PAUL stood up, threw his arms backward languidly, and stretched himself.
“Goin' to bed?” his father inquired, absent-mindedly.
“No, down to the creek; there was a plenty of cats and eels running last night. Where's my cup of bait?”
“I hain't touched it—I hain't dropped a hook in water for over two years. My hands shake, an' I can't hold a pole steady. The bait's with your tackle, I reckon.”
Paul went to the wagon-shed adjoining the stable, and from the slanting roof took down a pair of long canes, from the tapering ends of which dangled crude, home-twisted lines, to which were attached rusty hooks and bits of hammered lead, and, with the poles on his shoulder and the bait-cup in his hand, he went down the path to the creek near by. He had a subtle fondness for Nature, in any mood or dress, and the mystic landscape to-night appealed to a certain famished longing within him—a sense of an unattainable something which haunted him in his reflective moods. The stars were coming out in the unclouded skies, revealing the black outlines of the mountain, the intervening foot-hills, the level meadows, where the cattle and sheep lay asleep, and over which fireflies were darting and flashing their tiny search-lights. The sultry air held the aroma of new-cut hay, of crushed and dying clover-blossom. The snarl of the tree-frog and the chirp of the cricket were heard close at hand, and in the far distance the doleful howling of a dog came in response to the voice of another, so much farther away that it sounded softer than an echo.
Presently Paul reached a spot on the creek-bank where the creeping forest-fires had burned the bushes away, and where an abrupt curve of the stream formed a swirling eddy, on the surface of which floated a mass of driftwood, leaves, twigs, and pieces of bark. Baiting his hooks, he lowered them into the water, fastening one pole in the earth and holding the other in his hands. He had not long to wait, for soon there was a vigorous jerking and tugging at the pole in his hands.
“That's an eel now!” the sportsman chuckled; “an' I'll land 'im, if he don't wind his tail round a snag and break my line.”
Eels are hard to catch, and this one was seen to be nearly a yard in length when Paul managed to drag it ashore. Even out of water an eel is hard to conquer, for Nature has supplied it with a slimy skin that aids it to evade the strongest human grip. The boy sprang upon his prey and grasped it, but it wriggled from his hands, arms, and knees, and like an animated rubber tube bounded toward the stream.
“Nail 'im, nail 'im!” cried out Ralph Rundel, excitedly, quickening his stride down the path. “Put sand on yore hands! Lemme show you—thar now, you got 'im—hold 'im till I—” But the snakelike thing, held for a moment in Paul's eager arms, was away again. The boy and the man bumped against each other as they sprang after it, and Ralph was fortunate enough to put the heel of his shoe on it's head and grind it into the earth. The dying thing coiled its lithe body round the man's ankle like a boa, and then gradually relaxed.
Now, fully alive to the sport, Paul gave all his attention to rebaiting his hook. “This one raised such a racket he has scared all the rest off,” he muttered, his eyes on his line.
“They'll come back purty soon,” Ralph said, consolingly. He sat down on the sand and began to fill his pipe. His excitement over the eel's capture had lived only a moment. There was a fixed stare in his eyes, a dreamy, contemplative note of weariness in his voice, which was that of a man who had outgrown all earthly interests.
“How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord!”
It was the mellow, sonorous voice of Jeff Warren singing at his home across the fields.
“Humph! He gits a heap o' fun out of that, fust an' last,” Ralph remarked, sardonically, and he shrugged his frail shoulders. “It ain't so much the singin' he loves—if I'm any judge—as what it fetches to his net, as the sayin' is. He is a born lady's man. Jeff knows exactly when an' how to say the things that tickle a woman's fancy. I think—I think yore ma loves to hear 'im talk mighty nigh as well as she loves to hear 'im sing. I don't know”—a slight pause—“I say I don't know, but Ithinkso.”
Paul thought he had a bite, and he raised his hook to see if the bait was intact. Ralph sighed audibly. He embraced his thin knees with his arms, and held the unlighted pipe in his hands. The hook was back in the water; the boy's face was half averted.
“Thar's a good many points about Jeff that women like,” Ralph resumed, in a forced, tentative tone. “He's a strappin', fine-lookin' feller, for one thing; young, strong, an' always gittin' in fights over some'n or other. The impression is out amongst women an' gals that he won't let nobody pass the slightest slur ag'in' one o' the sex in his hearin'. That will take a man a long way in the opinion of females; but all the same, he's a sly devil. He'll do to watch—in my opinion, that is. I've thought some that maybe—well, I don't know that I'd go that fur neither; but a feller like me, for instance, will have odd notions once in a while, especially if he ain't actively engaged an' busy, like I am most o' the time since I've been so porely. I was goin' to say that I didn't know but what I ort to sorter, you know”—Ralph hesitated, and then plunged—“warn yore mother to—to go it sorter slow with Jeff.”
Paul turned his back on the speaker and began to examine the bait on his hook; he shrugged his shoulders sensitively, and even in the vague starlight evinced a certain show of awkwardness. But Ralph was unobservant; his mental pictures were evidently more clear to him than material ones.
“Yore aunt Mandy is right,” Ralph resumed. “She shorely did spoil yore ma for any real responsibility in life. La me! it was the talk of the neighborhood—I mean Mandy's love-affair was. She was just a gal when she took a big fancy to a Yankee soldier that come along in one o' Sherman's regiments. He was to come back after the war was over, but he never did. It mighty nigh killed 'er; but yore ma was then growin' up, and Mandy just seemed to find comfort in pamperin' and indulgin' her. Addie certainly got all that was a-goin'! No gal in the neighborhood had nicer fixin's; she was just like a doll kept in a bandbox. Stacks and stacks o' fellows was after her, me in the bunch, of course. At first it looked like I didn't stand much of a show; but my grandfather died about then an' left me the farm I used to own. I reckon that turned the scale, for the rest o' the fellows didn't own a foot o' land, a stick o' timber, or a head o' stock. I say it turned the scale, but I don't mean that Addie cared much one way or the other. Mandy had it in hand. I begun to see that she sorter held the rest off and throwed me an' Addie together like at every possible chance—laughin' an' jokin' an' takin' a big interest an' tellin' me she was on my side. You see, it was a case o' the real thing with me. From the fust day I ever laid eyes on yore ma, an' heard 'er talk in her babyish way, I couldn't think o' nothin' else. I felt a little squeamish over bein' so much older 'an her; but Mandy laughed good an' hearty, an' said we'd grow together as time passed. Addie kept me in hot water for a long while even after that—looked like she didn't want Mandy to manage for her, an' kicked over the traces some. I remember I had to beg an' beg, an' Mandy argued an' scolded an' nagged till Addie finally consented. But, la me! how a feller's hopes kin fall! Hard times came. I borrowed on my land to keep Addie supplied with nice things, an' my crops went crooked. I lost money in a sawmill, an' finally got to be a land-renter like I am now, low in health an' spirits, an' dependent on you for even my tobacco—tobacco.” Ralph repeated the word, for his voice had become indistinct.
“That's all right,” Paul said, testily. “Go on to bed. Settin' up like this ain't goin' to do you no good.”
“It does me more good'n you think,” Ralph asserted. “I hold in all day long with not a soul to talk to, an' dyin' to say things to somebody. I ain't hardly got started. Thar's a heap more—a heap that I'm afraid you are too young to understand; but you will some day. Yore time will come, too. Yore lady-love will cross yore track, an' you'll see visions in her eyes that never was on land or sea. I look at you sometimes an' think that maybe you will become a great man, an' I'll tell you why. It is because you are sech a hard worker an' stick to a job so steady, and because you've got sech a hot, spicy temper when folks rile you by treatin' you wrong. Folks say thar is some'n in blood, an' I don't want you to think because I'm sech a flat failure that you have to be. Experts in sech matters say that a body is just as apt to copy after far-off kin as that which is close by, and I want to tell you something. It is about the Rundel stock. Three year ago, when I was a witness in a moonshine case at government court, in Atlanta, my expenses was paid, an' I went down, an' while I was in the city a feller called on me at my boardin'-house. He said the paper had printed my name in connection with the case, an' he looked me up because he was interested in everybody by the name o' Rundel. He was writin' a family history for some rich folks that wanted it all down in black an' white to keep for future generations to look at. He was dressed fine, and talked like a presidin' elder or a bishop. He told me, what I never had heard before, that the name ought to be spelled with an A in front—Arundel. He had a short way o' twistin' it that I can't remember. He said thar was several ways o' callin' the name, an' he laughed an' said he met one old backwoods chap in Kentucky that said his was 'Runnels' because his neighbors called 'im that, an' he liked the sound of it. He set for a good hour or more tellin' me about the ups an' downs of folks by the name. He said what made the whole thing so encouragin' was that the majority of 'em was continually on the rise. He'd knowed 'em, he said, to be plumb down an' out for several generations, an' then to pop up an' produce a man of great fame an' power. He had a list o' big guns as long as yore arm. I knowed I was too far gone to benefit by it myself, but I thought about you, an' I felt comforted. I've always remembered with hope an' pride, too, what Silas Tye told me about the tramp phrenologist that examined heads at his shop one day. He said men was payin' the'r quarters an' listenin' to predictions an' hearin' nothin' of any weight; but that the feller kept lookin' at you while you set waitin', an' finally Tye said the feller told the crowd that you had sech a fine head an' eye an' shaped hands an' feet an' ankles, like a blooded hoss, that he would pass on you for nothin'. Tye said you got mad an' went off in a big huff; but the feller stuck to what he'd said. He declared you'd make yore way up in the world as sure as fate, if you wasn't halted by some accident or other.”
Paul saw his line moving forward, his tense hands eagerly clutching his rod, but the swishing cord suddenly became slack on the surface of the water. An impatient oath slipped from his lips.
“Snapped my line right at the sinker!” he cried. “He was a jim-dandy, too, bigger than that one.” He threw the pole with the broken line on the bank and grasped the other. If he had heard the rambling talk of his father it was completely forgotten.
“Folks laugh at me'n you both,” Ralph ran on, a softer cadence in his voice. “They say I've been a mammy to you, a nuss' an' what not. Well, I reckon thar's truth in it. After I found—found that me'n yore ma wasn't the sweethearts I thought we would be, an' you'd come an' looked so little an' red an' helpless in the pore little cradle I made out of a candle-box with wobbly rockers—I say, I reckon then that I did sorter take yore ma's place. She wasn't givin' milk, an' the midwife advised a bottle, and it looked like neither one o' the women would keep it filled an' give it at the right time. I'd go to the field an' try to work, but fearin' you was neglected I'd go to the house an' take you up an' tote you about. It was turnin' things the wrong way, I reckon, but I was a plumb fool about you. Yore mother seemed willin' to shift the job, an' yore aunt was always busy fixin' this or that trick for her to wear. But I ain't complainin'—understand that—I liked it. Yore little warm, soft body used to give me a feelin' no man kin describe. An' I suffered, too. Many a night I got up when you was croupy, an' uncovered the fire an' put on wood an' set an' rocked you, fearin' every wheezy breath you drawed would stop in yore throat. But I got my reward, if reward was deserved, for you gave me the only love that I ever knowed about. Even as a baby you'd cry for me—cry when I left you, an' coo an' chuckle, an' hold out yore little chubby hands whenever I come. As you got older you'd toddle down the field-road to meet me, yore yaller, flaxen head hardly as high as the broom-sedge. I loved to tote you even after you got so big folks said I looked ridiculous. You was about seven when my wagon run over me an' laid me up for a spell. I'll never forget how you acted. You was the only one in the family that seemed a bit bothered. You'd come to my bed the minute you got home from school, an' set thar an' rub my head. While that spell lasted I was the baby, an' you the mammy, an' to this day I ain't able to recall a happier time.”
Ralph rose and stood by his son for a moment, his gaze on the steady rod. “I'll take the eel to the house,” he said, “an' skin it an' slice it up an' salt it down for breakfast. You may find me in yore bed. This is one o' the times I feel like sleepin' with you—that is, if you don't care?”
“It is all right, go ahead,” Paul said; “there is plenty of room.”
With the eel swinging in his hand, his body bent, Ralph trudged toward the house, which, a dun blur on the landscape, showed in the hazy starlight. A dewy robe had settled on every visible object. An owl was dismally hooting in the wood, which sloped down from the craggy mountain. In the stagnant pools of the lowlands frogs were croaking, hooting, and snarling; the mountain-ridge, with its serried trees against the sky, looked like a vast sleeping monster under cloud-coverings.
Now and then Jeff Warren was heard singing.
AT certain times during the year Paul was en abled to earn a little extra money by hauling fire-wood to the village and selling it to the householders. One morning he was standing by his wagon, waiting for a customer for a load of oak, when Hoag came from the bar-room at the hotel and steered toward him. The planter's face was slightly flushed from drink, and he was in a jovial mood.
“Been playing billiards,” he said, thickly, and he jerked his thumb toward the green, swinging doors of the bar. “Had six tilts with a St. Louis drummer, an' beat the socks off of 'im. I won his treats an' I'm just a little bit full, but it will wear off. It's got to. I'm goin' in to eat dinner with my sister—you've seen 'er—Mrs. Mayfield. She's up from Atlanta with her little girl to git the mountain air an' country cookin'.”
At this moment Peter Kerr, the proprietor of the hotel, came out ringing the dinner-bell. He was a medium-sized man of forty, with black eyes and hair, the skin of a Spaniard, and an ever-present, complacent smile. He strode from end to end of the long veranda, swinging the bell in front of him. When Kerr was near, Hoag motioned to him to approach, and Kerr did so, silencing the bell by catching hold of the clapper and swinging the handle downward. Hoag laid his hand on Paul's shoulder and bore down with unconscious weight.
“Say, Pete,” he said, “you know this boy?”
“Oh, yes, everybody does, I reckon,” Kerr answered patronizingly.
“Well, he's the best hand I've got,” Hoag said, sincerely enough; “the hardest worker in seven States. Now, here's what I want. Paul eats out at my home as a rule an' he's got to git dinner here at my expense to-day. Charge it to me.”
Paul flushed hotly—an unusual thing for him—and shook his head.
“I'm goin'hometo dinner,” he stammered, his glance averted.
“You'll do nothing of the sort,” Hoag objected, warmly. “You've got that wood to sell, an' nobody will buy it at dinner-time. Every livin' soul is at home. Besides, I want to talk over some matters with you afterward. Fix 'im a place, Pete, an' make them niggers wait on 'im.”
There was no way out of it, and Paul reluctantly gave in. With burly roughness, which was not free from open patronage, the planter caught him by the arm and drew him up the steps of the hotel and on into the house, which Paul knew but slightly, having been there only once or twice to sell game, vegetables, or other farm produce.
The office was noisily full of farmers, traveling salesmen, lawyers, merchants, and clerks who boarded there or dropped in to meals at the special rate given to all citizens of the place and vicinity. On the right hand was a long, narrow “wash-room.” It had shelves holding basins and pails of water, sloping troughs into which slops were poured, towels on wooden rollers, and looking-glasses from the oaken frames of which dangled, at the ends of strings, uncleanly combs and brushes.
When he had bathed his face and hands and brushed his hair, Paul returned to the office, where the proprietor—with some more patronage—took him by the arm and led him to the door of the big dining-room. It was a memorable event in the boy's life. He was overwhelmed with awe; he had the feeling that his real ego was encumbered with those alien things—legs, arms, body, and blood which madly throbbed in his veins and packed into his face. He would not have hesitated for an instant to engage in a hand-to-hand fight with a man wearing the raiment of an emperor's guard, if occasion had demanded it; but this new thing under the heavens gave him pause as nothing else ever had done. The low-ceiled room, with its many windows curtained in white, gauzy stuff, long tables covered with snowy linen, glittering glass, sparkling plated-ware, and gleaming china, seemed to have sprung into being by some enchantment full of designs against his timidity. There was a clatter of dishes, knives, forks, and spoons; a busy hum of voices; the patter of swift-moving feet; the jar and bang of the door opening into the adjoining kitchen, as the white-aproned negroes darted here and there, holding aloft trays of food.
Seeing Paul hesitating where the proprietor had left him, the negro head waiter came and led him to a seat at a small table in a corner somewhat removed from the other diners. It was the boy's rough aspect and poor clothing which had caused this discrimination against him, but he was unaware of the difference. Indeed, he was overjoyed to find that his entrance and presence were unnoticed. He felt very much out of place with all those queer dishes before him. The napkin, folded in a goblet at his plate, was a thing he had heard of but never used, and it remained unopened, even after the waiter had shaken it out of the goblet to give him ice-water. There were hand-written bills of fare on the other tables, but the waiter simply brought Paul a goodly supply of food and left him. He was a natural human being and unusually hungry, and for a few moments he all but forgot his surroundings in pure animal enjoyment. His appetite satisfied, he sat drinking his coffee and looking about the room. On his right was a long table, at which sat eight or ten traveling salesmen; and in their unstudied men-of-the-world ease, as they sat ordering cigars from the office, striking matches under their chairs, and smoking in lounging attitudes, telling yams and jesting with one another, they seemed to the boy to be a class quite worthy of envy. They dressed well; they spent money; they knew all the latest jokes; they traveled on trains and lived in hotels; they had seen the great outer world. Paul decided that he would like to be a drummer; but something told him that he would never be anything but what he was, a laborer in the open air—a servant who had to be obedient to another's will or starve.
At this moment his attention was drawn to the entrance. Hoag was coming in accompanied by a lady and little girl, and, treading ponderously, he led them down the side of the room to a table on Paul's left. Hoag seemed quite a different man, with his unwonted and clumsy air of gallantry as he stood holding the back of his sister's chair, which he had drawn out, and spoke to the head waiter about “something special” he had told the cook to prepare. And when he sat down he seemed quite out of place, Paul thought, in the company of persons of so much obvious refinement. He certainly bore no resemblance to his sister or his niece. Mrs. Mayfield had a fair, smooth brow, over which the brown tresses fell in gentle waves; a slender body, thin neck, and white, tapering hands. But it was Ethel, the little girl, who captured and held from that moment forth the attention of the mountain-boy. Paul had never beheld such dainty, appealing loveliness. She was as white and fair as a lily. Her long-lashed eyes were blue and dreamy; her nose, lips, and chin perfect in contour. She wore a pretty dress of dainty blue, with white stockings and pointed slippers. How irreverent, even contaminating, seemed Hoag's coarse hand when it rested once on her head as he smiled carelessly into the girl's face! Paul felt his blood boil and throb.
“Half drunk!” he muttered. “He's a hog, and ought to be kicked.”
Then he saw that Hoag had observed him, and to his great consternation the planter sat smiling and pointing the prongs of his fork at him. Paul heard his name called, and both the lady and her daughter glanced at him and smiled in quite a friendly way, as if the fork had introduced them. Paul felt the blood rush to his face; a blinding mist fell before his eyes, and the whole noisy room became a chaos of floating objects. When his sight cleared he saw that the three were looking in another direction; but his embarrassment was not over, for the head waiter came to him just then and told him that Mr. Hoag wanted him to come to his table as soon as his dinner was finished.
Paul gulped his coffee down now in actual terror of something intangible, and yet more to be dreaded than anything he had ever before encountered. He was quite certain that he would not obey. Hoag might take offense, swear at him, discharge him; but that was of no consequence beside the horrible ordeal the man's drunken brain had devised. Hoag was again looking at him; he was smiling broadly, confidently, and swung his head to one side in a gesture which commanded Paul to come over. Mrs. Mayfield's face also wore a slight smile of agreement with her brother's mood; but Ethel, the little girl, kept her long-lashed and somewhat conscious eyes on the table. Again the hot waves of confusion beat in Paul's face, brow, and eyes. He doggedly shook his head at Hoag, and then his heart sank, for he knew that he was also responding to the lady's smile in a way that was unbecoming in a boy even of the lowest order, yet he was powerless to act otherwise. Like a blind man driven desperate by encroaching danger that could not be located, he rose, turned toward the door, and fairly plunged forward. The toe of his right foot struck the heel of his left, and he stumbled and almost fell. To get out he had to pass close to Hoag's table, and though he did not look at the trio, he felt their surprised stare on him, and knew that they were reading his humiliation in his flaming face. He heard the planter laugh in high merriment, and caught the words: “Come here, you young fool, we are not goin' to bite you!”
It seemed to the boy, as he incontinently fled the spot, that the whole room had witnessed his disgrace. In fancy he heard the waiters laughing and the amused comments of the drummers.
The landlord tried to detain him as he hurried through the office.
“Did you git enough t'eat?” he asked; but, as if pursued by a horde of furies, Paul dashed on into the street.
He found a man inspecting his load of wood and sold it to him, receiving instructions as to which house to take it to and where it was to be left. With the hot sense of humiliation still on him, he drove down the street to the rear fence of a cottage and threw the wood over, swearing at himself, at Hoag, at life in general, but through it all he saw Ethel Mayfield's long, golden hair, her eyes of dreamy blue, and pretty, curving lips. She remained in his thoughts as he drove his rattling wagon home through the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. She was in his mind so much, indeed, from that day on, that he avoided contact with the members of his family. He loved to steal away into the woods alone, or to the hilltops, and fancy that she was with him listening to his wise explanation of this or that rural thing which a girl from a city could not know, and which a girl from a city, to be well informed, ought to know.
BY chance he met her a week or so later. She and her mother were spending the day at Hoag's, and near noon Ethel had strolled across the pasture, gathering wild-flowers. Paul had been working at the tannery assisting a negro crushing bark for the vats, and was starting home to get his dinner when he saw her. She wore a big sailor hat and a very becoming dress of a different color from the one he had first seen her in. He wanted to take a good look at her, but was afraid she would see him. She had her hands full of flowers and fern leaves, and was daintily picking her way through the thick broom-sedge. He had passed on, and his back was to her when he heard her scream out in fright, and, turning, he saw her running toward him. He hurried back, climbed over the rail fence, and met her. “A snake, a snake!” she cried, white with terror. “Where?” he asked, boyishly conscious that his moment had arrived for showing contempt for all such trivialities.
“There,” she pointed, “back under those rocks. It was coiled up right under my feet and ran when it saw me.”
There was a fallen branch of a tree near by, and coolly picking it up he broke it across his knee to the length of a cudgel, then twisted the twigs and bark off. He swung it easily like a ball-player handling a bat.
“Now, come show me,” he said, riding on a veritable cloud of self-confidence. “Where did it go?”
“Oh, I'm afraid!” she cried. “Don't go, it will bite you!”
He laughed contemptuously. “How could it?” he sneered. “It wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance against this club.” He advanced to the pile of rocks she now indicated, and she stood aloof, holding her breath, her little hands pressed to her white cheeks, as he began prying the stones and boldly thrusting into crevices. Presently from the heap a brownish snake ran. Ethel saw it and screamed again; but even as he struck she heard him laugh derisively. “Don't be silly!” he said, and the next moment he had the dying thing by the tail, calmly holding it up for her inspection, its battered and flattened head touching the ground.
“It's a highland moccasin,” he nonchalantly instructed her. “They are as poisonous as rattlers. It's a good thing you didn't step on it, I tell you. They lie in the sun, and fellers mowing hay sometimes get bit to the bone.”
“Drop it! Put it down!” Ethel cried, her pretty face still pale. “Look, it's moving!”
“Oh, it will wiggle that way till the sun goes down,” he smiled down from his biological height; “but it is plumb done for. Lawsy me! I've killed more of them than I've got fingers and toes.”
Reassured, she drew nearer and looked at him admiringly. He was certainly a strong, well-formed lad, and his courage was unquestionable. Out of respect for her fears he dropped the reptile, and she bent down and examined it. Again the strange, new power she had from the first exercised over him seemed to exude from her whole being, and he felt a return of the cold, insecure sensation of the hotel dining-room. His heart seemed to be pumping its blood straight to his face and brain. Her little white hands were so frail and flower-like; her golden tresses, falling over her proud shoulders like a gauzy mantle, gave out a delicate fragrance. What a vision of loveliness! Seen close at hand, she was even prettier than he had thought. He had once admired Sally Tibbits, whom he had kissed at a corn-husking, as a reward for finding the red ear which lay almost in Sally's lap, and which, according to the game, she could have hidden; but Sally had never worn shoes, that he could remember, and as he recalled her now, by way of comparison, her legs were ridiculously brown and brier-scratched; her homespun dress was a poor bag of a thing, and her dingy chestnut hair seemed as lifeless as her neglected complexion. And Ethel's voice! He had never heard anything so mellow, soft, and bewitching. She seemed like a princess in one of his storybooks, the sort tailors' sons used to meet and marry by rubbing up old lamps.
“What are you going to do with it?” She looked straight at him, and he felt the force of her royal eyes.
“Well, I don't intend to take it to the graveyard,” he boldly jested. “I'll leave it here for the buzzards.” He pointed to the cloud-flecked sky, where several vultures were slowly circling. “They'll settle here as soon as our backs are turned. Folks say they go by the smell of rotten flesh, but I believe their sense is keener than that. I wouldn't be much surprised if they watched and seed me kill that snake.”
“How funny you talk!” Ethel said, in no tone of disrespect, but rather that of the mild inquisitiveness of a stranger studying a foreign tongue. “You saidseedforsaw. Why, my teacher would give me awful marks if I made a mistake like that. Of course, it may be correct here in the mountains.” Paul flushed a deeper red; there was a touch of resentment in his voice.
“Folks talk that way round here,” he blurted out; “grown-up folks. We don't try to put on style like stuck-up town folks.”
“Please forgive me.” Ethel's voice fell; she put out her hand and lightly touched his. “I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, and I never will say such a thing again—never, on my honor.”
He bitterly repented it afterward, but he rudely drew his hand away, and stood frowning, his glance averted.
“I am very sorry,” Ethel said, “and I can't blame you—I really can't. What I said was a great deal worse than your little mistake. My mother says rudeness is never excusable.”
“Oh, it's all right,” he gave in, as gracefully as he could.
“And are you sure you aren't mad with me?” she pursued, anxiously.
“Nothin' to be mad about,” he returned, kicking the snake with his foot.
“Well, I hope you won't hate me,” she said. “I feel that I know you pretty well. Uncle told us a lot about you that day at the hotel. He said you were the bravest boy he ever saw and the hardest worker. I saw you looked embarrassed that day, and he had no right to tease you as he did; but he was—of course, you know what was the matter with him?”
Paul nodded. “I wasn't going to pay any attention to him,” he declared. “I wasn't—wasn't fixed up fit to—to be seen by anybody, any more than I am now, for that matter; but I can't do the work I have to do and go dressed like a town dude.”
“Of course not—of course not,” Ethel agreed, sympathetically, “and Uncle says you spend all you make on others, anyway. He was telling us about how you loved your father and took care of him. You know, I think that is wonderful, and so does mama. Boys are not like that in Atlanta; they are lazy and spoiled, and bad, generally. People in a city are so different, you know. Mama says the greatest men were once poor country boys. I'd think that was encouraging, if I was—if Iwereyou—see, I make slips myself! Afterifyou must always say were to be strictly correct. Just think of it, when I am grown up you may be a great man, and be ashamed even to know me.”
He shrugged his shoulders and frowned. The flush had partly left his face, leaving splotches of white here and there. “No hopes of me ever mak-in' any sort of rise,” he declared. “There is too much to do at home; I don't get time to go to school or study.”
“What a pity!” Ethel sighed. She swept him from head to foot critically. Touches of pink lay on her cheeks just below her earnest eyes. “You are good-looking—you—you really are handsome, and so strong and brave! Somehow I feel certain that you are going to be successful. I—I am going to pray for it. They say God answers prayers when they are the right kind, and I know mine would be right.”
“I don't believe any of that rubbish,” he said, loftily. “I've heard your uncle Jim laugh at the preachers and folks that get converted one day and are plumb over it the next. He says they are the biggest fools in the world.”
“I know he talks that way, and it worries mama awfully,” the girl said. “I'm afraid he's terribly bad. You see, he drinks, plays cards, curses, and is hard on the negroes who work for him. Now, the truth is that the people who go to church really are better than he is, and that, in itself, ought to show he's wrong—don't you think so?”
“He just uses his natural brain,” Paul returned, philosophically. “He says there is just one life, an' he's goin' to get all he can out of it. I don't blame him. He's rich—he can buy and sell the folks round here that say he don't know what he's talkin' about. He says there ain't no God, and he can prove it. He made it purty plain one day while he was talking to a crowd at the tan-yard. He told 'em, if they believed there was any such thing, for 'em to pray for some'n and see if they'd get it. He told about a gang of Methodists that was praying for money to make a church bigger, and the lightning struck it and burned it down.”
“Did you never pray yourself?” Ethel questioned, quite irrelevantly.
He hesitated; his color flamed again in his face, and he avoided her gentle, upward gaze. “Not—not since I was very little,” he said, awkwardly. “I don't believe in it; the whole shoutin', singin-and-prayin' bunch of meetin'-folks make me sick.
“Uncle is responsible for all that,” Ethel declared. “You naturally would look up to him; but I believe he is wrong—I really do. I like good people, and, while he is my uncle, I—well, I don't feel the same toward him as I would if he were a different sort of man.”
“He's all right,” Paul defended. “He's rough, and curses some when he's mad, but you can count on him to keep his word in a deal. He's no hypocrite. Lots of folks believe as he does, but are afraid to own it; he stands his ground and tells them all exactly what he thinks, and says they can lump it.”
They had been walking side by side across the grass, and had reached the point where their ways parted. He was turning homeward, when she advanced impulsively and touched him almost timidly on the arm. Her pretty red lip was quivering and her hand shook visibly.
“I don't care what uncle says—or whatany onesays. I believe there is a God, and I believe He is good, and I am going to pray to Him to make you have faith.”
There were incipient tears in her eyes, and, as if to avoid his wondering stare, she lowered her head suddenly and walked away.
At the front gate his father stood waiting for him, a mild look of excitement in his weary eyes. “Heard the news?” he inquired.
“No; what's happened?” Paul answered.
“Enough, I reckon, to them that's hit by it,” Ralph returned. “Old Alf Rose, over t'other side o' the mountain, was found dead in a thicket close to his house. He was beat bad, his skull was all mashed in.”
“Who did it?” Paul asked.
“They don't know for sure; but he was robbed of all he had in his pockets, an' his hat was gone. A nigger, Pete Watson, is missin', and they say the sheriff and a passle o' deputies, an' half the county, are out scourin' the woods for 'im. Ef they ketch 'im thar 'll be a lynchin' as sure as preachin'.”
A voice now came from the farm-house. It was Amanda leaning out of the kitchen window.
“Come on in an' git yore dinner,” she cried. “Don't listen to that stuff or you won't eat a bite. Yore pa's chatter has already turned my stomach inside out.”
“That's the woman of it,” Ralph sniffed, wearily. “They both begged an' begged for particulars, an' wormed every bit they could out o' me, an' now they talk about its gaggin' em.”
THAT evening, after Hoag had put his sister and niece into his phaeton, and told Cato, the negro driver, to take them to Grayson, he went back to the veranda where his wife and her mother, Mrs. Sarah Tilton, stood waving their handkerchiefs at the departing guests. Mrs. Hoag was a thin, wanfaced woman of questionable age and health. In honor of the visitors she wore her best black-silk gown, and its stiff, rigid folds and white-lace collar gave her a prim and annual-excursion look. There was a tired expression in her gray eyes, a nervous twitching of her needle-pricked fingers. Her mother was of a lustier type, having a goodly allotment of flesh, plenty of blood and activity of limb and brain, and a tongue which occupied itself on every possible occasion with equal loquacity in small or large affairs.
“I couldn't help from thinkin' what an awful time we'd have had,” she was saying to her daughter, “if they had stayed here this summer instead of at the hotel. I can stand it for a day or two, but three months on a stretch would lay me stark and stiff in my grave. Did you ever in all yore bom days see such finicky ways? They nibbled at the lettuce like tame rabbits eatin' cabbage-leaves, and wiped their lips or fingers every minute, whether they got grease on 'em or not, and then their prissy talk! Ipresume, if Harriet saidpresee-umonce she did fully a dozen times, an' I didn't know any more what it meant than if she'd been talkin' Choctaw.”
“They are simply not used to our country ways,” Mrs. Hoag sighed. “I don't feel like they are, to say, stuck up. I think they was just tryin' to be easy an' natural-like.”
“Maybe she'd find it easier to go back to the way she used to live before her pa sent 'er off to that fine boardin'-school in Macon,” Mrs. Tilton retorted, with a smile that froze into a sort of grimace of satisfaction. “She used to go barefooted here in the mountains; she was a regular tomboy that wanted to climb every tree in sight, slide down every bank, and wade in every mud-puddle and branch anywheres about. She was eternally stuffin' her stomach with green apples, raw turnips, an' sweet potatoes, an' smearin' her face with 'lasses or preserves. She laid herself up for a week once for eatin' a lot o' pure licorice an' cinnamon-bark that she found in the drug-store her uncle used to keep at the cross-roads.”
Hoag sat down in a chair, tilted it back against the wall, and cast a summarizing glance toward his com, wheat, and cotton fields beyond the brown roofs of the long sheds and warehouses of the tannery at the foot of the hill. He seldom gave the slightest heed to the current observations of his wife or her mother. If they had not found much to say about the visitors, it would have indicated that they were unwell and needed a doctor, and of course that would have meant money out of his pocket, which was a matter of more moment than the most pernicious gossip. Hoag's younger son, Jack, a golden-haired child three years of age, toddled round the house and putting his chubby hands on the lowest of the veranda steps, glanced up at his father, and smiled and cooed. Hoag leaned forward, crude tenderness in his look and movement.
“That's right!” he cried, gently, and he held his hands out encouragingly. “Crawl up to daddy, Jack. I was lookin' for you, little boy. I was wonderin' where you was at. Got scared o' the fine town folks, an' hid out, didn't you?”
Slowly, retarded as Jack was by his short skirt, he mounted step after step, constantly applauded by his father, till, red in the face and panting, he reached the top and was eagerly received into the extended arms.
“Bully boy!” Hoag cried. “I knew you'd stick to it and never say die. You are as full o' pluck as an egg is of meat.” And the planter pressed the bonny head against his breast and stroked the soft, curling hair with his big, red hand.
Few of Hoag's friends knew of his almost motherly tenderness and fondness for his child. In returning home at night, even if it was very late, he never would go to bed without looking into his wife's room to see if Jack was all right. And every morning, before rising, he would call the child to him, and the two would wake The rest of the family With their romping and laughter. Sometimes Hoag would dress the boy, experiencing a delight in the clumsy action which he could not have analyzed. His devotion to Jack seemed all the more remarkable for his indifferent manner toward his older son, Henry, a lad of fifteen, who had a mischievous disposition which made him rather unpopular in the neighborhood. Many persons thought Henry was like his father in appearance, though quite the reverse in the habit of thrift or business foresight. Mrs. Tilton, the grandmother, declared that the boy was being driven to the dogs as rapidly as could be possible, for he had never known the meaning of paternal sympathy or advice, and never been made to do any sort of work. Be that as it might, Henry was duly sworn at or punished by Hoag at least once a week.
The phaeton returned from the village. Cato drove the horses into the stable-yard and put them into their stalls, whistling as he fed them and rubbed them down. The twilight was thickening over the fields and meadows. The dew was falling. The nearest hills were no longer observable. Jack, still in his father's arms on the veranda, was asleep; the touch of the child's breath on the man's cheek was a subtle, fragrant thing that conveyed vague delight to his consciousness. Henry rode up to the stable, turned his horse over to Cato, and came toward the house. He was, indeed, like his father in shape, build, and movement. He paused at the foot of the steps, glanced indifferently at Hoag and said:
“I passed Sid Trawley back on the mountain-road. He said, tell you he wanted to see you to-night without fail; he said, tell you not to leave till he got here.”
“Oh, all right,” Hoag said, with a steady, interested stare at his son, who now stood beside him. “I'll be here.”
His voice waked the sleeping child. Jack sat up, rubbed his eyes, and then put a little hand on his father's face. “Dack hungry; Dack want his supper,” he lisped.
Hoag-swung him gently to and fro like a woman rocking an infant to sleep. “Hold on!” He was speaking to Henry, and his tone was harsh and abrupt. “Did you water that horse?”
Henry leaned in the doorway, idly lashing his legs with his riding-whip. “No; the branch was a quarter of a mile out of the way. Cato will lead him to the well.”
“You know better than that,” Hoag growled. “You didn't even tell Cato the horse hadn't been watered. He would let him stay in the lot all night without a drop, hot as he is. Go water 'im now.Go, I tell you! You are getting so triflin' you ain't fit to live.”
Henry stared, and his stare kindled into a resentful glare. His whip hung steadily by his side. It was as if he were about to retort, but kept silence.
“Go 'tend to that horse,” Hoag repeated, “an' don't you ever do a thing like that again. You are none too good to do work o' that sort; I did plenty of it at your age. I had to work like a nigger an' I'm none the worse for it.”
Henry stood still. He had his father's temper, and it was being roughly handled. Jack, now thoroughly awake, put both his hands on his father's face and stroked his cheeks soothingly, as if conscious of the storm that was about to break. Then, slowly and with inarticulate mutterings, Henry turned and retraced his steps down the path to the stable. Hoag leaned over till Jack had to clutch the lapels of his coat to keep from falling.
“An' don't you raise a row with that nigger, neither,” Hoag called out. “I won't have it. You are not boss about this place.”
Henry paused in the path, turned a defiant face toward his father, and stood still for several seconds, then slowly went on to the stable.
“Dack want his supper, daddy,” Jack murmured.
“All right, baby,” Hoag said, in a tone of blended anger and gentleness, and with the child in his arms he went through the dark hall into the diningroom adjoining the kitchen in the rear of the house. Here, at the table next to his own place, he put Jack into the child's high-chair, and sat down beside him, his massive arm and hand still encircling the tiny shoulders.
“Now, make Dilly bring Jack's mush an' milk!” Hoag said, with a laugh. “Call 'er—call 'er loud!”
“Dilly!” Jack obeyed. “Oh, Dilly!”
“Louder; she didn't hear you.” Hoag shook with laughter, and patted the child on the head encouragingly.
“Dilly! Oh, Dilly!” Jack cried.
“Oh, I hear you, young marster,” the portly negress laughed, as she shuffled into the room. “I was gittin' yo' mush en milk, honey. I 'clar', 'fo' de Lawd you make me jump out'n my skin, I was so scared.”
“Where's the rest o' the folks?” Hoag inquired, with an impatient glance toward the door.
“Bofe of 'em say dey don't want er bite after eatin' all dat watermelon dis evenin',” the cook answered. “Miz Hoag say she gwine ter lie down right off, kase she got off dat hot dress en feel weak after so much doin's terday. She ain't er well 'oman, Marse Hoag—she ain't, suh. I know, kase I seed er lots of um in my day en time. She hain't got no spirit, suh; en when 'omen git dat way it's er bad sign o' what may come.”
Hoag showed no interest in the comment. He reached for the big platter of cold string-beans and boiled pork, and helped himself abundantly. He poured out his own coffee, and drank it hot from the saucer without sugar or cream. He used both hands in breaking the big, oval-shaped pone of corn-bread. He enjoyed his food as a hungry beast might, and yet he paused every now and then to feed the child with a spoon or to wipe the mush from the little chin. It was Jack's drooping head and blinking eyes that caused Hoag to hasten through the meal. He took the child to the little bed in its mother's room and put it down gently.
“Go to sleep,” he said. “Now go to sleep.”