azalea. It’s making trouble I am for Miss Pace and the rest of you. Anyway, it’s not fitting for me tobe here. Isn’t this a sort of nunnery?” He smiled in his sidelong, whimsical fashion. “If my tent was to be fixed up right I could wait on myself well enough, and Mr. McEvoy could be bringing me over a drop of soup now and then or a pail of milk.”
Azalea made no protest, for she knew how he felt. She would have felt the same way in his place.
“We love to have you here,” she said softly. “We truly love it. And it wouldn’t be safe yet for you to go to your tent. But I was thinking—”
“Yes?”
“How would it be if you went to Rowantree Hall, and got some one—Bud Coulter, or some one like that—to wait on you?”
To Azalea’s surprise he looked up with eagerness in the eyes that a moment before had been so lackluster.
“Oh, I wonder if itcouldbe arranged,” he said. “I should like that. I can’t tell why, but I should like it more than anything. Miss Azalea, will you see if it can be done? I’m terribly tired. I—I should like beyond words to go there.”
A sharp little grip of jealousy that he should prefer Rowantree Hall to the Oriole’s Nest had Azalea by the throat and kept her from answering. But she was ashamed of that pang even while she suffered from it, and nodding reassuringly, she went into the kitchen to attend to the neglected duties there.
Meantime, Mr. Rowantree (who loved teaching) was having his experiences. He had been in the habit of instructing his own children, who, from early infancy had been taught to listen and to learn. Indeed, there was nothing they would rather do. They knew almost all of the great stories for children that have been written by the different peoples of the world, and they were so used to having their father speak partly in English, partly in Latin and partly in French, that they did not mind that at all. Very likely he may have ventured to throw in a little German or Italian now and then—he certainly could have done so if he wished. Then, too, he had taught them their notes in the music book; and he had made figures seem like a game to them. Really, he had done little else since they were born but train them and teach them, and their minds answered to his as the strings of a harp respond to a piano.
Imagine then, his feelings, when he was left alone to deal with the twenty-one pupils—including Mrs. McIntosh—of the Ravenel school. He tried his best to realize how little they knew, but he really could not do it. He had begun with Skully Simms because Azalea had particularly begged him to look after the boy, owing to the peculiar circumstances under which he had come to school, and he set him a little reading lesson to con. Then he turned to Mrs. McIntosh, whose eagerness to learn, grown woman as she was, seemed to him very touching. But he was interrupted by Skully, who in a high-pitched voice and a wild singsong something like that used by the traveling preachers at a camp meeting, was going on:
“T-h-e, the, c-a-t, cat, s-a-w, saw, a r-a-t, rat—”
“What do you mean by that noise, sir?” thundered Mr. Rowantree. “Can’t you study to yourself?”
Skully looked terribly embarrassed and buried his scarlet face down behind his book. Mr. Rowantree regarded him something as a king looks at a cat—a stray, wayside cat—and resumed his instruction, only to hear a momentlater the wild, high notes of Skully breaking out again.
He turned on the little boy in his most majestic manner.
“Will you have the goodness to tell me—” he began. But he was interrupted by a chorus of explanatory voices.
“He’s been to a blab school, sir,” the other children declared. “He don’t know how to study no other way. Once you’ve got the blab way o’ l’arning, you can’t do no other way.”
Mr. Rowantree grasped the meaning of the statement. He had heard of the “blab schools” where each pupil studied his lesson aloud, often at the top of his lungs. He looked about him expecting to see the Coulter crowd doubled up with scornful mirth. But he saw nothing of the sort. The children there understood the difficulties of Skully. Nay, they firmly believed that when once the blab habit was settled on a person it could not be got rid of. They expected to see the schoolmaster fall into a terrible rage and they naturally looked forward to it with a not altogether innocent glee. But Mr. Rowantree, it seemed, could be a surprising person.
“I beg your pardon,” he said to Skullypolitely. “I didn’t understand. It will be rather bothersome for you to break off the habit of studying aloud, but of course you must, for it puts other people out very much, don’t you see? This morning I will allow you to move your lips as you study, but you must not speak aloud. By to-morrow I shall hope that you can study without even moving your lips.”
“Yessir,” said poor Skully, and he tried as hard as ever he could with his untutored, eager little mind, to do as he should in the school which he so very much wished to attend. But it was hard work, and from time to time his high-pitched singsong voice would break from the whisper to which it was held in leash and would cause Mr. Rowantree to hold up a warning finger. Then, Skully, scarlet-faced and wretched, would try again.
This, however, was not the only excitement of the day. Just before noon the instructor was surprised to see a very long, very thin, very dust-colored man appear in the doorway. It was not only his homespun clothes which appeared dust-colored. His hair and skin, even his eyes, had a faded yellowish hue.
He leaned forward, peering in the roomcuriously, his high, arched nose seeming to smell out what his eyes did not at first discover. Then he shot out his long arm and pointed at little Mrs. McIntosh, where she sat, her worn yet girlish face white with nervousness, and said:
“I want you-all to git out of this.”
For a moment no one spoke. The woman had not arisen. A little look of trembling bravery shone in her eyes. She seemed to be seeking for some words in which to express her thoughts and not finding them.
“You hear?” cried the man. “You-all git out of that thar seat and come to home whar you belong. Thissen ain’t no place for a married woman. You hear?”
Mr. Rowantree had been stroking his long ruddy mustache with his white hand, waiting, it seemed, for developments. But now he came forward, bearing upon his handsome face a look not unlike that he had turned upon Skully a while before.
“Mrs. McIntosh is your wife, I suppose,” he said in his easy, pleasant way.
“You jest bet she is,” said the man defiantly, “and I want her to home. She’s making me the laughing stock of the hull place.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Rowantree, quite politely. “What are they laughing at? Excuse me if I don’t quite understand.”
“They’re laughing because a married woman leaves her home and sets in school with childer, l’arning like she was five years old.”
“They probably are not aware that men and women of the most learned sort go to universities until they are much older than Mrs. McIntosh. Naturally, they wouldn’t know that, would they? It’s not the kind of thing that folk here on the mountain would be liable to hear about.”
“We know ’nough,” said the man sullenly. “We ken git along without nobody’s help.”
“Now, really,” said Mr. Rowantree in a pleasant tone, “youdon’tget on very well, you know. You couldn’t get on with men beyond the mountains—wouldn’t measure up with them in any way, except perhaps, in the use of a gun. And that’s because you don’t know the things your excellent wife is trying to learn. She already knows her letters, writes her name, and is beginning to read books. Of course that puts her quite a way ahead of you, Mr. McIntosh.”
Mr. Rowantree still stroked his mustache with a white hand and smiled.
“I don’t allow no woman belonging to me to know more than I know,” said Mr. McIntosh in what was meant to be a very manly manner. “What knowing thar is around our house is for me.”
“Too late, too late,” cried Mr. Rowantree, waving his hand magnificently in the air. “You see, she knows more than you this very minute. She’s got the key to the puzzle. You can’t stop her now. She’s got something you haven’t—something that puts her in line with the world beyond these mountains—something that will comfort and amuse her as long as she lives. That’s the wonder about learning; once you get it in your head, nobody can take it away from you.”
Mr. Rowantree regarded the mountaineer with an unflinching eye.
“I reckon I ken take it out o’ her,” said the man, his eyes flashing.
“No, you can’t,” retorted Mr. Rowantree. “You may think you can, but you can’t. She’s got hold of a secret that makes her more powerful than you, though of course your muscles aremuch stronger than hers. Mark this, Mr. McIntosh: No matter how things go with her, she’ll always have a kind of happiness that no one can take away.”
There was a little pause and then Mr. Rowantree went on.
“What’s more, she’s getting something that she’ll not want to keep to herself. That’s the way with folk who learn. They want to pass their knowledge on. She’ll be passing it to her children and they’ll come up in the world. You can’t tell anything abouthowfar they’ll come up. They may get to be the best known and most useful men and women in the state. They say children take from their mother, and your children have a good mother, Mr. McIntosh. She’s a woman with a clear, sensible mind, who wants to lift herself up out of poverty and ignorance. That’s the sort of a wife you have, sir, and I congratulate you.”
The preposterously pleasant Mr. Rowantree advanced upon the glowering McIntosh and held out his hand. In bewilderment the mountaineer took it and received a grip that surprised him.
“Aren’t you proud of her?” demanded Mr. Rowantree. “I know what it is to be proud of a wife, sir. I have one that’s much too good for me, and I realize it. Yes, it’s a great thing for a man to have a wife he can be proud of; one that can do something he can’t.”
“I ken do what she’s doing,” said Mr. McIntosh defiantly. “Thar ain’t no reason that I ken see, why I can’t do it as well as her.”
“I doubt it,” said Mr. Rowantree, shaking his head, “you might—but I doubt it, Mr. McIntosh.”
“I’ll bet you a young shote that I ken!” cried the man.
“I’ll bet you a brace of my ducks that you can’t,” retorted Mr. Rowantree.
“Done!” said Mr. McIntosh. “Give me a book. Set down and tell me about this here l’arning.”
Mr. Rowantree turned to the school.
“A brace of ducks against a young shote that Mr. McIntosh cannot learn to read,” he said gravely. “You are the witnesses. Coulter, kindly bring me a primer from that closet. You will all observe that I play fair. I shall do mybest to teach him, but I frankly confess I have my doubts. He has looked down on book-learning and that is against him.”
Mr. McIntosh made no reply. He had hung his hat on a nail and now he drew his one “gallus” a little tighter as if to prepare for a struggle. At the opposite corner of the room from his wife, he bent over his book. Mr. Rowantree drew a chair up beside him.
“We will give our attention, if you please,” he said in his mellow voice, and in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, “to the first letter of the alphabet.”
Young Mrs. McIntosh bent very low over her page and only the children sitting next saw her shoulders shaking with laughter. The children themselves, determined not to spoil sport, kept their mirth till they should be upon the mountain paths. Then they would have their chuckle there over the way McIntosh “was tricked into l’arnin’.” Now they devoted themselves to their own lessons, and away in the backs of their minds a new idea was growing. Why shouldn’t their own fathers and mothers come to school? Why shouldn’t they all know how to read? It was just as Mr. Rowantree said; they couldn’t“match up” with the men and women beyond the mountains. They were different—terribly different. Oh, yes, proud as they were, these children of the mountain clans, they knew that. Their sisters weren’t like Miss Azalea and Miss Carin—not at all like them. Their fathers weren’t like Mr. Rowantree; and though in some ways Mr. Rowantree was not liked by them, and his disinclination to work was noted even by these folk of easy-going ways, still, he was different. He knew about the great world beyond; about what people were doing in the cities; he was acquainted with what other men thought and wrote, and he could talk in a wonderful way. Just see how he had come it over McIntosh, and taken the “meanness” out of him!
It was the red-headed boy, Dibblee Sikes, the most sociable child in the school, who put into words the thing that had been stirring in the children’s minds. He came up to Mr. Rowantree at the nooning.
“Please, sir,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about something.”
“You look as if you had,” said Mr. Rowantree cordially. “Well, I always count it apleasant day when I have a new idea. What have you thought of, Sikes?”
“Why, seeing Mrs. McIntosh take up with books, sir, and Mr. McIntosh set down to beat her out in learning, made me think of having a school for the grown folks. They need it just as much as us young-uns.”
“They certainly do, Sikes, and do you know, the same notion has been in my head ever since McIntosh joined us? Just look at him, will you? He’s sitting over there on the ground, studying like a good fellow. Can’t even stop to eat.”
“Maybe he ain’t got nothingtoeat, seeing he didn’t count on staying when he come.” Sikes grinned at his instructor, and Mr. Rowantree returned the smile, accompanying it with a gentle wink of the left eye.
“Yes, his wife offered him half of her luncheon, though she didn’t have much.”
“Then I reckon he’s eating with one hand and studying with the other,” said Dibblee blithely. “But how about that school, Mr. Rowantree?”
“Well, I suppose it would be impossible for most of them to come in the daytime. Theyhave to attend to their work, don’t they?” Mr. Rowantree asked the question rather vaguely. It was a subject about which he was not very well informed.
Dibblee nodded. “Sure they do,” he said in the language he had picked up from some “tourist” boys at Bee Tree.
“What we need here, then, is a night school. Everything could be made safe in the homes, the big children could be set to look after the little ones, and then the fathers and mothers could come here. What do you think of that, Sikes?”
“It would be a mighty good thing, Mr. Rowantree, but there’s one thing stands in the way.” Dibblee wore a “studyin’” look which sat oddly on his round, smiling face.
“And what is that, pray?”
“Well, you see, half the time it’s darker than a hat on the roads, with the trees growing over them and all. Some folks around here ain’t even got lanterns, and anyway, if they had, they wouldn’t want to go out such pitch black nights.”
“Then they could come on moonlight nights,” cried Mr. Rowantree triumphantly. “We’llhave a moonlight school, Sikes. Moonlight will be a sign and token that school has taken up. What do you say to that?”
“I say it’s just the very thing,” cried Dibblee Sikes. “Then my ma can come, can’t she? Why, she’s jest as knowing as she can be—keeps me laughing at her purty near all the time I’m home. She’s got more rules for cooking than anybody hereabouts, and she can remember the greatest songs—about fifty verses long, some of them be—about things that has happened in this here country. But she carries it all in her head. She can’t read, jest because she ain’t been taught. If she could read she’d be the smartest woman anywhere, almost.”
Mr. Rowantree was a man with his own faults, but for every fault he had a virtue, and now his eyes were alight like the boy’s.
“Right you are, Sikes,” he said. “And we’ll teach her. A moonlight school we shall have, and with the permission of Miss Carson and her friend, I will teach it. I’ve been a happy man, Sikes, but I haven’t been a particularly useful one. So now I’ll surprise myself by turning over a new leaf. I’m going to be useful, if teaching my neighbors what I know is—”
“Oh, Mr. Rowantree,” interrupted the boy, “I wisht school was over so I could run home and tell my ma. I know she’ll want to come, and she’ll make other folks want to come, too. You’d be real surprised the way my ma can get folks to do things.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Mr. Rowantree; “not if she’s like you, Sikes. You can get folk to do things, too. You’ve got me to take a job, and by Jove, I didn’t know it was in me to do such a thing.”
The laziest man in the community smiled at the red-headed boy, and the boy grinned back, and in doing so revealed three vacancies in the two rows of teeth. It was “tooth-dropping” time with him, and he was not beautiful.
The afternoon, it must be confessed, seemed rather tedious to Mr. Rowantree. He wondered where Azalea and Carin had found their patience. Nay, it took something more than patience to sow the seeds of knowledge in these uncultivated minds. Yet he had to admit, that though uncultivated, they were not rocky and sterile soil. On the contrary, beneath all their shyness, the children were wild to learn. Paralee was, of course, not present that day, so hemissed the pleasure of instructing the one pupil who treated books as if they were food and she a starveling.
One last odd incident closed the day of strange experiences for this new teacher. In spite of his utmost efforts, poor Skully had broken out every once in a while with his “blabbing.” The children, rather strained and excited by the presence of their very learned instructor, finally “got the giggles” after the fashion of tired and nervous school children the world over. Even the gentle Mrs. McIntosh could not keep from a foolish “snicker” now and then as the wild cadences of Skully’s voice broke on the air and were choked back by a grimy hand clapped across his mouth. The poor little “blab” boy was covered with confusion, and finally, in despair, dropped his towseled head upon his arm and softly wept.
The children, ashamed and sorry, did the very thing they did not want to do, and giggled all the more. And at that, up rose Bud Coulter, the hereditary enemy of little Skully.
“Look a-here, you-all,” he said defiantly. “I said that there kid should come to school and no harm should be done him. What I say Imean. Nobody but a Coulter ken take the stuffing out of a Simms, and this here Coulter is going to see that this here Simms is give a chanct.”
“Go home, Skully, my lad,” said Mr. Rowantree kindly. “It’s been a hard day for you, but you’ve done wonders. Practice studying to yourself awhile this evening, and be here to-morrow morning with the rest. You’ll come out ahead. Miss Azalea was very happy that you were to be in her school. You see, she and Miss Carin have given up a good deal to come up here to help you young folk along, and they want everybody in the country round about to get some good out of the school. They want you to make their sacrifice and hard work worth while. So you’ll come to-morrow, won’t you, son?”
Skully lifted a tear-stained face and looked at the teacher with weary eyes.
“You bet, sir,” he said sadly.
“And please be so good as to run over to Miss Azalea’s house to see how they are getting on there, and bring me back word.”
Skully cast a look of gratitude at the man who was making his escape easy, and finding his batteredcorn husk hat, fled from the school.
Incredibly soon he was back again.
“Miss Zalie says for you to come over to the house soon as ever school closes, sir,” Skully reported. “She says to tell you Mis’ Rowantree is there and Mr. Keefe is mighty poorly, and Mis’ Rowantree wants to take him home with her.”
An hour later when school closed, the teacher found Skully sitting on a log, book in hand, studying with one finger acting as monitor to his lips.
The children pretended not to notice and slipped away after their fashion down the mountain paths. Mrs. McIntosh walked with her little daughter, but while Mr. Rowantree watched, he saw McIntosh stride forward, throw his little girl pick-a-back over his shoulder, and lope down the trail behind his wife.
Keefe O’Connor had slept for hours, heavily, and Miss Zillah, stealing in every few minutes to look at him, was not well satisfied.
“I’d give anything if we had a good doctor at hand,” she said to the girls. “Rest is a fine thing, of course, but it isn’t always enough. Keefe seems badly in need of stimulation. I don’t believe his heart would have been strained like that, great as the exertion of carrying poor Mr. Panther was, if he hadn’t been run down. Probably he hasn’t been having half enough to eat, for one thing. Cooking for himself the way he has is a bad thing. We ought to have had him in here with us oftener. I blame myself very much. But I hesitated to act, knowing so little of him and being responsible for you two girls.”
In course of time Mrs. McEvoy came over, and she, too, tiptoed into the room to look at the sleeping youth.
“I’ve got medicine for almost everything that can ail a body,” she said when she had joined the others on the porch, “but the trouble is, I don’t know whatisthe matter with him. He seems clean beat out. Now, if only Mrs. Rowantree was here she might be able to give us some notion of what to do. She reads doctor books so that she can care for her children.”
Azalea snatched at the idea.
“Let’s do have Mrs. Rowantree come,” she said. “Now that Mrs. McEvoy speaks of it, I realize that I’ve been wanting Mary Cecily Rowantree all day.”
“What a queer girl you are, Azalea,” smiled Carin. “Every little while you put on a mysterious look and say something eerie, as if you had been talking with spooks.”
“I’m not one bit spooky, Carin, and you know it,” said Azalea rather indignantly, “but now and then I do have feelings—” she did not try to finish her sentence, but stared before her.
“That’s what I meant,” retorted Carin. “You have feelings! And you look as if you did.”
“We are all mysteriously moved to do certain things,” said the gentle Miss Zillah, who didnot like her girls even to make a pretense of teasing each other. “I myself would like to have Mrs. Rowantree here. She knew Keefe before we did, and she is of the same nationality, and so possibly might have some peculiar sympathy with him. I also think we should send for a physician.”
“There doesn’t seem to be any use in sending for physicians to come up here,” Carin put in. “Just think how hard I tried to get one for Mr. Panther. Let’s have Mrs. Rowantree over by all means.”
So Miles McEvoy, a much busier man these days than he had been for years before, undertook to go for Mrs. Rowantree, though he was only just back from carrying Haystack Thompson and Mr. and Mrs. Panther to the station.
Carin decided to walk down the road a way to meet the wagon bringing Mary Cecily Rowantree; and Miss Zillah, seeing the prospect of another guest, went into the kitchen to stir up a cake and compound a custard. But Azalea did not move. She sat near the door and from time to time looked in at the delicate face of the sleeping youth. It appeared almost transparent as he lay there, his eyes closed andyet not quite closed, his lips trembling a little from the fluttering of his over-taxed heart.
“Oh, I don’t want anything to happen to him,” her heart cried within her. “How sunny and brave he is—and yet how sad, in that strange quiet way. We know him, and yet we don’t know him. If he should die, we wouldn’t be able to send word to any of his friends, for we haven’t an idea who they are. But of course he mustn’t die. There’s no reason why he should when he’s so young and all. And yet—”
The boy opened his eyes drowsily and looked about him. At first he failed to remember where he was, and half-raised himself on his elbow. Then he sank back, white and trembling. Azalea poured a glass of water from the jar they kept on the window sill, and hastening to him, lifted his head and gave him the cool drink.
Keefe smiled gratefully.
“You’re good,” he said simply. Then, after a pause: “Sit down, please.”
Azalea took a low mountain chair and brought it near, so that she could face him. That mysterious feeling which had been hanging over her all day, whispering to her that somethingstrange was about to happen, deepened curiously. Little chills ran lightly over her frame and she had to close her hands to keep her fingers from twitching.
“It must seem particularly silly to you that a fellow can’t do a little job like the one I did yesterday without going to pieces over it,” Keefe began. “But I don’t believe I’ve ever been very strong. I have color in my face, and that rather fools people. It fools me too, and makes me think I’m of more account than I am.”
“It was a terribly hard piece of work you did yesterday,” replied Azalea softly. “But perfect rest will make you all right, Aunt Zillah thinks. If I were you, I wouldn’t talk, boy. Aunt Zillah says you’re not to move a finger, and I’m sure that means you’re not to move your tongue either.”
Keefe shook his head.
“Never mind what anybody wants, Azalea. I’ve something to tell you and I’m going to do it now.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t, Keefe, really—”
Keefe lifted a languid hand, but it had authority in it.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time,” he said. “You know, Zalie, if I wait—it may possibly be too late.”
Keefe lifted a languid hand. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time,” he said
“No, no, Keefe, I won’t have you—”
“Keep still, please. I’m going to tell you now, quickly, before anybody comes.”
“Go on then. Speak quietly. I’ll listen.”
She realized suddenly that it was kinder and wiser to let him have his way. So she folded her hands in her lap, and sat as still as a stone—no, as still as a rosebush, for the wind rustled her pale green frock, and lifted the tendrils of her brown hair.
“Zalie,” he began, his voice at once uncertain yet determined, “I told you, didn’t I, that I knew neither my name nor my kin? I am a waif, but not because I was not loved. That is what is queer and sad about it all. That is what keeps me always looking and hoping that some day—” he broke off and rested for a minute. “I must begin at the beginning,” he recommenced. “I must tell you what I remember. There was a pleasant home, somewhere, with a low window from which I could look down the street if I stood on my toes. There was a father, a mother, and a sister who played with me, andwhom I adored. Matey was what I called her. That little name is all I have to remember her by. I cannot even tell you my own last name. I was ‘Little Brother.’ When any of the three said it, I was happy. ‘Little Brother!’ It is the thing I have loved best in all the memories—the way they said that. But father went away. There were darkened windows, a long black box, and all the house was changed. It was as terrible as if the sun had gone out of heaven. I was so lonely and sad it seemed as if I would die, and I remember always clinging to black skirts—sometimes my mother’s, sometimes my Matey’s.”
He paused for a moment longer, his dark eyes darkening yet more, and throwing into relief the pallor of his face. Azalea was still immovable, but the look of her face changed. A warm, wild surmise banished something of the anxiety in it and flushed it with excitement.
“Then next, I remember the ship. Mother and Matey and I were on it with hundreds and hundreds of others, all crowded together sickeningly. Mother was always in her bed, and Matey and I sat together, creeping out of people’s way, wrapped in an old plaid shawl.I would go to sleep beneath the shawl; and under the shelter of it she told me stories, while the wind flapped it against us. Then there came a day when—when my mother would not answer either Matey or myself. I heard Matey screaming and I screamed with her, and some women were good to us. One kept kissing me, though I didn’t want to be kissed. After that, I saw no more of mother. I know now they must have dropped her in the sea, but of course they told me nothing of that. There were only Matey and me crouching out of the wind beneath that old shawl, Matey crying in my hair and on my face, and trying to laugh and play with me.”
He saw the changed look on Azalea’s face and could not quite make it out.
“So then, the landing day came, and sister and I were pushed down the gangplank with the others. I remember falling and losing hold of her hand, and getting up and catching at her skirt again. At least I thought it was her skirt. I ran down the wharf as fast as I could, holding on to that dress. Then I remember some one shrieking: ‘It ain’t Jimmy at all! It’s another boy altogether!’ And with that a woman seizedme by the arm and shook me till I screamed. ‘Who air you that’s takin’ the place of me Jimmy?’ she asked.
“I have forgotten all the other words of that day, but I remember those. The people kept pouring and pouring along, and I think the woman left me to look for her Jimmy. So after a while I found myself in the street with the people and the carts and carriages dashing every way about me. I ran about like a crazy boy, too frightened to ask questions. Finally a man who was going along with a tin pail on his arm, stopped and picked me up. He tried to talk to me, but I was too frantic to listen, and anyway, I was only a baby. He took me to a poor home, a dark place with two rooms or maybe three, and there was a woman there who was good to me. I used to hear the two of them talking and saying that whoever I belonged to couldn’t have cared much for me or they’d have been looking for me. But afterward, I came to believe that they were not very anxious to have my people find me. They were homesick folk with no little ones, and they thought I was one of a great brood and would not be missed. So I lived with them, Azalea, till I was seven years of age.”
“Till you were seven!” breathed Azalea, leaning forward a little now. “And then, Keefe?”
“And then good Bridget O’Connor, who had, in her way, been a mother to me, died. Mike O’Connor was fond of me, too, but how could he be looking after me, and himself away every day working on the street? Besides, said he to me: ‘You be different from us O’Connors, boy. It would be a shame to tie you down all your life to a man like me. Bridget knew it, God save her, but she wanted the sound of your voice in the house. I’ll put you with the good Sisters, and they’ll find a new fayther and mother for ye.’ So he did. He put me in an orphan asylum, and there I lived for three months, and at the end of that time I was taken by another lonely woman who wanted a child in her house.”