THAT evening after supper, as Paul sat writing in his room, his employer came to the door and looked in.
“Hello!” was his half-tentative greeting, as he slouched in and took a chair near the table. “I've just been talkin' to my sister. She's powerful tickled over the effect on Eth' of your trip over the mountain. She says she's actually astonished. It seems like the gal's goin' to quit 'er foolishness. I was gettin' powerful sick of it myself. It's hard enough to know your own end's got to come some time ahead without dyin' every time anybody else kicks the bucket.”
“I'm glad to know that Miss Ethel feels better.” Paul dipped his pen and continued to write.
Hoag crossed his fat legs and, reaching down to his right shoe, he began to fumble the string. “I want to see you about a certain matter,” he began, clearing his throat. “I don't know as you will consider it any o' my business exactly, but it is something that I thought you ought to be prepared for.”
“What is it?” Paul put his pen into the rack and leaned toward the speaker.
“Why, I was talkin' to Bob Mayburn this mornin'. You know his land joins mine on the west. He had a few acres to rent an' was afraid he wouldn't find a tenant; but he has hooked one at last, and who under the shinin' sun do you reckon he got?”
“I haven't the slightest idea,” Paul answered.
“Jeff Warren,” Hoag said, his eyes bluntly fixed on the young man's face in a groping stare of pleased curiosity.
“Oh!” Paul exclaimed. “I didn't know he was anywhere near Grayson.”
“He ain't got here yet,” Hoag went on, a note of vindictive harshness creeping into his voice. “The triflin' skunk has been over in Alabama with yore ma an' her sister tryin' to make a livin' farmin', but without any sort o' headway. He wrote May-burn that he was up to his eyes in debt over thar—plumb busted—an' that they'd all three got sick an' tired o' livin' among strangers, an' was anxious to git back here whar they are acquainted. May-burn's got a comfortable new frame cottage on his land that's empty, but knowin' that Jeff couldn't pay for it, he wrote 'im that it was already rented. Thar is an old log cabin close to the cottage, an' accordin' to the agreement Jeff an' his lay-out is to occupy that. It's tough on a feller of Jeff's high an' mighty pride, but it is as good as he deserves.”
Paul made no reply, a shadow lay across his sensitive face. He took up the pen again, but he did not begin to use it.
“I knowed you wouldn't like it a bit,” Hoag continued, unctuously. “Here you are risin' as fast as a dog can trot, gittin' the respect an' favorable opinion of the best folks in the county, an' it's tough to have a thing like that revived right when you ain't lookin' for it. I've no doubt you wouldn't have settled here if you had thought such a thing would happen.”
“Warren is a free man.” Paul's brows met, and his eyes held a far-off gleam. “He has as much right here as I.”
“Of course, of course,” Hoag admitted; “but he's got a nasty, quarrelsome disposition, an' accordin' to some o' his friends he still holds a big grudge ag'in' you. It was humiliatin' the way you plugged 'im an' left 'im to die like a pig in the woods. You see, whar I'm interested is this: I want you to keep on workin' without interruption, an' knowin' what a hot temperyou'vegot yourself—well, I see that you an' him will jest have to hitch ag'in. I'm sorry he's comin' back myself. I never liked 'im. It is not often that I belittle myself by takin' notice of a triflin' clodhopper like him; but he's been in my way several times, an' may step in ag'in, for all I know.”
Paul drew a ledger toward him and opened it. “I'm glad you told me this,” he said. “I've got a lot of work to do before bedtime. I know you will excuse me if I go at it.”
“Oh yes, oh yes!” Hoag rose, staring in a puzzled, thwarted sort of way. “I don't want to hinder you. I'll be goin'. I just thought I'd throw out a hint about the matter. It is well to be prepared for trouble if ithasto come, an'—an' a man like Warren is sure to pick a row.”
Hoag lingered a moment, but seeing that the young man was at work he left the room.
THE following Sunday was a somber day for Paul Rundel. When he opened his eyes in the gray of dawn, and lay watching the pink flood of light as it widened and lengthened along the eastern horizon, his first thought was the despondent one under which he had dropped to sleep—it was the day Edward Peterson was to visit Ethel.
Paul rose and stood at the window and looked out over the lawn and frowsy brown roofs of the tannery sheds. He was cringing under a poignant agony that permeated his whole being, clogged the blood in his veins, and sucked away the very breath of the life which had recently been so full of indefinable content. The cause was not hard to find. He was convinced that Ethel was absolutely necessary to his happiness. Had he not met her again on his return to Georgia she might have remained in his memory only as the young girl who had been so unexpectedly kind and gentle to a poor outcast; but he had recently found himself more nearly on a social level with her, and he had actually helped her. She had said so. She had shown it in her words and actions, in her turning, under his guidance, from despair to hope. Yet she was to be another man's wife, a man who was evidently not disturbed by any fine-spun ideas of the Infinite or of duty to humanity. Peterson would forge ahead in the happy way such men have, surmounting obstacle after obstacle, climbing higher and higher in the estimation of men, and reaping honor after honor. Ethel would marry him. Her uncle wished it, all her friends counted on it. To refuse Peterson would be madness. The man—especially a poor man—who would ask her to do otherwise for his sake would be mad. Yes, all thought of her as anything but a sympathetic friend must be crushed. When Jeff Warren and his wife came to live in their sordid cabin on the roadside Ethel and her mother would pass their door daily and realize fully the caste to which Paul belonged.
He dressed himself and descended to the lawn. He raised his arms and lowered them, and inhaled deep breaths in his usual morning exercise; but it was done without zest and with the conviction that it would not be of benefit while such morbid thoughts ran rife within him. He must throw them off. He must face life as it was. He had suffered before. He must suffer again. After all, might he not hold Ethel in his heart as his ideal woman, even after she had become the wife of another? It must be—that was all that was left him—and yet, and yet—A sharp pain shot through him. His senses swam; the mocking rays of the rising sun flared upon him. Ethel another man's wife! Ethel the recipient of another man's caresses! Ethel the mother of another man's—
“O God, have mercy!” he moaned, and he turned down toward the gate, almost swaying as he moved across the grass.
“Are you going for a walk?” It was Ethel's cheery voice, and it came from the veranda. Glancing back he saw her lightly tripping down the steps.
“Because if you are, I'll go too—if you will let me. I was up and dressed, and saw you from the window. Oh, isn't the sunrise beautiful?”
As in a dream he stood waiting for her, and together they passed through the gate out upon the grayish, stony road, which sloped gradually up the mountain. He had smiled and bowed, but was unable to formulate any suitable words of greeting. She was studying his face slowly, furtively, and with an anxiety she was trying to hide.
“You look a little paler than you did yesterday,” she said, hesitatingly. “Did you not sleep well?”
“I worked rather late last night,” was his evasive answer. “Night-work sometimes has a rather depressing effect on me.”
“I suppose so,” she answered, still studying his features, “and yet usually you are so full of happy spirits. Perhaps you”—she hesitated—“would rather be alone?”
“Oh, how could you say that?” he exclaimed. “It is just the contrary. I don't feel, however, that I have quite the right to intrude on you in your—your—”
“You needn't look at it that way,” she broke in, not yet fully convinced that she had fathomed his mood. “In fact, I want to see you. I want to tell you how much you have helped me. You have made me realize my error. I was depressing my mother and every one else by my gloomy hopelessness; but now—well, I seem to have absorbed some of your wonderful philosophy. I slept last night, as uncle would say, 'like a log,' and I feel much better this morning.”
“Peterson is coming; that is the cause,” Paul groaned inwardly, and he glanced away, that she might not read the thought in his eyes. To her he said, aimlessly: “I am glad—very, very glad. Hope is the only thing. Once one has it, all things become possible.”
“And you are sofullof it,” she ran on, glibly. “I was speaking to my mother about you last night. She declared she did not think any one could come in contact with you and be despondent. She said it was a comfort just to watch the play of your features and hear the cheerful ring of your voice. Perhaps you don't realize, Paul, how God has blessed you. To go through life throwing out a radiance like yours is—well, it is next to—divinity.”
“Divinity, divinity!” The words seemed to slip from his lips incautiously. “There are philosophers, Ethel, who believe that God Himself suffers in His hampered effort to bring things up to His ideal, and that, as parts of Him, we, too, must suffer as long as He suffers. It may be that the more we partake of His essence the more we have to bear. Who knows? The person who can bury himself in the stirring affairs of earth has a bliss which, if due to ignorance, is nevertheless bliss.”
“This is not like you a bit,” Ethel said, in pained reproachfulness; and then a light broke upon her. She understood. Her heart beat more quickly, and a hot flush mantled her brow. She hoped he would not note her confusion. She must have time to think, to consider. Many grave things might hang upon what he or she might impulsively say on the crumbling edge of a precipice like that. She must not allow her sympathies to rule her. She must never encourage a man whom she did not love with her whole heart, and how was a girl to judge calmly when a man was such a glorified sufferer?
“According to your views, Paul,” she continued, “faith in the goodness of Godwillbring all possible things.”
“Save the things of earth.” She saw his fine mouth writhe under a sardonic smile as he recklessly plunged into what he knew was mad indiscretion. “A jealous man cannot walk in the footsteps of a jealous God.”
Ethel avoided his desperate and yet frankly apologetic eyes. She shrank within herself. She was sure his words were becoming dangerously pertinent. She kept silence for a moment. Then she paused at a lichen-grown boulder, rested a white, throbbing hand on it, and listlessly surveyed the trees about the farm-house.
“I am sure you cannot possibly realize the good you are doing,” she said, with abrupt irrelevance. “I want to tell you something. It is about my cousin Henry. You know I have never liked him very much, but the other day I was thrown with him at the dinner-table after the others had left. He was very downcast and sad over some recent trouble with his father, and, to my great surprise, he spoke regretfully of his useless life. He said you had talked to him, given him good advice, and that you had helped him borrow money to go into business on at Grayson. Paul, I am sure you won't lose by it. He told me, with tears in his eyes, that he would rather die than disappoint you.”
“I am sure he will succeed,” Paul said. “He has energy and enthusiasm, and is anxious to prove himself. I was surprised to have the bank accept my indorsement, but they did quite readily. I really have great faith in him. He is ashamed of himself, and that is a fine beginning.”
Ethel was turning, to proceed higher up on the road, but he stopped her.
“We must not get beyond the sound of the breakfast-bell,” he warned her.
“No, for I am hungry,” she answered, eying him still with anxious studiousness. She turned back toward the farm-house, hesitated a moment, and then said: “Did you happen to see the—the flowers on the mantelpiece in your room? I gathered them and put them there yesterday.”
“Oh, did you?” he cried, eagerly. “That was very kind of you. I thought that Mrs. Tilton did it. They fill the whole room with fragrance.”
“I'm glad you like them,” Ethel said. “By the way, I couldn't help glancing at your books. I now know where you get your wisdom. What a wholesome group of mental companions you have!”
“Those are my special favorites,” he answered. “If you wish to read any of them please help yourself.”
“I was really hinting at that,” she laughed. “You have roused my curiosity. I want to read what you have read and liked. There, that is the breakfast-bell!”
She quickened her step, tripping on ahead of him with a little laugh which held a note of vague uneasiness. Presently she slowed down, and with a look of gentle concern in the glance which she directed to him she faltered:
“I hope you won't get angry with my mother for something she is going to inflict on you and me this morning. Being opposed to working on Sunday, she remained up last night and arranged the table for dinner to-day. She has it gleaming like a bank of snow, and fairly covered with evergreens, ferns, and flowers. She insists that we take our breakfast this once in the kitchen. She is afraid we will disarrange something. She thinks a good deal of Mr. Peterson—ColonelPeterson now, for you know the paper yesterday said he was taken on the staff of the Governor. He confided to us some time ago that he had hopes in that direction, having worked hard and pulled wires for the Governor during his recent campaign. On state occasions Mr. Peterson will wear a glittering uniform, carry a sword, and be as stiff as a polished brass poker. Oh, he will like it immensely, but I can never call him 'Colonel.'”
“It certainly would not do to puthimin the kitchen,” Paul said, significantly; “at least not with his regalia on. Aunt Dilly might spill something on his epaulets.”
“I see even you—good as you are—can make sport of people now and then,” Ethel said, her eyes twinkling approvingly. “However, I am not going to let you sit in the kitchen this morning. I'll bring your breakfast and mine out to the table in the summer-house. It will be great fun, won't it?”
“I certainly do not consider myself above the kitchen,” he returned, in too bitter a tone to fall well into her forced levity. “I've eaten at second table in a circus dining-tent, with the negro horse-feeders in a gipsy camp, as a beggar at the kitchen door of a farm-house, and barely escaped having my ration pushed through the iron wicket of a prison. I am certainly unworthy of—of the summer-house and such—such gracious company. I mean this—I mean it from the bottom of my heart.”
“You sha'n't talk that way—you sha'n't, you sha'n't!” Ethel's eyes flashed and her round, full voice quivered. “You have said yourself that all those unfortunate things were behind you for ever and ever things of the past.”
“Except when I need sharp, personal discipline,” he smiled significantly, “and I need that now. I need it to kill blind, hopeless, impossible desire.”
“You mean—” But Ethel checked herself. He seemed such a riddle—such a profound, alluring dangerous riddle as he walked beside her with that gray look of desperate renunciation on his sensitive face, beneath the surface of which smoldered unquenchable fires of passion.
Suddenly he stopped her. He laid his trembling fingers on her arm for a bare, reverent instant.
“I am a coward at times, Ethel. You must forgive my weakness. I groan under a burden that I know is right because it is from the Infinite. No man should be as vain as I am tempted to be when I am with you. You can't understand now, but some day you may—if not here, in Eternity. There is only one way to look at it, and that is that God intends me to suffer.”
Ethel found herself unable, wisely at least, to make any sort of suitable response, and in awkward silence they walked along together till the gate was reached. Then she said, nervously, and yet with firmness that was quite evident: “I want you to meet my friend to-day at dinner. I want him to know you. He belongs to a class of men who seem too busy to think of deep things—things aside from an active routine, but I am sure he will like you.”
Paul's face clouded over; he averted his eyes as he unlatched the gate and swung it open. “Thank you, but I am afraid I can't to-day,” he said. “Uncle Si and his wife have asked me to take dinner with them.”
“Oh, I'm sorry,” Ethel answered. “My mother will regret it, too, for she admires you and likes you very much. But we shall have our breakfast together in the summer-house, sha'n't we?” She glanced at the little vine-clad structure and essayed a playful smile. “Now, run in and take a seat, and let me attend to everything.”
THAT afternoon, while the ladies were taking what Hoag called their “sy-esta” in their rooms, he entertained the guest, who was a dapper young man exquisitely dressed and carefully groomed, even to the daintiest of waxed mustaches. The two men were smoking in the big, cool parlor and chatting agreeably.
“Well, I am not going to refuse the title.” Peterson laughed in a pleasurable way after Hoag had made a bald jest about the honor recently conferred upon him. “I am no born idiot, Mr. Hoag. I know some folks sort of poke fun at the new list of Georgia colonels after every gubernatorial race; but even a handle to a fellow's name like that helps now and then. Take Colonel Pangle there in Atlanta, our big criminal lawyer, you know. Why, he wasn't in the war; he never fired a shot or dodged a ball. He organized a little local military company in his home town. I don't reckon he had more than thirty men at any time, and his rank, at the best wouldn't have been above captain; but he was a dignified-looking fellow with a heavy mustache and goatee, and they called him Colonel on the spot, and when he moved to Atlanta the title followed him. The boys at the bank were disposed to joke when my commission came—saluting me like a bunch of jumping-jacks; but you bet I cut it out. Think little of yourself, and the world will do the same.' That's my motto. You noticed how nice the papers spoke about it, didn't you? Well, I stand in with the reporters. They are my political friends; we take a drink together now and then, and they know how I look at such things. I am hitting the bull's eye down there in that burg, Mr. Hoag, just as you've hit it here. We are two of a kind. It doesn't take much gray matter to succeed among these slow, ante-bellum leave-overs here in the South.”
Hoag laughed heartily. “Oh, you are all right,” he said. “I've had my eye on you ever since you started out. As the sayin' is, you could make money on a rock in the middle of the ocean.”
Peterson's features settled into rigidity suddenly, and he exhaled a tentative breath, as he held his cigar between his fingers and leaned toward his host. “As certain as I am about men, business deals, and politics, Mr. Hoag, I'm going to admit to you that I'm a country school-teacher—a knot on a log—when it comes to handling a woman. Don't you reckon every fellow is that way that is kind o' submerged, so to speak, in the affairs of the business world? I know I am a regular stick, and I don't know how to help myself.”
“I reckon you are talkin' about Eth',” Hoag said, with more bluntness than a diplomat would have employed. “At least, I've wondered why you an' her both seem so offish. I don't reckon you come all the way up here on a holiday like this to talk business tome, an' as for Eth'—well, I can't make 'er out, that's all; an' what's the use to try? A woman is hard to understand when she is willin' to be understood, an' a devil to fathom when she ain't. Folks tell me some high-strung gals would ruther die than let a man know they are gone on 'im.”
“I know,” Peterson replied. “I used to size Miss Ethel up that way down home among the other girls; but this morning, when me'n her strolled down to the spring, it looked to me as if she didn't want to talk about anything but books—an' books that I've never heard about to boot. She had a thick one under her arm and I peeped in it. I think it was by Cato—no, that is the name of your stable-boy, isn't it? Oh, yes, now I remember; it was Plato, Plato. He was one of the old-time fellows, wasn't he—before the Revolution, anyway?”
“Hanged if I know.” Hoag shrugged his shoulders as if the question were a disagreeable incubus suddenly fastened upon him. “I don't know any more'n a rabbit. I set one night an' listened to Paul Rundel an' her talkin' on the veranda an' I hardly understood one word in five. That fellow is the damnedest chap I ever run across.”
“Is he the man you told me about coming home to give himself up?”
“Yes; an' I've had 'im managin' for me ever since. He's a wheel-hoss. He's doubled my income; he's as keen as a brier; knows how to manage laborin' men. They think the sun rises an' sets in 'im. He don't indorse no church in particular, an' yet the women say he's religious. Men that was too triflin' to draw the breath o' life under me work like puffin' steam-engines for him.”
“And he sits around at odd times and talks books?” Peterson said, a faultfinding frown on his face. “That's the way he seems to get his relaxation,” Hoag returned. “Well, I don't care how religious he is. Sometimes that helps. I had a little crossroads store away back in my early day an' I didn't have time to manage it. I kept hirin' fellows to run it, an' every one I got would soak me—steal money an' goods so thar wasn't a sign o' profit. But one day a misfit parson come along. He had failed to make good. He was tongue-tied an' he stuttered so bad that he made the mourners laugh an' had to quit preachin'. I gave him the job, an' it was the best deal I ever made. The fellow was so honest that he wouldn't use a postage-stamp for any private purpose, or take a chaw o' tobacco, without enterin' it on his account. He kept a big Bible on the counter, an' so many o' his sort hung around that the store looked like a Salvation headquarters; but the gang bought plenty o' goods an' paid cash. I never forgot that experience, an' when I saw the kind o' man Paul had got to be I raked 'im in.”
“You say he—sometimes talks to Miss Ethel?” Peterson asked, the flicker of vague rebellion in his eyes.
“Oh yes,” Hoag answered, indifferently. “She's been powerfully worried over Jennie's death, an' Paul, somehow, seems to brace her up with his odd views in regard to a happy land. Maybe”—Hoag hesitated, and then pursued more confidently—“maybe if you sorter talked a little on that line yourself it would catch her fancy. Anything is fair in love an' war when a woman is clean upset like Eth' is.”
“I believe in religion,” the banker declared, quite gravely. “I always have a good word for it. I don't believe this world could get along without it. All of us at the bank are in some church or other. I'm a Baptist, you know; all my folks are of that persuasion. And my church has made me it's treasurer. First and last our bank handles a pile of its funds. If the heathen have to wait for it sometimes we get the interest on it. But, say, Mr. Hoag, I'm sort o' worried over this thing—I mean about this queer duck you've got working for you.”
“Well, don't let that bother you.” Hoag filled the awkward pause with a soft, satisfied chuckle. “Eth' understands what I want, and so does her ma. Both of 'em know I'd never give in to her marryin' such a—why, he belongs to the lowest stock this country ever produced—as nigh dirt-eaters as any folks you ever saw. He's picked up some learnin' out West, an' has got brains an' pluck; but no niece o' mine could tie herself to a bunch o' folks like that. Humph, I say—well, I reckon not! He'd not have the cheek to think of it. You leave the affair in my hands. I won't push matters now, but I will put in my oar at the right time.”
“Well, I don't want no womancoerced.” Peterson brightened even as he protested. “I don't want that exactly, but Miss Ethel is the girl I've been looking for. I can't get her out of my mind. She would be an ornament and a help to any rising man. I ought to marry; there is no sort of doubt on that line, and though I might look the field over she—well, she simply fills the bill, that's all. I'm going to erect a fine home on Peachtree Street, and I want her to preside over it.”
“An' I want a place to stop when I run down thar,” Hoag laughed. “You leave it to me.”
JEFF WARREN and the two women of his family were on their way back to their former home. A wagon, a rickety affair on wabbly wheels, covered by a clay-stained canvas stretched over hoops, and drawn by a skeleton of a horse, contained all their earthly possessions. Peering under the hood of the wagon, an observer might see two musty straw mattresses, an old hair-covered trunk, a table, three chairs, a box of dishes, and a sooty collection of pots, pans, kettles, pails, and smoothing-irons. Carefully wrapped in bedquilts, and tied with ropes, was the household joy, a cottage-organ. Tethered to the wagon in the rear was a cow which tossed her head impatiently under the rope around her horns, and dismally mooed to her following calf.
Jeff now belonged to the shiftless class of small farmers that drifts from one landowner to another, renting a few acres on shares and failing on at least every other crop. The three members of the family were equal partners in misfortune; for both Mrs. Rundel and her sister quite frequently toiled in the fields, using the hoe, the scythe, the spade, and in emergencies, when Warren's rheumatism was at its worst, even the plow. Still of irascible temper, and grown more sensitive under adversity, Jeff had quarreled or fought with almost every man from whom he had rented land, until he now found few who would deal with him.
As he walked at the side of the wagon in which his companions were riding, along the narrow mountain road, trampling down the underbrush which bordered the way, he had still about him a remnant of the old debonair mien which had made him a social favorite in his younger days.
Amanda, as is the case with many women who have foresworn matrimonial and maternal cares, had withstood the blight of time remarkably well. Her round, rosy face had few new angles or lines, and her voice rang with youthful joy when she spoke of once more beholding familiar scenes and faces. It was her sister who had changed to a noticeable degree. There was a lack-luster expression about Addie's light-brown eyes, which had been so childlike and beautiful. Her hair was thinner; her skin had yellowed and withered; her teeth, for the most part, were gone, and those which remained appeared too prominent, isolated as they were in bare gums, when she forced a smile over some remark of her cheerful sister.
Crude as she was, Addie had followed, her poor mental hands always outstretched to grasp it, an ever-receding masculine ideal. In Jeff Warren, with his love of music and courage before men and gallantry to all women, she had once believed she had found it. But ideals do not thrive so well under hardship as violets rooted in filth, and Addie's heart constantly ached for the lost and the unattainable.
Suddenly Jeff turned to his companions and smiled. “I reckon I've got a big surprise for you both,” he chuckled, his hand resting on the wagon-bed. “'Tain't the first o' April, but I've been foolin' you. I tol' you this was White Rock Mountain, but it ain't no such a thing. It is the south spur of our old Bald, and as soon as we pass through that gap up thar we'll see Grayson right at the foot.”
“You don't say!” Amanda clapped her hands in delight. “Lord, Lord, I shorely shall be tickled to get back! I want to shake hands with everybody within reach. You'll never pull me away again, Jeff—never!”
Addie, in her turn, said nothing. She scarcely smiled. She was inexpressibly pained by the thought of having to live among old friends and associates in the dismantled log cabin Jeff had reluctantly described. A reminiscent sob rose and died within her as she recalled the comfortable farm-house to which Ralph Rundel, who now seemed almost faultless, had taken her as a bride. To this another pang of memory was added. By her conduct, innocent though it was, she had driven her only child from her, and how many times had her tired heart gone back to the sturdy youth who had toiled so uncomplainingly, and, young as he was, borne so many burdens! Was Paul alive or dead? she often asked herself. If alive, how he must hate her! If dead, then the baby, which she now sometimes recalled with the awakening yearning of a mother's dry breast, was gone forever.
Slowly the horse tugged up the slope. “Whoa!” Amanda cried out suddenly. “I'm goin' to jump out an' walk on to the top. I'm simply crazy to git a look at the valley. Somehow it seems like the Promised Land flowin' with milk an' honey.”
Only too willingly the horse stopped, and she sprang down to the ground.
“Don't you want to walk a little, Addie?” she asked. “You'd better limber up your legs. I'm as stiff as a pair o' tongs.”
Mrs. Warren sadly shook her head and Jeff tossed the reins into her lap.
“Well, you drive,” he said. “We'll walk on to the top an' take a peep. I agree with you, Mandy. I don't feel like I'll ever want to leave this country ag'in. I want to die an' be buried among my kin.”
The two moved faster than the tired horse, and Addie saw them on the brow of the mountain, outlined against the blue expanse beyond. She noticed Jeff pointing here and there and waving his hand; even at that distance the glow of his animation was observable. Reaching the top, Mrs. Rundel caught their words, and in the depths of her despondency she wondered over their gratification.
“Not a new buildin' of any sort that I kin make out,” she heard her husband saying. “Thar, you kin see Jim Hoag's house above the bunch o' trees. It's had a fresh coat o' paint lately; look how bright the window-blinds are!”
“An' how green an' fresh everything seems!” commented the more poetic spinster. “Looks like thar's been plenty o' rain this summer. Oh, I love it—I love it! It's home—the only home I ever knowed.”
The horse paused close by them. The cow mooed loudly, and the calf trotted briskly up to her and began to butt her flabby bag with his sleek head.
“That looks like a different-shaped steeple on the Methodist meetin'-house,” Amanda commented, as she shaded her eyes from the sun and stared steadily off into the distance.
“I believe you are right, by hunky,” Jeff agreed. “This un is fully ten foot taller, unless them trees around it has been topped since we left.” He turned to his wife, and a shadow of chagrin crept across his face as he said: “I see the house whar you an' Rafe used to live—thar, just beyond Hoag's flour-mill. Well, thar's no use cryin' over spilt milk, old girl; you ain't goin' back to comfort like that, as scanty as it seemed when you had it, an' I was goin' to do such wonders in the money line. We'll have to swallow a big chunk o' pride to put up with a hut like our'n among old friends, but we've got to live life out, an' the cabin is the best we kin get at present, anyway.”
Addie, holding the reins in her thin fingers, rose to her full height, her weary eyes on her old home, which stood out with considerable clearness on the red, rain-washed slope beyond a stretch of green pasture. She saw the side porch, and remembered how Paul's cradle had stood there on warm afternoons, where she and Amanda had sat and sewed. Again that sense of lost motherhood stirred within her, and she was conscious of a sharp contraction of the muscles of her throat. Surely, she mused, after all there was no love like that of a mother's for her child, and in her own case there was so much to regret. The child had been beautiful—every one had noticed that. Its little hands were so chubby and pink; its lips like a cupid's bow. As a baby it had smiled more than any baby she had ever seen, and yet in boyhood the smile had gradually given way to a scowl of ever-increasing discontent and weariness of life and its clashing conditions.
Amanda and Jeff were now descending the mountain, and the horse plodded along behind them. They must hurry on, Jeff said, for the sun would soon be down and they must get to the cabin before dark, so as to unload and shape things up for the night. Fortunately, as he took care to remind them, they would not have to pass through the village, as the hut stood in the outskirts of the place, close to Hoag's property line.
Reaching the foot of the mountain, they took a short cut through some old unfenced fields to the cabin. Here their forebodings were more than realized. The two-roomed hut was worse than they had expected. It was built of logs, and had a leaning chimney made of sticks and clay. The rain had washed the clay out of the cracks between the logs of the walls, and the openings were stuffed with rags, paper, and dried moss. The door shutter, with broken hinges, was lying on the ground. The doorstep was a single log of pine, which the former inmate of the hut had chopped half away for kindling-wood. The wooden shutters to the tiny, glassless windows had gone the same way, along with several boards of the flooring.
“Mayburn lied to me like a dirty dog!” Jeff growled, his face dark with anger. “He said it was in decent shape—good enough for any farmer. When I see 'im I'll—”
“Yes, you will want to fight 'im, an' then we'll have no roof over us at all,” Amanda said, with a smile designed to soften her own disappointment as well as his. “I tell you, Jeff, we've got to make the best of it an' be thankful. We'll have decent neighbors, I'll bet. Look at that nice house right in our yard.”
“That's it,” Jeff thundered. “Mayburn wrote me this shack was all the house he had, an' that one is his, an' is empty. He insulted me by sizin' me up that way before I even got here.”
“Well, he'd have insulted hisse'f by puttin' us in it without the money to pay for it.” Amanda had no intention of adding fuel to her brother-in-law's wrath. “A fine house like that would be worth fifteen dollars a month at the lowest. You better not tackle 'im about it; he might offer it to us cash in advance—then I'd like to know what we'd do. You said this momin' that we'd have to buy our first groceries on a credit. Jeff, yore pride has been yore drawback long enough; you've got to smother it or it will smother you. Now pick up that door an' hang it some way or other. I won't sleep in a house that can't be shut up at night.”
Warren, quite beside himself in disappointment and ill-humor, replaced the shutter and then went to work unloading the furniture. He soon had it all within. Then he announced that he must leave them, to go up to the Square to buy the supplies of food they needed.
The two sisters had finished all that was to be done in the cabin, and were out in the desolate yard waiting for Warren to return.
“I see 'im,” Amanda cried. “He's comin' through the broom-sedge. He's took that way to keep from passin' Abe Langston's an' havin' to say howdy, He'll have to git over that or we'll never git along. He's got to take his medicine. The Lord's hard on 'im, but Jeff never was much of a Lord's man. It's the meek an' humble that the Lord favors, an' Jeff kicks ag'in' the pricks too much. Nothin' but a strong coffin an' plenty o' earth on top of it will ever humble that man.”
“He walks like he's bothered about something.” Mrs. Warren sighed, her slow gaze following her approaching husband's bowed form as he trudged through the thickening twilight. “Do you suppose they have refused to credit him?”
“I reckon not, for I see a bag o' something under his arm; but he's upset—you kin depend on it. He knows we are hungry, an' he'd strike a livelier gait than that if he wasn't mad as Tucker.”
As Jeff drew near they moved forward to meet him.
“Did you git anything to eat? That's what I want to know,” Amanda said, with her usual disregard of even the darkest of his moods.
It was as if he were going to make no response; but her eager hands were on the tow bag under his arm, and he sullenly answered in the affirmative.
“Smoked bacon.” She winked cheerfully at her sister. “I smell it. Sugar-cured in the bargain. Coffee, too, already parched an' ground. I'd know that a mile off if the wind wras in the right direction. I'm glad I put on the kettle.”
Jeff strode on heavily and deposited the bag at the door.
“We've all got to bunk in one room for to-night,” Amanda told him, as she untied the bag and began to take out the parcels. “There is no way fixed to keep the cow an' calf apart, an' she's got to graze or we can't have milk in the mornin', so I shut the calf up in the other room. It won't do no harm; it's clean and as gentle as a pet dog.”
“That's no way to do!” Jeff loweringly protested. “A thing like that would make us the laughin'-stock of the whole county. Besides, do you know that—” He seemed to hesitate, and then, as if he was thinking of something too unpleasant for discussion, he turned abruptly away. The two women saw him walk out to the well in the yard and stand still, his gaze on the village lights in the distance.
“What do you reckon is the matter with 'im?” Addie inquired, listlessly.
“Go to higher powers 'an me if you want to know,” Amanda retorted, as she proceeded to prepare supper. “Something shore has rubbed 'im the wrong way. He was out o' sorts when he left us, an' he's ready to kill somebody now.”
A few minutes later supper was on the table and Jeff was summoned. He entered the dimly lighted room, dropped his hat on a bed, and sat down at one end of the table. He was hungry, as the others well knew, and yet he ate with less apparent relish than usual. Amanda kept up an incessant flow of half-philosophical chatter with more or less comforting intent, but no part of it evoked comment from the head of the family.
Supper over, Jeff rose, reached for his hat, and was stalking out with bowed head at the low doorway, when Amanda suddenly uttered a little scream of astonishment.
“What's that in your—ain't that a pistol in your hip-pocket, Jeff Warren?” she demanded, while her weaker sister stared in slow, childlike wonder.
Impulsively and somewhat guiltily Warren slapped his hand on his bulging pocket and turned, blinking doggedly at the questioner.
“That's what it is!” he answered. His tone was sullen and defiant.
“Whar did you get it?” Amanda was now on her feet, leaning toward him in the meager light.
“I swapped my watch for it,” Jeff muttered; and he drew the brim of his hat lower over his burning eyes.
“Your watch!” Amanda cried. “Why, what are we goin' to do for a timepiece now? Besides, we didn't have to go armed all along that lonely mountain road; what is the need of a pistol here in the edge of town, among old friends an' law-abidin' neighbors?”
“That'smybusiness,” Warren snarled, and he turned out into the dark. “Folks willknowit's my business, too. You jest lie low an' see if they don't. I'll take care of number one.”
“I knowhowyou'll take care of number one,” Amanda sneered. “It will be by ignorin' numberthree, like you always have done when you get the devil in you as big as the side of a house. Right now you are just itchin' for a row with somebody, an' you are goin' to have it if I don't take you in hand.”
Warren's innate gallantry checked the hot outburst, the forerunner of which was quivering on his white lips, and without a word he went back to the well and stood with his hand on the windlass, a pitiful symbol of human discontent outlined against the star-strewn sky.
“I ain't a-goin' to put my hands in dish-water till my mind's at ease,” Amanda said to her sister. “Poor thing! I reckon you feel so bad about the way we are fixed that you ain't bothered about Jeff's fits: But it's different with your sister Mandy. When you was a young gal I worried about whether you'd git married or not. Later I was bothered about your first choice an' his jealous suspicions. Next I turned into a wet-nurse; I walked the floor with your baby at night, stickin' splinters in my feet at every step, an'nowI've got to keep your last investment from danglin' from the gallows like a scarecrow on a pole.”
Together the two women went to the brooding man at the well.
“What ails you, Jeff?” the wife began, with a timid sigh. “Anybody can see you are out o' sorts.”
“Well, I'lltellyou what's the matter,” Warren fumed. “If I'd knowed it sooner I'd 'a' left you two beyant the mountain an' come on an' got it over with. I don't want to disturb women with a thing o' this sort.”
“Wayburn's goin' to turn us out, that's my guess,” Amanda dropped. “The shack ain't no better'n a stable for hosses, but we can't have even that without more cash than we've got.”
“No, he's had one of his old quarrels with somebody,” Mrs. Warren suggested, despondently.
“I hain't had one, but I'mgoin' to,” Jeff threatened. “This State simply ain't wide enough, orlongenough, to hold me and the dirty young pup that left me lyin' in the road for dead an' went off an' gloated over me. He was a boy then, but he's a man now, an' fully responsible.”
“Why, what are you talkin' about?” Amanda's inquiring stare shifted excitedly back and forth between her sister's startled face and the sinister one of her brother-in-law. “Is Paul alive—have you heard from him?”
“Heard from 'im?” Jeff's white lip curled and trembled like that of a snarling opossum. “I hain't heard from him personally yet, nor seed 'im, but he's back here struttin' around in fine clothes with plenty o' money in his pocket, an' sayin' that—”
“Oh, Jeff, oh, Jeff, are you sure?” Mrs. Warren had turned pale, and it was as if she were about to faint. Amanda threw a strong arm about her and firmly shook her. “Don't keel over,” she said, almost fiercely. “I want to know about this thing right now. All this dinky-dinky talk about shootin' may pass onsomeoccasions, but when the big strappin' hulk I work for gits on a high jackass an' talks about killin' my own blood-nephew because he's got more clothes an' money than we got—well, I'll be in the game myself, that's the long an' short of it, I'll be in it tooth an' toe-nail.”
Never had Warren's gallantry been swathed in a blanket of such soaking dampness. He stared at his verbal antagonist with a fresh and uncurtained vision, and seemed unable to formulate a suitable reply.
“Never mind me.” Amanda's tone became distinctly conciliatory, and she smiled faintly: “I won't kill you till I git at the facts, anyway. I'm dyin' to know about the boy. Go on an' tell us.”
Jeff hesitated for a moment and then slowly complied. “He's back from the West. He got a fine education, an' worked his way up somehow. He's got a job on big pay managin' for Jim Hoag—he's got a hundred or more hands under him, an' the whole' county's braggin' about 'im. He rides around from one place to another with his head high in the air, givin' orders. When he landed here he told some cock-an'-bull tale about thinkin' I was underground, an' wanted the law to act, an' the like, but he's a liar.”
“Oh, I'm so glad; I'm so glad!” Amanda hugged her stupefied sister to her breast impulsively and kissed the sallow brow. “I always thought thar was come-out in that boy, an' now I know it. I'm dyin' to see 'im.”
“Well, he ain't dyin' to seeyou, or his mammy, either, in the plight you are in!” Jeff hurled at her. “They say he lives at Hoag's, an' goes gallivantin' about the country with that Atlanta gal, Ethel Mayfield. He's mad because we are back here to disgrace him with our dirt an' rags. He's the only livin' man that ever gloated over me, an' he's hand an' glove with my lifelong enemy. If you think I'm goin' to set back, an'—an'—”
“I don't care whether yousetback,standback, orrollback,” Amanda's eyes rekindled. “If you fetch a hair o' that boy's head I'll pull every one you got out an' leave 'em for bird's-nests. It's Paul's prosperity that's stickin' in your craw. Hand me that pistol!”
Jeff swayed defiantly backward, but she caught his arm and turned him round by sheer strength. “Give it to me, I say, or you'll never darken that cabin-door. When I give in to you an' Addie marryin' after all that slanderous talk you agreed, as a man o' honor, to withdraw all charges ag'in that poor boy. You did that, an' now stick a cannon in the scat o' your pants an' lie in wait for 'im like a cutthroat in the dark. Gi' me that thing!”
Reluctantly Warren complied, and stood silent as Amanda scrutinized the weapon in her hand. “We kin swap it for meal an' bacon,” she said. “Now let's all go to bed. I'm plumb fagged out.”