CHAPTER IVDriven to Endless Toil
Inlife’s glad morning a mother-bird warbled forth her song of praise. The soft and tender notes that she sang were sweet, and their melody told a story of love. The burden of her song today was home, and she worked as she sang. Day after day she flew about, toiling and building at the nest until it seemed that her weary wings would fail to bear her up. The fatigues and the torrid heat of the day were trying, but they failed to rob her of her song. But one bright day the task was done. Then she lifted her tiny head into the blue above and when the little birdlings came, how the mother-heart beat with rapture! Day after day, with unfailing strength, she made trip after trip on weary wings to feed the birdlings in the nest. Each time she returned and dropped a worm into a hungry mouth, only to be off again in quest of food for another. But when all are fed she takes her place upon the bough above and begins anew her song.
She is singing her song today to the birdlings in the nest. She is telling them that there is much sweetness in life, and that they must have confidence. Aye, she is telling them of that sad day when mother’s wings shall no longer bear her up—the day that each of them shall climb upon the rim of the old home-nest, stretch his little, tender wings, and sail away over life’s sea upon his own resources.
The long summer through, happiness permeates the nest. The mother-bird sang, she fed, she cooed and the birdlings grew stronger. But one sad day, “the snare of the fowler” laid low the mother-bird and destroyed the nest.
Not unlike the birds is too often the truth with human life. The morning of life comes to us blooming with glad expectations of youth. Then, as we grow into young manhood and young womanhood, we see no cloud upon the sky, no worm in the bud of promise, no anticipated barriers to the full enjoyment of human bliss. But, alas! if we could lift the veil that hides the future from our eyes the pleasant dreams of youth would pale away before stern realities. Sooner or later we had best learn that which another has well said, that—“life is earnest. That it is fraught with great peril as well as with grand and noble victories. That life is not an idle promenade through fragrant flower gardens, but it is a stern pilgrimage—a battle and a march.” How sweet it is to have father’s and mother’s strong arms about us to protect and bear us up! But one day the father’s strong arm shall lose its strength, crumble and fall; the home-nest is broken, and we shall go out into life upon our own responsibilities and resources to fight the battles of life alone.
How little the world knows of the adverse conditions under which a large per cent. of the children of our own Appalachian region must struggle in their earlier and tender years. Too often it falls to their lot to be set adrift—like the birdling from a broken nest.
The lot of Gena Filson, the only daughter of Lucky Joe, was a hard one. Lucky Joe Filson had not been much of a father to little Gena. Nevertheless, he had always been kind to her, even tender in his uncouthway. But now her father and mother were both sleeping under the chestnut trees on the hill overlooking Blood Camp, and her friends were few indeed.
But true to his promise, Paul Waffington journeyed back to the hills and sought her mountain home. He turned from the deserted home and went into the village and learned the truth. The villagers told him of the mother’s death and the subsequent going away of the brothers to the far west, in quest of fortune and fame, leaving behind them the baby of the nest, Gena, aged thirteen, bound under the roof of old Jase Dillenburger, to wear her little body away over the rocks and hills, toiling for him. He met her at the Sunday-school on the following Sunday, and went with her to the cabin on the mountainside, and was introduced to her savage foster-father, old Jase. After a brief visit, he presented the promised book, “Captain January,” and departed.
“Good-bye,” he said to Jase Dillenburger. “A fine little soul is your adopted daughter, and I know that you appreciate your position to her. Good-bye, Gena. Strive to always keep yourself as sweet as you now are, and I am sure that it will bring happiness to all. Good-bye.”
The long summer months had passed away since he who had promised to befriend her had taken his departure from the cabin on the mountain, and the succeeding days brought her only toil and abuse. Through the heat of the summer she had been compelled to go to the field with the others, and work with the hoe. Then, when summer was over, there were scores of unfinished tasks in the cabin waiting for her tired hands.
She sits tonight in the cabin by the side of old Jase’s portly wife, darning her part of the huge pile of yarn socks that lay before them. The light by which she works is not an electric burner,—not even the common brass lamp of years ago, but rather a faint light, comingfrom the end of a strip of cloth immersed in a spoonful of grease. Even though the light is faint and does flicker, the golden head looks shapely and the neck and eyes are beautiful. Long before ten o’clock the short little back grows tired, and the big, blue eyes grow heavy, but she works on with never an outward sign of fatigue. Whenever the last sock is darned, then, perhaps, she will be allowed to go to her hard bed. But her tired limbs are hardly relaxed in sleep until the thundering voice of old Jase commands her to get up.
“Git up, an’ git about! The clock’s struck four an’ no fires built, nor nothin’ done. You build the big fire fust, ’fore you go to the cookin’! An’ mind thet you put the back log on right, too, or I’ll tan you up when I git up. Move about now!” And thus, being driven by a hard and uncompromising hand through such drudgery as this, the tender and delicate hands were becoming thin and coarse, the pretty little form twisted and dwarfed, and the rosy-cheeked face growing pale and pinched.
Gena Filson had good blood in her veins. Joseph Filson had been born in the mountains and his father before him. But old Granny Green knew all the facts of how it came about, that Joseph Filson brought his wife into the mountains from the Pennsylvania settlements in those early days. Before Granny Green died, she had taken the Allisons into her confidence and told them the true story of the mother of Gena Filson. When Joseph Filson was young, a drover had employed him as a helper with the cattle on the long trips that were made to the markets of Pennsylvania. In the third year of Joseph Filson’s drovership, he brought back with him into the mountains his young bride, “a teacher from the Pennsylvania settlements,” as he announced to his friends.
For the first few years of her married life the wife of Joseph Filson was happy. Then her life narrowed downand became bound by the mountain fastnesses, but never a murmur from her. Years went by and Joseph yielded to temptation, but she was not too harsh. He went to prison at last, but she bore up under it for the family’s sake. But in the end, grief overcame her, and tenderly she was laid to rest in the chestnut grove along by the side of the mountaineer whose name she bore.
In the bright afternoon sunshine Gena Filson sits in the door of the cabin on the mountainside, and looks off over the thousands of peaks and wonders what will be the end of her. Hard labor is driving the red from her cheeks. She looks at her hands and notes the thinness and the corns in her palms. If she were only away over on the other side of that great peak over there, she thought! Oh, it would seem rest to her! Who lives over there, she knows not. But just to be away, to get away from the hard knocks of old Jase, would be rest to her weary limbs! But the hawk-eye of old Jase was always upon her. He had lately bound her world by the yard fence, which was some thirty feet square, unless she was sent into the field for something, and then always with another. Twice she had asked if she might visit her mother’s grave on a Sunday afternoon, and received all but a flogging for the asking.
“Go to your mammy’s grave? I’ll go ye to somebody’s grave. You let the ded alone. Nobody is goin’ to bother yer mammy’s grave. We got no time to spendin’ on ded uns. It’s hard for us to keep the livin’ agoin’. My mammy never had a flower on her grave, an’ I haint seed it in twenty year’. Your mammy warn’t no better than my mammy wuz, if she did come frum Pinsilvaney. I’m your boss now. You git about pullin’ weeds down thar in the garden or sumthin’. An’ ef I hear of ye aspeakin’ of sich foolin’ agin, I’m agoin’ to tan ye up,” and witha shake of his huge fist old Jase turned and went down the mountainside.
After the old mountaineer had gone, she ventured to go out to the yard fence and look down the mountainside towards the village of Blood Camp. It was now late in the Sunday afternoon, and she saw the people returning to their homes from the little Sunday-school that Paul Waffington had organized two years before. Her young heart was full now at the sight of the Sunday-school scholars. How she longed to be with them. True, old Jase had permitted her to attend for a time. But then she came home one day with Paul Waffington with her, and the old man had been miserably persecuted for an hour or more by the presence of a good man in his house. Since that time old Jase had told her that it was best for her to stay near him, and that he himself didn’t go to “sich doing’s as Sunday-skules.”
She stood and looked down upon the dispersing scholars and wondered why she could not be as free as they. Why had she so few friends? Why had her two brothers deserted her so? Why had they never written to her? Perhaps they did, but the letters never reached her.
“But Mr. Waffington said that he would come back to see me again, and that he would be my friend,” she finally said aloud. She sighed as she looked away out over the domes and peaks of the Blue Ridge, saw the long golden finger of the setting sun kiss the hills good-night, turned and went into the cabin.
That night Gena Filson went to her hard bed with her heart full—it was heavy. She well knew that the morning would bring her nothing less than another solid week of hard and continuous toil, and, oh, could she endure it! As she lay in her dark corner and thought of her place in the world, and of her hard master, old Jase, she wishedthat she might be dead, and wondered, if such were the case, if he would allow her the privilege of being buried by the side of her dear mother under the chestnut tree.
“Nobody thinks of me! Nobody cares for me! Nobody loves me!” she cried, in the late hours of the night. Then turning on her hard bed she fell asleep to dream. She dreamed of a beautiful country where people are gentle and kind, where everyone is friendly and just, and where little mountain girls never grow hungry or cold. And as she went forward in that land, Paul Waffington was the first to meet her. And together they went into the fields and wove garlands and coverlets of daisies, and stood at her mother’s grave, and Paul Waffington bared his head and laid the coverlet on the mound and tucked it with all but a feminine hand.
What a pity that our Gena could not always dream on and never awake to her hard material surroundings! But perish the thought; and let her dream on in peace now, for the morning will dawn, aye, too soon.