II
IT was the end of another day when Caleb Trench and his dog, Shot, came slowly down the long white road from Paradise Ridge. It is a shell road, exceeding white and hard, and below it, at flood-tide, the river meadows lie half submerged; it turns the corner below the old mill and passes directly through the center of Eshcol to the city. Behind the mill, the feathery green of spring clouded the low hills in a mist of buds and leafage. The slender stem of a silver birch showed keen against a group of red cedars. A giant pine thrust its height above its fellows, its top stripped by lightning and hung with a squirrel’s nest.
Trench and his dog, a rough yellow outcast that he had adopted, were approaching the outskirts of Eshcol. Here and there was a farmhouse, but the wayside was lonely, and he heard only the crows in the tree-tops. It was past five o’clock and the air was sweet. He smelt the freshly turned earth in the fields where the robins were hunting for grubs. Beyond the river the woods were drifted white with wild cucumber. Yonder, in the corner of a gray old fence, huddled some of Aaron Todd’s sheep. The keen atmosphere was mellowing at the far horizon to moltengold; across it a drifting flight of swallows was sharply etched, an eddying maelstrom of graceful wings.
In the middle of the road Caleb Trench was suddenly aware of a small figure, which might have been three years old, chubby and apparently sexless, for it was clad in a girl’s petticoats and a boy’s jacket, its face round and smeared with jelly.
“Sammy,� said Trench kindly, “how did you get here?�
“Penny,� said Sammy, “wants penny!�
To Sammy the tall man with the homely face and clear gray eyes was a mine of pennies and consequently of illicit candy; the soul of Sammy was greedy as well as his stomach. Trench thrust his hand into his pocket and produced five pennies. Sammy’s dirty little fist closed on them with the grip of the nascent financier.
“Sammy tired,� he sobbed, “wants go to candy man’s!�
Trench stooped good-naturedly and lifted the bundle of indescribable garments; he had carried it before, and the candy man was only a quarter of a mile away. He was raising the child to his shoulder when the growth of pokeberry bushes at the roadside shook and a woman darted out from behind it. She was scarcely more than a girl and pitifully thin and wan. Her garments, too, were sexless; she wore a girl’s short skirt and a man’s waistcoat; a man’s soft felt hat rested on a tangled mass of hair,—the coarse and abundant hair of peasant ancestry. She ran up to him and snatched the child out of his arms.
“You shan’t have him!� she cried passionately; “you shan’t touch him—he’s mine!�
Sammy screamed dismally, clutching his pennies.
“Never mind, Jean,� said Trench quietly. “I know he’s yours.�
“He’s mine!� She was stamping her foot in passion, her thin face crimson, the veins standing out on her forehead. “He’s mine—you may try ter get him, but you won’t—you won’t—you won’t!� she screamed.
The child was frightened now, and clasped both arms around her neck, screaming too.
“I was only offering to carry him to the candy man’s, Jean,� Trench said; “don’t get so excited. I know the child is yours.�
“He’s mine!� she cried again, “mine! That’s my shame, they call it, and preach at me, and try ter take him away. They want ’er steal him, but they shan’t; they shan’t touch him any more’n you shall! He’s mine; God gave him ter me, and I’ll keep him. You can kill me, but you shan’t have him noways!� She was quivering from head to foot, her wild eyes flashing, her face white now with the frenzy that swept away every other thought.
“Hush,� said Trench sternly, “no one wants to steal the child, Jean; it’s only your fancy. Be quiet.�
He spoke with such force that the girl fell back, leaning against the fence, holding the sobbing child tight, her eyes devouring the man’s strong, clean-featuredface. Her clouded mind was searching for memories. She had lost her wits when Sammy was born without a father to claim him. Trench still stood in the middle of the road, and his figure was at once striking and homely. He was above the average height, big-boned and lean, the fineness of his head and the power of his face not less notable because of a certain awkwardness that, at first, disguised the real power of the man, a power so vital that it grew upon you until his personality seemed to stand out in high relief against the commonplace level of humanity. He had the force and vitality of a primitive man.
The girl crouched against the fence, and the two looked at each other. Suddenly she put the child down and, coming cautiously nearer, pointed with one hand, the other clenched against her flat chest.
“I know you,� she whispered, in a strange penetrating voice, “I know you at last—you’re him.�
Trench regarded her a moment in speechless amazement, then the full significance of her words was borne in upon him by the wild rage in her eyes. He knew she was half crazed and saw his peril if this belief became fixed in her mind. Often as he had seen her she had never suggested such a delusion as was then taking root in her demented brain.
“You are mistaken,� he said gently, slowly, persuasively, trying to impress her, as he might a child; “you have forgotten; I only came to Eshcol four years ago. You have not known me two years, Jean; you are thinking of some one else.�
A look of cunning succeeded the fury in her eyes, as she peered at him. “It’s like you ter say it,� she cried triumphantly at last, “it’s like you ter hide. You’re afeard, you were always afeard—coward, coward!�
Trench laid his powerful hand on her shoulder and almost shook her. “Be still,� he said authoritatively, “it is false. You know it’s false. I am not he.�
She wrenched away from him, laughing and crying together. “’Tis him,� she repeated; “I know him by this!� and she suddenly snatched at the plain signet ring that he wore on his left hand.
Trench drew his hand away in anger, his patience exhausted. “Jean,� he said harshly, “you’re mad.�
“No!� she shook her head, still pointing at him, “no—it is you!�
She was pointing, her wild young face rigid, as a carriage came toward them. Trench looked up and met the calm gaze of Colonel Royall and Diana, who occupied the back seat. In front, beside the negro coachman, Jacob Eaton leaned forward and stared rudely at the group in the dust.
“What is the matter, Jacob?� the old man asked, as the carriage passed.
The young one laughed. “The old story, I reckon, Colonel,� he said affably, “begging Diana’s pardon.�
“You needn’t beg my pardon. It was Jean Bartlett, pa,� she added, blushing suddenly.
“Poor girl!� The colonel touched his lips thoughtfully.“By gad, I wish I knew who was the father of her child—I’d make him keep her from starving.�
“You do that, pa,� said Diana quietly.
“I reckon the father’s there now,� said Jacob Eaton, with a slight sneer.
Diana flashed a look at the back of his head which ought to have scorched it. “It is only the shopkeeper at Eshcol,� she said haughtily.
“Are shopkeepers immune, Diana?� asked Jacob Eaton, chuckling.
“I am immune from such conversations,� replied Diana superbly.
Jacob apologized.
Meanwhile, the group by the wayside had drawn nearer together. “I will take your child home, for you are tired,� said Trench sternly, “but I tell you that I do not know your story and you don’t know me. If you accuse me of being that child’s father, you are telling a falsehood. Do you understand what a falsehood is, Jean?�
His face was so stern that the girl cowered.
“No,� she whimpered, “I—I won’t tell, I swore it, I won’t tell his name.�
“Neither will you take mine in vain,� said Caleb Trench, and he lifted the sobbing Sammy.
Cowed, Jean followed, and the strange procession trailed down the white road. Overhead the tall hickories were in flower. The carriage of Colonel Royall had cast dust on Trench’s gray tweed suit and it had powdered Shot’s rough hair. The dogtrailed jealously at his heels, not giving precedence to Jean Bartlett. The girl walked droopingly, and now that the fire of conviction had died out of her face, it was shrunken again, like a thin paper mask from behind which there had flashed, for a moment, a Hallowe’en candle. They began to pass people. Aaron Todd, stout farmer and lumberman, rode by in his wagon and nodded to Trench, staring at the child. Jean he knew. Then came two more farmers, and later a backwoodsman, who greeted Trench as he galloped past on his lean, mud-bespattered horse. Then two women passed on the farther side. They spoke to Trench timidly, for he was a reserved man and they did not know him well, but they drew away their skirts from Jean, who was the Shameful Thing at Paradise Ridge.
Strange thoughts beset Caleb; suddenly the girl’s accusation went home; suppose he had been the father of this child on his arm,—would they pass him and speak, and pass her with skirts drawn aside? God knew. He thought it only too probable, knowing men—and women. He was a just man on occasions, but at heart a passionate one. Inwardly he stormed, outwardly he was calm. The dog trailed behind him; so did the girl, a broken thing, who had just sense enough to feel the women’s eyes. They passed more people. Again Caleb answered salutations, again he heard the girl whimper as if she shrank from a blow.
At her own door, which was her grandmother’s,he set down the child. A shrill voice began screaming. “Is the hussy there? Come in with you, you thing of shame; what d’ye walk in the road for? The Ridge is fair screamin’ with your disgrace, you trollop. Jean, Jean!�
The old woman was childish, but she knew the tale and retained it. There was also a half-foolish brother; it seemed as if, in the making of this luckless family, the usual three pints of wits had been spilled to a half pint and then diluted to go around. Zeb Bartlett came to the door, shambling and dirty, but grinning at the sight of Trench. Sammy ran from him shrieking, for he feared the theft of his spoils. Zeb towered in righteous wrath as Jean appeared.
“Get in, Shameless!� he commanded.
The girl shrank past him sobbing.
“My God!� said Caleb Trench and turned away.
He did not heed an appeal for help to get work that Zeb shouted after him; he was, for the moment, deaf. Before him lay the broad fields and sloping hills, the beauty of earth and sky, drenched in sunset; behind lay a girl’s purgatory. He forgot his anger at her senseless accusation, he forgot the peril of it, in his wrath; he hated injustice. Only the yellow dog followed at his heels and his heart was full of strange thoughts. Five years of isolation and injustice must tell in a man’s life, and the purposes born there in solitude are grim. The great trial that was to divide Eshcol against itself was growing, growing out of the sweet spring twilight, growingbeyond the song of the thrush and the cheep of the woodpecker, growing in the heart of a man.
Meanwhile, Jacob Eaton had called Trench the father of Jean Bartlett’s child, and old Scipio, who drove the colonel’s bays, heard it and told it to Kingdom-Come Carter, who had been butler at Broad Acres for fifty years, and had carried Diana in his arms when she was two weeks old. Kingdom-Come told it to Aunt Charity and Uncle Juniper, coal-black negroes of the cabin, and thus by kitchens and alley-doors the story traveled, as a needle will travel through the body and work its way to the surface. The reputation of a man is but the breath on a servant’s lips, as man himself is compared to grass and the flower of it.