IT was the evening of the following day. Ethel had heard of the return of Jeff Warren and was quite disturbed. Since early morning Paul had been away, and Ethel fancied that he was unaware of the arrival of the little family. In many ways she pitied Paul, and she gravely feared for his safety, for there was no mincing the fact that Jeff Warren was a most dangerous man, with a quick, uncontrollable temper. Mrs. Tilton, Mrs. Mayfield, Cato, and Aunt Dilly were all discussing the situation. That the two men would meet was not to be doubted; that Paul would have to defend himself or be injured was regarded as a certainty.
Ethel was at the window of her room just as the night began to fall, when Paul came in at the gate, and, with a weary step, advanced up the walk toward the house. Hoag was seated on the veranda, and Ethel heard the posts of his chair jar the floor as he rose and descended the steps. The two men met almost beneath her open window. Ethel was aware that their words might not be intended for other ears, and yet she was chained as by some weird and ominous spell to the spot. She dropped on her knees, leaned against the window-sill, and peered cautiously through the overhanging vines.
“Oh, yes, I heard he was here,” she caught Paul's reply to an obvious question, and she was sure there was an odd, changed tone in his voice which seemed to have lost its old hopeful vitality. She saw him take his handkerchief from his pocket and slowly wipe his brow as he stood with his dusk-draped profile toward her.
“Well, I just thought I'd put you on your guard,” Hoag was heard to say, with an unction of tone which men of his own type could have fathomed better than a delicate, frightened woman. “I'm sure I'd appreciate it to have a friend ofminecome to me at such a ticklish time. I know you've got grit. I've seed it put to a test. That's why folks are a-talkin' at such a rate. The opinion of one an' all is that what you did once you can an' will do ag'in.”
Ethel held her breath to catch Paul's tardy words. His head was lowered when he spoke. “So they think I'll shoot him again, do they—they think that?”
“You bet they know you won't let the skunk run roughshod over you, an' he's ready an' waitin'—bought 'im a gun right off—looked all about for you to-day, I'm told, an' some say he hinted that you'd skipped clean out to keep from facin' the music. I haven't met him. I hain't no use for the puppy, an' never did have. You've got a gun, haven't you?”
“No, I haven't owned one since I got back from the West.”
“You don't say—well, you'd better git one. I've got three. You can take your pick if you want to, but for the Lord's sake don't mix me up in it. I just offer it to you as I would to any other man in my employ.”
“Thank you.” They were moving toward the house, and the roof of the veranda hid them from the eyes of the awed and frightened observer. Ethel heard Paul uttering some unintelligible words in the hall below, and then he came up the stairs and entered his own room. She stood in the center of the floor, trembling from head to foot. He had been such a wonderful friend to her; under his advice she had soared to heights she had never reached before, and yet now he himself, strong as he had been in her behalf, was in peril—peril he was too brave to see. She heard her uncle's ponderous step as he strode through the long hall to the kitchen, and then it occurred to her to pray for guidance. She sank down on the edge of her bed and folded her delicate hands between her tense knees. Her lips moved, but she was not conscious of the words mutely escaping her lips. Suddenly she sprang up and started to the door, for Paul had left his room and was going down the stairs with a firm and hurried stride. Her hand on the door-knob, she leaned out into the darkened hall and peered after him. She had an impulse to call to him, yet the thought that she had no excuse for stopping him which would not reveal the fact that she had been eavesdropping checked both her voice and movement. She heard him crossing the veranda swiftly, and, returning to the window, she saw him on the walk striding toward the gate. Again she tried to cry out to him, and again she failed. As he reached the gate and passed out into the road she prayed that he would go toward the village rather than toward the cabin in which his stepfather lived. Her breast seemed to turn to stone the next instant, for he was taking the shortest cut toward the cabin. How calmly, fearlessly, he moved! How erectly he walked, and it was perhaps to his death! Ethel staggered back to her bed, sank on it face downward, and began to sob, began to pray as only he had taught her to pray, with all her young soul bent to its holy purpose.
Paul strode on through the gloaming. Overhead arched the infinite symbol of endlessness, with here and there a twinkling gem of light. On either side of him the meadows and fields lay sleeping, damp with rising dew. Fireflies were flashing signals to their fellows; insects were snarling in the trees and grass; a donkey was braying in the far distance; dogs were barking.
As Paul approached Warren's cabin the firelight from within shone through the open door out upon the bare ground in front. He paused for a moment, undecided as to how he should make his presence known—whether he should call out from where he stood, after the manner of mountain folk, or approach the threshold and rap. Just then a bulky, top-heavy looking object turned the corner of the cabin and advanced to the wood-pile near by. It was a man carrying a bunch of fagots on his shoulder. He threw it down, and, seeing Paul for the first time, he drew himself erect, staring through the darkness.
“Who goes thar?” he grunted.
Paul was about to reply when Warren suddenly grasped the handle of an ax, and swiftly swinging it to one side as if ready to strike a blow, he panted: “Oh, it'syou—is it? Well, I've been expectin' you all day. I knowed you'd hear I'd come, an' not lose time..Well, I hain't got no gun—my fool women folks took—”
“I haven't either, Jeff,” Paul laughed, appeasingly. “You've got the best of it this time; I'm at your mercy, and I'm glad of it. Turn about is fair play, and if you want to you can brain me with that ax. I really think I deserve it, Jeff. I've had seven years to regret what I did, and I don't want to lose a minute to tell you that I am sorry—sorry as ever a man was in this world.”
Silence fell. Warren leaned on his ax-handle and stared with wide eyes and parted lips. When he finally spoke his breath hissed through his teeth.
“Say, young feller, if you've come here to poke fun at me I tell you now you've—”
“I'm in no mood for that, Jeff,” Paul broke in, with increased gentleness. “I've done you a great injury. I was a silly boy at the time and I've sorely repented. I've come to beg your pardon—to beg it as humbly as I know how.”
“Good God! You—you say—you mean—”
“I'm sorry, that's all, Jeff. I want to see my mother. You've got more right to her than I have now, after my conduct, but I want to see her and ask her to forgive me, too. A man has but one mother, Jeff, and the time comes to all men when they know what it means to lose one. Is she in the house?” There was an awkward pause. Warren stood swaying like a human tree touched in every branch, twig, and leaf by clashing winds which had never so met before.
“Why, I thought—we thought—folksallthought”—Warren dropped his ax, made a movement as if to regain it, then drew his lank body erect, and stood staring through the gloom.
“I know,” Paul laughed softly and appealingly, “they think blood, and nothing but blood, can wash out a difference like ours; but there is a better way, Jeff, and that is through good-will. We've been enemies long enough. I want to be your friend. You've taken care of my mother and aunt all these years, and I am genuinely grateful for it.”
Warren turned his shattered countenance aside. “I didn't look for you to be this way at all—at all,” he faltered, huskily. “I reckon when I heard you was back here I got mad because you was makin' your way up so fast, and I've been steadily goin' down. The devil was in me, an' I thought he was in you, too. Lord, I never dreamt that you'd walk up like this to a—a—feller that—” Warren waved a dejected hand toward the cabin—“that had fetched your mammy to a pig-pen of a shack right in the neighborhood whar you are thought so much of.”
“A man doesn't deserve to be well thought of, Jeff, who considers himself better in any way than a less fortunate fellow-being. If you could really understand me you'd see that I actually thinkmoreof you than if you were well-to-do.”
“Oh, come off!” Warren sharply deprecated. “That's beyond reason. I used to be proud. In fact, I reckon that's what drawed me so much to your mother. I pitied her because your daddy made so little headway, but look at me now. Lord, Lord, jest look! Why, he was akingbeside me. I've plumb lost my grip.”
“I see—I know what you mean,” Paul said, sympathetically, “but you are going to get it back, Jeff, and I'm going to do all I can to help. Is my mother in the house?”
“No; the calf got to the cow, an' the two wandered off somewhar. Your ma is down in the meadow close to the swamp tryin' to find 'em.”
“And my aunt?”
“Oh, Mandy—why, you see”—Jeff appeared to be embarrassed anew—“you see, Mrs. Tobe Williams, who lives over in town, driv' by this evenin' about an hour by sun, and—and said she'd had so much trouble gettin' a woman to—to cook for her big family o' children that, if Mandy wouldn't mind helpin' her out in a pinch, she would pay well for it. I put my foot down ag'in it, but Mandy wouldn't listen to reason, an' got in the buggy and went. It seemed to me that was my last straw. If killin' myself would aid anybody the least bit I'd gladly—”
Warren's voice broke, and he stood quivering from head to foot in the effort to control his emotion. Paul advanced and extended his hand. “We must be friends, Jeff,” he said, with feeling. “Between us, we can make both of them happy.”
“Between us! You say—”
Warren clasped the outstretched hand and clung to it as if for some sort of support in the strange new storm which was tossing him as he had never been tossed before.
“I can't make you out, Paul,” he fairly sobbed; “by God, I can't! Seems like you are foolin', an' then ag'in I know you ain't—yes, Iknowyou ain't!”
“No, I'm in earnest,” Paul returned. “Do you think my mother will be back soon?”
“Yes; but you stay here an' let me step down whar she's at,” Warren proposed, considerately. “She ain't so well—in fact, she might get upset if—if she saw' you all of a sudden. I'll run down an'—an' tell her you are friendly. That'll be the main thing. She's been afraid you an' me would act the fool ag'in. She will be relieved and astonished. You wait here. I'll go tell 'er.”
When Warren had stalked away in the gloom Paul went to the cabin-door and glanced within. The pine-knots burning under the open fire of logs, the ends of which rested on stones, lighted the poor room, from which musty odors emerged, and he shuddered and turned away. Passing around the cabin, he approached the neat cottage near by. He went up on the little vine-clad porch and peered through the window's and side-lights of the door. Putting his hand into his pocket, he took out a key, and, thrusting it into the lock, he opened the door and entered. Striking a match, he held it above his head and went into all the rooms.
WARREN strode down the narrow winding path through the meadow. He crossed a swift-flowing creek on a narrow, sagging foot-log and went on toward the swamp. When he was some distance from the cabin he descried, beyond a patch of blackberry vines and a morass full of pond-lilies and bulrushes, the blurred outlines of a solitary figure. Then an unexpected sound fell upon his ears. It was a piping, uncertain voice endeavoring to run the scale after the manner of the exercises in a rural singing-class. It was Mrs. Warren. She was strolling toward him, beating time with a stiff index-finger held out before her.
“That's her!” Jeff mused. “She'll sing a different tune when I tell her what I know. By gum, the boy certainly floored me! Who would 'a thought it? Not me, the Lord knows.”
Skirting the boggy ground by passing along a little rise where velvety mullein-stalks grew in profusion, Jeff came face to face with his wife. With a crude instinct for dramatic surprise, he stood still without speaking and allowed her to approach closer to him. Listlessly intoning her scale and cutting the half darkness with her finger, she stopped with a start. Then, recognizing him, she laughed, and advanced confidently.
“You caught me,” she said, abashed. “I was jest wonderin' if me'n you'd ever sing another note. I declare my voice is all out o' whack. Some say, losin' the teeth spoils a voice. Well, we ain't goin' out to meetin', noway, I reckon, an' so we won't be asked to sing by the old crowd. I hain't got a thing fit to put on, an' they just sha'n't poke fun at my looks.”
“I thought you hit that top-note purty clear just now,” he said, evasively. He was wondering how he could smoothly explain the thing which had so startlingly upset all his calculations, and in which she was so soon to participate.
“I couldn't git the cow an' calf,” she listlessly informed him. “The fool beasts went clean over the hill. Bob Triggs saw 'em. He said they couldn't cross the river, an' we can drive 'em up to-morrow. But you don't get no milk to-night. Say, Jeff, just for the fun of it, let's try our old brag duet. If we kept at it in the evenin' for a few days we might sorter get back into harness.”
“I don't want to sing no more, never no more,” he answered, and something in the ring of his voice riveted her attention. She suddenly laid her hand on his arm and forced him to look at her.
“Jeff, what's the matter?” she demanded, the comers of her sad mouth drooping in dire expectation. “Some'n has happened. I know it. You come to meet me to let me know. Oh, Lord, Lord! you an' Paul hain't met—”
“Yes, but no harm was done,” he said, unsteadily. “I've seed 'im. He come to the cabin just now of his own accord. He—he wasn't lookin' for trouble; in fact, he talked nice. I never was so astonished since I was born. He—well, we shook hands an' made friends. I can't tell you—I don't know exactly how to explain it, but he's changed a powerful sight.' Nothin' like he used to be—don't talk the same—more like a lawyer, or a judge, or a high-up professor. Got a straight way about 'im, an' lots o' friendly feelin', an' even pity. He's waitin' up thar at the shack for you.”
“Forme?Forme?”
“Yes, he wants you, an' I told 'im if he'd stay I'd come down an' hurry you up.”
The woman's scant color diminished. Her eyes caught and reflected the meager light of the stars. Her thin breast shook under suppressed agitation. Her lips moved mutely. She twisted her bony fingers together and remained silent.
“You'd better come on,” Warren urged, gently. “It won't do to hold hard feelin's after a feller has put himself out to come forward like a man an'—”
“I ain't goin' a step!” Mrs. Warren blurted out in a sob of bewildered protest. “I—I don't want to see 'im ever ag'in! I ain't goin' up there. Tell 'im to go away. We ain't his sort. He's belittlin' himself to come from that fine house up there an' them fine folks to our dirty shack just because I am—am—his mother.”
“Come on, come on, don't begin that!” Warren was at the end of his resources. He deliberated for a moment, then caught his wife by the arm and attempted to draw her forward, but with a low cry she sank to the ground and buried her face in her lap. He stood over her, his gaze sweeping back to the cabin in the distance.
“Come on—what will he think?” Warren pleaded, in a bewildered tone. “I don't think I'd—I'd hurt his feelin's after—after—”
“I don't care what he thinks ordoes,” surged up from the submerged lips. “I'll not go a step till he's gone.”
“Well, I've done all I can,” Warren sighed. “But I'll have to make some excuse.”
Trudging back to the cabin, he met Paul advancing eagerly toward him.
“Couldn't you find her?” the young man inquired, anxiously.
“Yes, I found her.” Warren pointed to the swamp with a jerky sweep of his rheumatic arm. “I told 'er, too; but she wouldn't budge a step. She's ashamed. If you knowed everything, you'd understand how she feels. I'm dead sure she don't harbor a speck o' ill-will. She's a changed woman, Paul Rundel. She ain't the creature you left. I never give 'er no child, an' it looks like she's gone back in her mind to your baby days, an' she feels like she didn't do her full duty. I've ketched her many a time huggin' little youngsters, an' I knowed what that meant. She thought you was dead till yesterday, and of course you can see how—”
“I think I'll walk down there,” Paul said, his face turned toward the swamp. “I must see her tonight.”
“Well, maybe you'd better,” Warren acquiesced. “As soon as she sees how—how well-disposed an' friendly you are I reckon she'll act different. I don't know, but I say I reckon she will.”
As Paul neared the edge of the swamp he came upon his mother standing near a clump of sassafras bushes. Her face was turned from him, and, as the thick grass muffled his step, she was unaware of his approach.
“O Lord, show me what to do!” she was praying in 'tones which came distinctly to him on the still air. “Oh, show me—show me!”
“Mother!” he cried out, and even in the vague light he saw her start, and gaze at him in actual fear. Then she averted her face, and he saw her swaying as if about to fall. Springing to her side, he took her in his arms, and drew her frail body against his strong breast. In the desperate effort to avoid his eyes she hid her face on his shoulder. He could not remember ever having kissed her, or having been caressed by her, and yet he kissed now as naturally and tenderly as if he had fondled her all his life.
“Don't, don't!” she sobbed, yet there was a blended note of surprise and boundless delight in her opposition. Presently she struggled from his embrace and stood a foot or two away, now gazing at him in slow wonder while he took in her miserable physical aspect, the consequence of years of toil, poverty, and lack of proper nourishment.
“Aren't you glad to see me again, mother?” he asked.
“I don't know—I don't know,” she stammered, piteously. “I thought you'd try to kill me an' Jeff on sight. We heard that's what you come back for.”
“I came back to do my duty to God, to the law of the land, to you and every one. Mother, I am older and wiser now. Hard experience has opened my eyes and given me a clearer knowledge of right and wrong. We can't get away from duty. You are my mother, and a man owes his very life and soul to his mother.”
“But not to me, not tome,” she protested, fiercely. “I know what I done, an' how inhuman I acted toward you when I was so silly an' giddy, when you needed a mother's love an' care. You ought not to notice me in the road. You've riz, an' amount to some'n, an' me an'—an' Jeff would be mill-rocks about your neck. We are jest scabs—human scabs!”
“Listen, mother,” he broke in, passionately. “No words can describe my happiness. It seems to me that the very kingdom of Heaven is here among these old hills and mountains, and you gave it all to me, for you are responsible for my very being. But for you I'd never have existed. I'll show you what I mean, and then you will understand that poverty of the body can only increase the wealth of the soul.”
“But—but wearein such a disgraceful plight,” she faltered. “You saw that cabin; you see my rags an' noticed Jeff's looks. You know what folks that used to know us will say an' think. We thought we was so smart. We was goin' to roll in money an' fine things an' prove that we knowed what we was about, but misfortune after misfortune piled on us, till—”
“That's all to end,” Paul said, with firmness. “Do you know what I did to-day? As soon as I heard that Mayburn had put you in that dirty hut I rode over to his home and rented the cottage next door for you, and made a better all-round contract for Jeff—a contract under which he can easily earn money.”
“You—you say?” she gasped. She laid both her thin hands on his arms and flashed a hungry stare into his face. “You say you rented that cottage?”
“Yes, here is the key,” he answered, putting it into her hand. “You can move in to-night if you wish, but I wouldn't till to-morrow if I were you, for I have bought a complete outfit of new furniture in town and it will be out early in the morning.”
“Oh, Paul, Paul—my boy, my baby!” she was weeping now. Violent sobs shook her frail form from head to foot. Again he drew her into his arms, and stroked back her thin hair from her wrinkled brow. “And that is not all, mother dear,” he continued. “You've waited long enough for the comforts and things you love. I shall supply you with everything—food, clothing, and anything else you want. I am going to make you three happy. I am able to do it, and it will be the joy of my life.” She slowly dried her tears on the skirt of her dress. She looked at him, and a glad, childlike smile broke over her face as he led her homeward..
“It all seems like a pretty dream,” she muttered. “I'm afraid I'll wake in a minute.”
“Life ought to be that way always,” he said. “If it isn't beautiful it is our fault. If anything goes wrong with us it is because we are out of harmony with the laws of the universe, which are perfect. It is never the universe that is wrong, but only our blind notion of it.”
“But, oh, Paul—” She was not capable of rising to his philosophy, and she paused and drew herself sorrowfully from his arm. “You are doing all this, but I know how most folks look at things. They say—some do—that—that you are goin' with Ethel Mayfield, an' her folks are proud an' well off. They are not the same sort of stock as me an' Jeff, and if you tie yourself to us, why, may be she—”
An expression of inner pain rose to the surface of his face. “People are apt to make mistakes,” he said, awkwardly, and he forced a little misleading laugh. “It is true that I have driven out with her several times, but it was only because she needed an escort and her mother wished it. She and I understand each other, in a friendly way, but that is all.”
“So thar is nothin' inthat?”
“Nothing at all. Mother, I”—his voice caught suddenly, and he cleared his throat—“I am not really a marrying man. Marriage seems to be the happy fate of some fellows, but I am an exception. I have a great work before me—a sort of duty, as I see it—and these mountains are the best field on earth.”
“Oh, I'm so happy I hardly know what to do.” Her face was fairly glowing. “This thing will tickle Jeff an' Mandy to death. I am glad you made up with Jeff. He's all right, Paul. He means well. He's just been unlucky, that is all.”
“Yes, he is all right,” Paul agreed, “and things will run more smoothly with him from now on.”
They were nearing the cabin. They saw Warren in front of the door, a bowed, sentinel-like figure in the red light of the fire within. His face was toward them as they approached, but he made no movement. His wife quickened her step, and going ahead of her son she took her husband's hands.
“Jeff, Jeff!” she was heard to say, and Paul caught the words, “cottage,” “furniture,” and “oh, ain't it glorious?”
Warren said nothing, but Paul heard him sigh. He pressed his wife's hands spasmodically and then dropped them. Firmly he advanced to meet his stepson, and paused in front of him.
“The Lord ought to have let your shot go deeper that night, Paul,” he gulped, and for the first time in his life his eyes and voice were full of tears.
“The Lord caught that shot in His hand, Jeff,” Paul answered. “He saved us both, and we are wiser now!”
AS Paul walked homeward a wave of transcendental ecstasy fairly lifted him from the ground. The stars and all space seemed his. He laughed; he sang; he whistled; a prayer of mystic delight rippled from his lips.
He was drawing near the gate to Hoag's grounds when he noticed a man on a mule in the middle of the road. The rider's short legs swung back and forth from the plodding animal's flanks like pendulums, but his face was toward the village and Paul did not recognize him. Presently, however, when the gate was reached the rider was heard to cry “Whoa!” and Paul knew the voice. It was that of Tye, the shoemaker.
“How are you, Uncle Si?” Paul quickened his step and approached just as the old man was about to dismount.
“Oh!”—the cobbler settled back in his saddle—“I'm glad to see you. I've been over the mountain deliverin' a big raft o' work. I shod a whole family—two grown-ups an' ten children. I want to see you, an' I was goin' to hitch an' go to the house.”
“I see, I see,” Paul smiled easily. “Like all the rest, you want to warn me to look out for Jeff Warren.”
“Not a bit of it—you are away off!” Tye stroked his short beard with the fingers which held his riding-switch and grinned confidently. “That will take care of itself. I don't have to be told what a feller withyourlight will do. I'll bet a dollar to a ginger-cake that you've been to see 'em already, an' you didn't act the fool, neither.”
With a laugh Paul admitted it. “I had a narrow escape,” he added. “Jeff wanted to brain me on the spot with an ax.”
“But you bet he didn't,” Silas chuckled, “an' I'll lay he's lookin' at things in a brighter light than ever fell across his path before. But I've come to see you about business—strict earthly business, an' it's your business, not mine. Paul, you've heard of Theodore Doran an' the big cotton-factory he's just built at Chester?”
“Oh, yes,” Paul returned. “Some of my men have gone over there to work.”
“Well, what do you think? Doran is stoppin' at Kerr's Hotel, buyin' up cotton to run on next fall, an' this mornin' he come in my shop an' took a seat. You see, I used to know him an' his folks powerful well. He was in a Sunday-school class of mine, along with three other lads, away back in the seventies, when he was a tow-headed scrub of a boy that nobody ever thought would get rich, an' so I reckon he's purty free with me in confidential matters. Well, he set in to chattin' in a roundabout way, an' it wasn't long before I took notice that the talk always somehow got back to you an' your expert management of Hoag's affairs. Whar I fust began to smell a rat was when he said he'd been to every plant an' farm of Hoag's an' taken a look at 'em. Then what do you reckon he said? He said he had looked high an' low for a man to help 'im run the big factory, but hadn't found the right chap. Then he went on to say that from all he had seed an' heard you was the one he was lookin' for. He knowed me an' you was close friends, an' so he bantered me to find out if I thought you'd consider a change. I told 'im I didn't know; but, la me! if I didn't grease the wheels o' your cart no man in Georgia could. I said a lot, but he had heard more than I could tell 'im in a month o' Sundays. He said what he wanted was a feller who he knowed was honest to the core, an' he was sure he could sleep sound with a man at the helm that had come back here, like you did, as a bare matter of principle.”
“I am afraid you both are thinking entirely too well of me,” Paul faltered, “but I am glad you wanted to help me along.”
“Well,” Tye continued, “the upshot of the talk was that Doran didn't want no mix-up with Jim Hoag over tryin' to hire a man o' his, an' he asked me, as your friend, to sort o' sound you. He says he's willin' to pay a big price for your services, an' he thinks you will take an interest in the work. It is to be a model mill. They have built comfortable cottages for the workers, with a nice garden tacked onto each one, an' they don't intend to employ little children. Paul, it is a fine job—there is no better anywhar. I told 'im I didn't think you was bound to any written contract to Hoag, an' Doran said he was sure you wasn't, because Hoag wouldn't obligate hisse'f to nobody—even a good man.”
“No, I am not bound to him,” Paul said, “and I am just a little bit afraid he will not approve of something I am going to do. I have decided to help Jeff Warren and my mother.”
“I see.” Tye thrust his stubby fingers through the bristling mane of his mule, and bent down reflectively, “No, that will make 'im as mad as a wet hen. He hates Jeff with all the puny soul that's in him. Paul, take my advice. Doran will be at the hotel to-morrow an' wants to see you. Go have a talk with him.”
“It is plainly my duty,” Paul answered, with conviction. “There are certain expenses I have to meet, and I must sell my services for all they are worth.”
“Well, that's what I wanted to see you about.” Tye thrust his heels into the mule's flanks, shook the reins, clucked through his gashed teeth, and started homeward. “Good night; you know I wish you well.”
Paul entered the gate and started up the walk toward the house. As he drew near the steps he saw a shadowy form emerge from the darkened doorway, move across the veranda, softly descend to the ground, and noiselessly glide toward him. It was Ethel. Her head was enveloped in a light lace shawl held close at her chin, and her sweet face showed pale and rigid through the opening.
“Oh, Paul—” she began, but her timid voice trailed away into silence, and she stood staring at him, a fathomless anxiety in her eyes.
“Why, I thought you were in bed long ago,” he said, in surprise. “Has anything happened—gone wrong?”
“No, no,” she ejaculated; “but you—you, Paul—”
Again her power of utterance forsook her, and she stood before him with downcast eyes. The hand holding the shawl was quivering visibly; there was a flare of burning suspense beneath her eyelids.
“I see,” he said, regretfully. “Your grief has got the upper hand again. You can't fully master it yet. It may be that way for some time, but you must keep trying to view it right, for itisright, Ethel. I am more positive of it to-night than ever before.”
“It is notthat—oh, it isn'tthat!” Ethel cried. “It is you, Paul—you and—”
“I really don't understand,” he said, bewildered. “You say that I—”
She released her hold on the shawl and laid her hand on his arm. “I must own the truth,” she began, tremulously, her voice steadying bravely as she hurried on. “I listened to what you and my uncle said when you got home to-night. You were beneath my window and I could not resist it.”
“Oh, I see!” A light broke on him. “And you thought—”
“You went to your room and then hurried away—you went straight toward Jeff Warren's cabin, and—”
“And you counted on hearing gunshots,” he laughed, reassuringly. “Well, there were none. I owed him an apology and I made it. We are friends now, and I have my mother back.”
“Oh, Paul, was that all?” He could almost see her face glow in the darkness. “I was afraid—oh, I was afraid that all your troubles were going to begin over again!”
She was silent after that. His gentle words of reassurance seemed to fall on closed ears. She stood staring up at the window of her room for several minutes, and then she said, in a tone that was quite incomprehensible to him: “You think I am silly—I know you do, but worrying over Jennie's death has—has really unstrung me. I am not myself. I don't know what I am doing or saying. I give myself up to terrible fancies. Good night, Paul.”
He remained on the lawn after she had disappeared. He heard her slow step on the stair. His ecstatic spirit-dream was over. He sank on a rustic seat and bowed his head to his open hands. She was so dear to him and yet so absolutely unattainable!
THE next afternoon, following a conference with the owner of the cotton-mill, which took place at Tye's shop, Paul returned home. As he was about to ascend the stairs to his room he met Mrs. Tilton in the hall.
“Have you seen Jim?” she inquired; and when he had answered in the negative she added: “He was asking whar you was at. I thought I'd sort o' warn you to look out for him; he ain't in the best of tempers. Some'n's gone crooked somewhar or other. He actually cussed me just now an' slapped little Jack for the first time in over a year. The child was just comin' to git in his lap, an' he's been cryin' as if his heart was broke ever since.”
“Where is Mr. Hoag?” Paul asked.
“He's down at the tannery shippin' some leather.” There were still several minutes to spare before supper-time, and Paul decided to seek his employer at once, so he turned down to the tannery. As he approached the warehouse the rumble of the iron truck-wheels on the heavy floor reached him, and above the din he heard Hoag's gruff voice giving commands to two negro laborers. Stepping upon the platform, Paul saw his employer near the wide sliding door just within the dust-filled room, and he approached him.
“Anything I can do?” he asked, politely.
“Do! Does it look like thar's anything to do?”
Hoag hurled the words at him, his eyes flashing beneath beetling brows, his lip curled and drawn tight across tobacco-stained teeth.
Paul stared at him unflinchingly. “Shipments have always been made in the morning,” he said, calmly. He drew a note-book from his pocket and opened it. “I had this down for the first thing to-morrow.”
“It ain't whatyouhave down, but what I want done, when an' how I like it. I couldn't findyou, so I had to do itmyself.”
“We won't talk about that at all,” Paul retorted, drawn into anger he was trying hard to control. “I know I earn my salary, and I'll be treated like an intelligent human being while I am at work or I'll quit. Do you understand that? I'll quit!”
“Damn your soul”—Hoag looked about on the floor as if for something with which to strike the speaker to earth—“do you mean to stand thar an' give me any of your jaw?”
“Not any more than you need to make you act like a man.” Paul bent a steady and fearless gaze on him that made him flinch and drop his eyes. But Hoag was not subdued. He blinked sullenly for a moment, swore at a negro who was staggering past under an overloaded truck, followed him to the wagon at the door, where he stood, a mere husk of a man buffeted by fierce inner storms. Presently he came back to Paul; he had unconsciously crushed the order for the leather in his hand and broken the tip of his pencil.
“Thar's no use beatin' about the bush,” he began, in a tone which showed that he was now more sure of his ground. “I'm goin' to give you the truth straight from the shoulder. An' if you don't like it you kin lump it.” Another loaded truck was passing and Hoag stopped it. He made a flurried effort to count the rolls, and failing to do so, he waved his hand impatiently, swore at the man, and the truck was trundled on to the door.
“You needn't waste time getting to it,” Paul began firmly. “I know what's the matter with you. You've made up your mind that slavery is not yet over. You've heard about what I am doing for my mother, and—”
“That's it,” Hoag's dead face flared. “I may as well tell you the truth an' be done with it. Not a dollar—not one dollar of my money shall go to a low-lived, dirt-eatin' skunk like Jeff Warren.”
“Yourmoney? No; not a penny ofyourmoney,” Paul laughed, sarcastically.
“Well, haven't you gone an' moved his whole lay-out into Mayburn's new house an' laid in furniture an' supplies an'—an'—”
“Oh, yes, but not atyourexpense,” Paul continued to smile. “I knew you would want me to quit working for you when I did it; still, I did it, and I'm going to keep it up.”
“You say you are!” Hoag had never had his will more flatly opposed. “Well, listen to me, young man. You are gittin' entirely too big for your pants. I took you up when you come back here under the ban of the law an' couldn't 'a' got a job like this to save your neck. I've been payin' you a hundred a month, but seein' that you are countin' on livin' like a royal prince, an' spendin' your wages on the rag-tag an' bobtail scum of the earth, from now on your pay is cut to seventy-five dollars a month.”
The eyes of the two men met. Hoag's were burning with satanic triumph; Paul's held a certain gleam of pity, and yet they bore down with a steadiness that stirred the slow surprise of his companion.
“If you mean that as final,” Paul said, “I have something vital and positive to say myself.”
“I'll not pay a cent more,” Hoag panted. “I'll see you dead an' buried first. Any young man with the chances you had, to go an' throw 'em all away for a low-lived tramp clodhopper—”
“We'll leave Warren out of the matter,” Paul interrupted, almost fiercely. “My proposition to you is this, Mr. Hoag. I do not want to leave you, because certain things I have got under way in your interests cannot well be carried out by any one else, and it would be wrong for me to cause you to lose. Still, I know my value. If I didn't I'd not have brains enough to manage your affairs as I am managing them. Only this afternoon I have had the offer of the superintendency of the Doran Cotton Mills. The pay is double my present salary—with various chances of promotion.”
“What—what? You say that you—you say that Doran—” But Hoag's utterance had failed him completely. He stood quivering from head to foot, his lip hanging low, his teeth parted, his breath hissing as it passed through them.
“I don't want to quarrel with you,” Paul softened. “It is wrong for two men to quarrel—especially wrong for one who has learned the full evil of it as I have, and we need not do it now. But I have certain human rights which, for reasons of your own, you ignore, and are trying to trample underfoot. It is my right to help my mother, and any one else I see fit to help. I cannot do these things if I work for you for less than my services are worth on the market. I want to remain here, and if you will pay me the price offered by Doran I will do so, otherwise I shall leave you.”
“Pay you—pay you two hundred a month”—Hoag gasped—“pay you double what you now get so that you can spend it on a lazy, good-for-nothin' scamp? Not on your life! I'll see the last one of you dead first, an' laid out stark an' cold.”
“Then it is settled,” Paul answered, calmly. “I told Doran I'd let him have my decision in the morning. I'll leave you on the first of next month.”
“You can go an' be damned,” Hoag swore under his breath, and raised his clenched fist and shook it in Paul's face. “Git out o' my sight.”
And with that ultimatum Hoag stalked out to the platform. Paul looked at him regretfully a moment and then turned away.
He failed to see his employer at the supper-table. He was at work in his room near bedtime when he heard a heavy, dragging step on the stairs. The next moment Hoag leaned in the open doorway. His face was flushed with drink; there was a thwarted glare in his bloodshot eyes.
“I reckon you meant what you said about Doran?” he began, sullenly.
“Yes, I simply stated the facts,” Paul answered.
“You said you'd keep on with me for the price Doran's willin' to pay?”
“Yes,” Paul returned, with dignity. “I meant to put it that way.”
“Well, I reckon”—in blended chagrin and anger—“you are worth as much to me as you are to him. The offer comes through enemies of mine who want to injure me—fellers that stand in with Doran—a gang o' narrow church elders over there, who have got it in for me. You stay on, an' I'll try not to kick any more over your private matters. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“All right, then. That's all I wanted to say.” Hoag turned to the door. He stood there for a moment, then slowly faced Paul again.
“There is one other thing,” he said, half-sheepishly. “I got onto the fact that you went on Henry's note at the bank to git the money for 'im to go into that business on, an' I thought I'd tell you that I don't intend to let you lose it. Good business men think Henry is goin' to make money thar. In fact, I think myself that he may stick to it. I was in his store to-day an' his partner is well pleased with the work Henry is doin'. I expect to pay that note off, but I'll let 'im owe the bank a while. That will be best, I think.” And with that Hoag turned and went down the stairs.