IT was quite dark when Pole went into the cottage. There was a fire in the little sitting-room, and by its light he could see his wife through the open door of the next room as she quietly moved about. He paused in the door-way and whispered:
“Are the childern asleep, Sally?”
“Yes, an' tucked away.” She came to him with a cautious step, and looked up into his face trustingly. “Little Billy kept askin' fer papa, papa, papa! He said he jest wasn't goin' to sleep anywhar except in his own place in yore lap.”
Pole went to the children's bed, looked down at the row of yellow heads for a moment, then suddenly bent and took the eldest boy into his arms.
“You goose!” Mrs. Baker exclaimed. “I'm sorry I said what I did. You'll spile 'im to death. Thar, I knowed he'd wake up! It's jest what you wanted.”
“Did you want yore papa?” Pole said, in cooing tones of endearment. “Well, Billy-boy, papa's got you, an' he ain't a-goin' to let no booger git you, nuther. Thar now, go back to sleep.” And in a big arm-chair before the fire Pole sat and rocked back and forth with the child's head on his shoulder.
“Whar've you been, papa?” Billy asked, sliding his arm around Pole's rough, sunbrowned neck and pressing his face to his father's.
“To feed the hogs, Billy-boy.”
“But you never took so long before,” argued the child.
“I had to watch 'em eat, Billy-boy—eat, eat, eat, Billy-boy! They hadn't had anything since mom-in' except roots, an' snags, an' pusley weeds, an' it was a purty sight to watch 'em stick the'r snouts in that slop. Now, go to sleep. Here we go—here we go—across the bridge to Drowsy Town.”
In a moment the child was sleeping soundly and Pole bore him tenderly back to bed. As he straightened up in the darkened room his wife was beside him.
“I declare you are agoodman,” she said—“the best-hearted, tenderest man in the world, Pole Baker!”
He looked at her steadily for an instant, then he said:
“Sally, I want you to do me a special favor.”
“What is it, Pole?” Her voice was full of wonder.
“Sally, now don't laugh at me, but I want you to go put on a piece o' red ribbon, an' let yore hair hang down yore back loose like you used to. Fix it that away an' then come in to the fire.”
“Pole, yo're foolish!” Mrs. Baker was really pleased, and yet she saw no reason for his whim.
“You do as I ax you, an' don't be long about it, nuther.”
He turned back into the firelight, and, watching him cautiously from the adjoining room, Mrs.
Baker saw him straightening out his shirt and brushing his coarse hair. Then, to her further surprise, she saw him take down his best coat from its peg on the wall and put it on. This was followed by a dusting of his rough shoes with a soiled, red handkerchief. In great wonder, Sally, with her hair loose on her shoulders, looked into the room.
“You ain't in earnest about that—that red ribbon, are you, Pole?” she faltered.
“Yes, I am,” he answered, without lifting his eyes from the fire. “I mean exactly what I say.”
“All right, then, I'll do it, but I don't see a bit o' sense in it,” she retorted. “It's about our bedtime, an' I know in reason that we ain't a-goin' nowhar at this time o' night an' leave the childem by the'r-selves.”
Still Pole did not look up.
“You go an' do as I tell you,” he repeated, a flush of growing embarrassment on his face.
Presently Mrs. Baker came in, even redder and more confused than he.
“Pole, what in the name o' common-sense—”
But he was gallantly placing a chair for her in front of the fire near his own. “Take a seat,” he said, bowing and motioning downward with his hands. “When you stood in the door jest then, lookin' fer all the world like you did away back in our courtin'-day, I come as nigh as peas callin' you 'Miss Sally.' Gee whiz! It's Mrs. Baker now—ain't it? How quar that sounds when a body looks back!”
“Pole,” she asked, as she sat down wonderingly, “are you goin' some'rs at this time o' night?”
“No, it ain't that,” he said, awkwardly—“it ain't that, Sally. It ain't meetin', nor singin'-school, nor a moonlight buggy-ride.'Tain't none o' them old, old things.” Pole crossed his long legs and leaned back in his chair. “I know in reason that you are a-goin' to laugh at me, an' say I'm plumb crazy, but it's this away, Sally: some'n's jest happened that's set me to thinkin', an' it occurred to me that I wasn't half thankful enough to the Almighty fer all His many blessin's, an'—”
“Pole”—Mrs. Baker was misled as to his meaning—“somebody's been talkin' religion to you. You want to begin holdin' family prayer ag'in, I reckon. Now, looky' here, ef you do, I want you to keep it up. I feel wuss ever'time you start in an' break off.”
“'Tain't that, nuther,” Pole said, eying the red chunks under the fire-logs. “Sally, thar ortn't to be no secret betwixt man an' wife. I had a talk with Cynthia Porter out at the hog-pen jest now about Nelson Floyd, an' the way she talked an' acted worked on me powerful. Seein' the way she feels about her sweetheart started me to thinkin' how awful I'd feel without you. An' with that come the feelin' that, somehow—somehow or other, Sally—me'n' you ain't jest pine-blank the way we used to be, an' I believe thar's a screw loose. I'd liter'ly die ef I didn't have you, an' I've been spittin' in the face o' Providence by the careless way I've been actin'. Now, Sally, I want you jest to set right thar, an' let's forget about them towheads in the next room, an' try an' forget all I've made you suffer fust an' last, an' let's git back—let's git back, Sally, to the old sweetheart-time. I know I'm tough, an' a sorry cuss before God an' man, but I've got the same heart a-beatin' in me to-night that was in me away back on Holly Creek. In this firelight you look as plump an' rosy an' bright-eyed as you did then, an' with that red ribbon at yore neck, an' yore hair down yore back, I feel—well, I feel like gittin' down on my knees an' beggin' you, like I did that time, not to take Jim Felton, but to give me a showin'. I wonder”—Pole's voice broke, and he covered his mouth impulsively with his hand—“I wonder ef it's too late to ax you to give me a chance to prove myself a good husband an' a father to them thar childern.”
“Oh, Pole, stop!” Mrs. Baker cried out, as if in pain. “I won't let you set thar an' run yorese'f down, when you are the best-hearted man in this state. What is a little spree now an' then compared to the lot o' some pore women that git kicked an' cuffed, with never a tender word from the'r husbands. Pole, as the Lord is my judge, I kin honestly say that I—I almost want youjest like you are. Some men don't drink, but they hain't got yore heart an' gentle way, an' ef I had to take my choice over an' over ag'in, I'd choose a man like you every time.”
She rose suddenly, and with a face full of pent-up emotion she left the room. She returned in a moment.
“I thought I heard the baby wakin',” she said.
He caught her hand and pulled her gently down into her chair. “Yo're a liar, Sally,” he said, huskily. “You know yo're a-lyin'. You went out to wipe yore eyes. You didn't want me to see you cry.”
She made no denial, and he put his rough hand, with a reverent touch, on her hair.
“It ain't quite as heavy as it was,” he said. “Nor so fluffy. I reckon that's beca'se you keep it bound up so tight. When I fust tuck a shine to you, you used to run about them old hills as wild as a deer, an' the wind kept it tousled. Do you remember the day it got full o' cockleburs an' I tried to git 'em out? La me! I was all of a tremble. The Lord knows I never thought then that sech a sweet, scared, rosy little thing ud ever keep house fer me an' cook my grub an' be a mother to my childern. I never dreamt, then, that instead o' bein' grateful fer the blessin', I'd go off weeks at a time an' lie in a gutter, leavin' you to walk the floor in agony—sometimes with a nursin' baby an' not a scrap to eat. No, I never—”
“Hush, Pole!” With a sob, half of joy, half of sadness, Mrs. Baker put her hand over his mouth and pressed her face against his. “Hush, hush, hush!”
“But, thank God, I hope that day is over,” he said, taking her hand from his lips. “I've passed through a great crisis, Sally. Some'n' you don't know about—some'n' you mayneverknow about—that happened right here in these mountains, but it may prove to be my turnin'-p'int.”
His wife looked uneasily at the fire. “It's gittin' late, Pole,” she said. “We'd better go to bed.”
THE following evening was balmy and moonlit. Hillhouse was at Porter's just after supper, seated on the porch in conversation with Mrs. Porter.
“Yes, I believe I'd not ask her to see you to-night,” she was advising him. “The poor girl seems completely fagged out. She tries to do as much about the house as usual, but it seems to tire her more. Then she doesn't eat heartily, and I hear her constantly sighing.”
“Ah, I see,” Hillhouse said, despondently. “Yes,” the old woman pursued, “I suppose if you finally get her to marry you, you'll have to put up with the memory that shedidhave a young girl's fancy for that man, Brother Hillhouse. But she wasn't the only one. The girls all liked him, and he did show a preference for her.”
“Has she—has she heard the latest news—the very latest?” Hillhouse asked, anxiously. “Has she heard the report that Henry A. Floyd told Mr. Mayhew he had met Nelson and revealed that awful news about his parentage?”
“Oh yes; Mrs. Snodgrass came in with that report this morning. She knew as well as anything that Cynthia was excited, and yet she sat in the parlor and went over and over the worst parts of it, watching the girl like a hawk. Cynthia got up and left the room. She was white as death and looked like she would faint. Mrs. Snodgrass hinted at deliberate suicide. She declared a young man as proud and high-strung as Nelson Floyd would resort to that the first thing. She said she wouldn't blame him one bit after all he's suffered. Well, just think of it, Brother Hillhouse! Did you ever hear of anybody being treated worse? He's been tossed and kicked about all his life, constantly afraid that he wasn't quite as respectable as other folks. And then all at once he was taken up and congratulated by the wealth and blood around him on his high stand—and then finally had to have this last discovery rammed in his face. Why, that's enough to drive any proud spirit to desperation! I don't blame him for getting drunk. I don't blame him, either, for not wanting to come back to be snubbed by those folks. But what Idowant is fer him not to drag me and mine into his trouble. When my girl marries, I want her to marry some man that will be good to her, and I want him to have decent social standing. Even if Floyd's alive, if I can help it, Cynthia shall never marry him—never!”
“Does Miss Cynthia believe,” ventured the preacher, “that Floyd has killed himself?”
“I don't think she believes that,quite,” was Mrs. Porter's reply; “but she doesn't seem to think he'll ever come back to Springtown. Don't you worry, Brother Hillhouse. She'll get over this shock after a while, and then she'll appreciate your worth and constancy. If I were you, I'd not press my claim right now.”
“Oh, I wouldn't think of such a thing!” Hillhouse stroked a sort of glowing resignation into his chin, upon which a two-days beard had made a ragged appearance. “I've been awfully miserable, Sister Porter, but this talk with you has raised my hopes.” Mrs. Porter rose with a faint smile. “Now, you go home and write another good sermon like that last one. I watched Cynthia out of the corner of my eye all through it. That idea of its being our duty to bear our burdens cheerfully—no matter how heavy they are—seemed to do her a lot of good.” The color came into Hillhouse's thin face, and his eyes shone. “The sermon I have in mind for next Sunday is on the same general line,” he said. “I'm glad she listened. I was talking straight at her, Sister Porter. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I've been unable to think of anything but her since—since Floyd disappeared.”
“You are a good man, Brother Hillhouse”—Mrs. Porter was giving him her hand—“and somehow I feel like you will get all you want, in due time, remember—in due time.”
“God bless you, sister,” Hillhouse said, earnestly, and, pressing the old woman's hand, he turned away.
WHEN Cynthia heard the gate close behind the preacher, and from the window of her room had seen him striding away, she put a shawl over her shoulder and started out.
“Where on earth are you going?” her mother asked from the end of the porch, where she stood among the honeysuckle vines.
“I want to run across to Mrs. Baker's, just a minute,” Cynthia said. “I won't be long. I'll come right back.”
“I'd think you'd be afraid to do that,” her mother protested, “with so many stray negroes about. Besides, it's the Bakers' bedtime. Can't you wait till to-morrow?”
“No, I want to walk, anyway,” said Cynthia. “I feel as if it will do me good. I'm not afraid.”
“Well, I sha'n't go to bed till you come back,” Mrs. Porter gave in.
In a few minutes the girl was at the back-yard fence of Pole Baker's cottage. The door was open wide, and in the firelight Cynthia saw Mrs. Baker bending over the dining-room table.
“Oh, Mrs. Baker!” the girl called, softly.
“Who's that? Oh, it's you, Cynthia!” and the older woman came out into the moonlight, brushing her white apron with her hand. She leaned over the fence. “Won't you come in?”
“No, I promised mother I'd be right back. I thought maybe you could tell me if Mr. Baker had heard anything yet.”
“I'm sorry to say he hain't,” replied the little woman, sadly. “Him and Mr. Mayhew has been working all sorts of ways, and writing constant letters to detectives and the mayors of different cities, but everything has failed. He came in just now looking plumb downhearted.”
Cynthia took a deep breath. Her lips quivered as if she had started to speak and failed.
“But, la me! I haven't give up,” Mrs. Baker said, in a tone of forced lightness. “He'll come home all safe and sound one of these days, Cynthia. I have an idea that he's just mad at his ill-luck all round, and, right now, doesn't care what folks about here think. He'll git over all that in due time and come back and face his trouble like other men have done. It's a bitter pill fer a proud young man to swallow, but a body kin git used to most anything in time.”
“I'm afraid he's never coming home,” Cynthia said, in rigid calmness. “He once told me if he ever had any great trouble he would be tempted to drink again. Mr. Baker thinks he's been drinking, and in that condition there is no telling what has happened to him.”
“Well, let me tell you some'n'—let me give you a piece of sound advice,” said Mrs. Baker. “It's unaxed; but I'm a sufferin' woman, an' I'm a-goin' to advise you as I see fit, ef you never speak to me ag'in. Ef whiskey is keepin' Nelson Floyd away, an' he does come back an' wants to marry you, don't you take 'im. Tear 'im from yore young heart 'fore the roots o' yore love git too big an' strong to pull out. It may not be whiskey that's keepin' 'im away. He may 'a' taken a dram or two at the start an' be livin' sober somewhar now; or, then ag'in, as you say, some'n' may 'a' happened to 'im; but, anyhow, don't you resk livin' with 'im, not ef he has all the money on earth. Money won't stick to a drinkin' man no longer than the effects of a dram, an' in the mind of sech a fellow good intentions don't amount to no more than a swarm o' insects that are born an' die in a day. Of course, some mendoreform. I'm prayin' right now that the awful thing that happened t'other night to Pole will be his tumin'-p'int, but I dunno. I'll walk on thin ice over a lake o' fire till I kin see furder. Be that as it may, Cynthia, I can't stand by an' see another unsuspectin' woman start in on the road I've travelled—no, siree!”
“I think you are exactly right,” Cynthia said, under her breath, and then she sighed deeply. “Well, good-night. I must go.” She was turning away, when Mrs. Baker called to her.
“Stop, Cynthia!” she said. “You ain't mad at me, are you?”
“Not a bit in the world,” Cynthia answered. “In fact, I'm grateful for your advice. I may never have a choice in such a matter, but I know you mean it for my own good.”
As Cynthia entered the gate at home, her mother rose from a chair on the porch. “Now I can go to bed,” she remarked. “I have been awfully uneasy, almost expecting to hear you scream out from that lonely meadow.”
“There was nothing to be afraid of, mother,” and Cynthia passed on to her own room. She closed the door and lighted her lamp, and then took her Bible from the top drawer of her bureau and sat down at her table and began to read it. She read chapter after chapter mechanically, her despondent eyes doing work which never reached her throbbing brain. Presently she realized this and closed the book. Rising, she went to her window and looked across the grass-grown triangle to her mother's window. It was dark. All the other windows were so, too. The house was wrapped in slumber. She heard the clock strike nine. Really she must go to bed, and yet she knew she would not sleep, and the thought of the long, conscious hours till daybreak caused her to shudder.
Perhaps twenty minutes had passed since the clock struck, when a sound suddenly fell upon her ears that thrilled every muscle in her body. It was the far-off call of a whippoorwill! Was it the cry of the real bird or an imitation—hisimitation? She stood like a thing of stone, straining her ears for its repetition. There! There it was again, and nearer, clearer, more appealing. Ah, no creature of mere feathers and flesh could have uttered that tentative, soulful note! It was Nelson Floyd alive!—alive and wanting her—her first of all! Standing before her mirror, she tried to tie up her hair, which had fallen loose upon her shoulders, but her hands refused to do their office. Without a second's deliberation she sprang to her door, opened it, and ran on to the outer one. Passing through this, she glided across the porch and softly sped over the grass in the direction of the sound. She heard it again, in startling shrillness, and then, in the clear moonlight, she saw Floyd standing in front of the grape-arbor. As she drew near her heart stood still at the sight of the change which had come on him. It lay like the tracing of Death's pencil on his brow, in his emaciated features and loosely fitting, soiled, and unpressed clothing. For the first time in her life she yielded herself without resistance to his out-stretched arms. With no effort to prevent it, she allowed him to press his lips to hers. Childlike, and as if in fear of losing him again, she slid her arm round his neck and drew him tightly to her. Neither uttered a word. Thus they remained for a moment, and then he led her into the arbor and they sat down together, his arm still about her body, her head on his breast. He was first to speak.
“I was so afraid you'd not come,” he panted, as if he had been walking fast. “Have you heard of my trouble?” he went on, his voice sounding strange and altered.
She nodded on his breast, not wanting to see the pain she knew was mirrored in his face.
“Oh no, surely you haven't—that is, not—not what I learned in Atlanta about my—my mother and father?”
Again she nodded, pressing her brow upward against his chin in a mute action of consolation and sympathy.
He sighed. “I didn't think anybody knew that,” he said. “That is, anybody up here.”
“Mr. Mayhew went down and saw your uncle,” Cynthia found voice to say, finally.
“Don't call him my uncle—he's not that, except as hell gives men relatives. But I don't want to speak of him. The memory of his ashy face, glittering eyes, and triumphant tone as he hurled those facts at me is like a horrible nightmare. I'm not here to deny a thing, little girl. I came to let you see me just as I am. I fell very low. No one knows I'm here. I passed through Darley without meeting a soul I knew and walked all the way here, dodging off the road when I heard the sound of hoofs or wheels. I've come to you, Cynthia—only you. You are the only one out of this part of my life that I ever want to see again. I am not going to hide anything. After that revelation in Atlanta I sank as low as a brute. I drank and lost my head. I spent several days in New Orleans more like a demon than a human being—among gamblers, thieves, and cutthroats. Two of my companions confessed to me that they were escaped convicts put in for murder. I went on to Havana and came back again to New Orleans. Yesterday I reached Atlanta. I learned that the police had been trying to find me, and hid out. Last night, Cynthia, I was drunk again; but this morning I woke up with a longing to throw it all off, to be a man once more, and while I was thinking about it a thought came to me like a flash of light from heaven thrown clear across the black waste of hell. The thought came to me that, although I am a nobody (that name has never passed my lips since I learned it was not my own)—the thought came to me, I say, that there was one single and only chance for me to return to manhood and obtain earthly happiness. Do you follow me, dearest?”
She raised her head and looked into his great, staring eyes.
“Not quite, Nelson,” she said, softly. “Not quite.”
“You see, I recalled that you, too, are not happy here at home, and, as in my case, through no fault of your own—no fault, except being born different from others around you. I remembered all you'd told me about your mother's suspicious, exacting nature, and how hard you worked at home, and how little real joy you got out of life, and then it came to me that we both had as much right to happiness as any one else—you for your hard life and I for all that I'd suffered. So I stopped drinking. I have not touched a drop to-day, although a doctor down there said I really needed a stimulant. You can see how nervous I am. I shake all over. But I am stimulated by hope—that's it, Cynthia—hope! I've come to tell you that you can make a man of me—that you have it in your power to blot out all my trouble.”
“I don't see how, Nelson.” Cynthia raised her head and looked into his shadowy face wonderingly.
“I've come here to ask you to leave this spot with me forever. I've got unlimited means. Even since I've been away my iron lands in Alabama and coal lands in Tennessee have sprung up marvellously in value. This business here at the store is a mere trifle compared to other investments of mine. We could go far away where no one knows of my misfortune, and, hand-in-hand, make us a new home and new friends. Oh, Cynthia, that holds out such dazzling promise to me that, honestly, all the other fades away in contrast to it. Just to think, you'll be all mine, all mine—alone with me in the wide, wide world! I have no legal name to give you, it's true, but”—he laughed harshly—“we could put our heads together and pick a pretty one, and call ourselves by it. I once knew a man who was a foundling, and because they picked him up early in the morning he was called 'Early.' That wouldn't sound bad, would it? Mr. and Mrs. Early, from nowhere, but nice, good people. What do you say, little girl? It all rests with you now. You are to decide whether I rise or sink back again, for God knows I don't see how I could possibly give you up. I have not acted right with you all along in not declaring my love sooner, but I hardly knew my mind. It was not till that night at the mill that I began to realize how dear you were to me, but it was such a wonderful awakening that I did not speak of it as I should. But why don't you say something, Cynthia? Surely you don't love any one else—”
She drew herself quite from his embrace, but, still clasping one of his hands like an eager child, she said:
“Nelson, I don't believe I'm foolish and impetuous like some girls I know. You are asking me to take the most important step in a woman's life, and I cannot decide hastily. You have been drinking, Nelson, you acknowledge that frankly. In fact, I would have known it anyway, for you are not like you used to be—even your voice has altered. Nelson, a man who will give way to whiskey even in great trouble is not absolutely a safe man. I'm unhappy, I'll admit it. I've suffered since you disappeared as I never dreamed a woman could suffer, and yet—and yet what you propose seems a very imprudent thing to do. When did you want me to leave?”
“A week from to-night,” he said. “I can have everything ready by then and will bring a horse and buggy. I'll leave them down below the orchard and meet you right here. I'll whistle in the old way, and you must come to me. For God's sake don't refuse. I promise to grant any request you make. Not a single earthly wish of yours shall ever go unsatisfied. IknowI can make you happy.”
Cynthia was silent for a moment. She drew her hand from his clasp. “I'll promise this much,” she said, in a low, firm voice. “I'll promise to bring my decision here next Friday night. If I decide to go, I suppose I'd better pack—”
“Only a very few things,” he interposed. “We shall stop in New Orleans and you can get all you want. Oh, little girl, think of my sheer delight over seeing you fairly loaded down with the beautiful things you ought always to have had, and noting the wonder of everybody over your rare beauty of face and form, and to know that you are all mine, that you gave up everything for a nameless man! You will not go back on me, dearest? You won't do it, after all I've been through?”
Cynthia was silent after this burst of feeling, and he put his arm around her and drew her, slightly resisting, into his embrace.
“What is troubling you, darling?” he asked, tenderly.
“I'm worried about your drinking,” she faltered. “I've seen more misery come from that habit than anything else in the world.”
“But I swear to you that not another drop shall ever pass my lips,” he said. “Why, darling, even with no promise to you to hold me back, I voluntarily did without it to-day, when right now my whole system is crying out for it and almost driving me mad. If I could do that of my own accord, don't you see I could let it alone forever for your sake?”
“But”—Cynthia raised her eyes to his—“between now and—and next Friday night, will you—”
“I shall be as sober as a judge when I come,” he laughed, absorbing hope from her question. “I shall come to you with the clearest head I ever had—the clearest head and the lightest heart, little girl, for we are going out together into a great, mysterious, dazzling world. You will not refuse me? You are sent to me to repay me for all I've been through. That's the way Providence acts. It brings us through misery and shadows out into joy and light. My shadows have been dark, but my light—great God, did mortal ever enter light such as ours will be!”
“Well, I'll decide by next Friday night,” Cynthia said; “that's all I can promise now. It is a most important matter and I shall give it a great deal of thought. I see the way you look at it.”
“But, Cynthia,” he cautioned her, “don't tell a soul that I've been here. They think I'm dead; let them continue to do so. Friday night just leave a note saying that you have gone off with me and that you will write the particulars later. But we won't write till we have put a good many miles behind us. Your mother' will raise a lot of fuss, but we can't help that.”
“I shall not mention it to any one,” the girl agreed, and she rose and stood before him, half turned to go.
“Then kiss me, dearest,” he pleaded, seizing her hands and holding them tight—“kiss me of your own accord; you know you never have done that, not even once, since I've known you.”
“No; don't ask me to do that,” she said, firmly, “for that would be absolute consent, and I tell you, Nelson, frankly, I have not yet fully decided. You must not build on it too much.”
“Oh, don't talk that way, darling. Don't let me carry a horrible doubt for a whole week. Do say something that will keep up my hopes.”
“All I can say is that I'll decide by Friday night,” she repeated. “And if I go I shall be ready. Good-night, Nelson; I can't stay out longer.” He walked with her as far as he could safely do so in the direction of the farm-house, and then they parted without further words.
“She'll go—the dear little thing,” he said to himself, enthusiastically, as he walked through the orchard. When he had climbed over the fence he paused, looked back, and shrugged his shoulders. An unpleasant thrill passed over him. It was the very spot on which he had met Pole Baker that night and had been so soundly reprimanded for his indiscretion in quitting Nathan Porter's premises in such a stealthy manner.
Suddenly Floyd pressed his hand to his waistcoat-pocket and drew out a tiny object that glittered in the moonlight. “The engagement ring!” he exclaimed, in a tone of deep disappointment; “and I forgot to give it to her. What a fool I was, when she's never had a diamond in her life! Well”—he looked hesitatingly towards the farm-house—“it wouldn't do to call her back now. I'll keep it till Friday night. Like an idiot, I forgot, too, in my excitement, to tell her where we are to be married—that is, if she will go; but she won't desert me—I can trust her. She will be my wife—my wife!”
THE next morning, after breakfast, Mrs. Porter told her husband to harness the horse and hitch him to the buggy. “I've got some butter ready to sell,” she explained, “and some few things to buy.”
“You'll gain lots by it,” Nathan sneered, as he reluctantly proceeded to do her bidding. “In the fust place it will take yore time fer half a day, the hoss's time fer half a day, an' the wear an' tear on the buggy will amount to more than all you git fer the butter. But that's the way women calculate. They can't see an inch 'fore the'r noses.”
“I can see far enough before mine to hear you grumbling at dinner about the coffee being out,” she threw back at him; “something you, with all your foresight, forgot yesterday.”
“Huh, I reckon the old lady did hit me that pop!” Nathan admitted to himself as he walked away. “Fust thing I know I'll not be able to open my mouth—women are gittin' so dern quick on the trigger—an', by gum, Ididforgit that coffee, as necessary as the stuff is to my comfort.”
When Porter brought the horse and buggy around a few minutes later his wife was ready on the porch with her pail of neatly packed butter. Cynthia came to the door, but her mother only glanced at her coldly as she took up her pail and climbed into the vehicle and grasped the reins.
Reaching Mayhew & Floyd's store, she went in and showed the butter to Joe Peters, who stood behind one of the counters.
“I want eighteen cents a pound,” she said. “If towns-people won't pay it, they can't eatmybutter. Butter for less than that is white and puffy and full of whey.”
“What did you want in exchange for it, Mrs. Porter?” the clerk asked. “In trade, you know, we do better than for cash.”
“I want its worth in coffee,” she said, “that's all.”
“We'll take it, then, and be glad to get it,” Peters said, and he put the firm, yellow lumps on the scales, made a calculation with a pencil on a piece of wrapping-paper, and began to put up the coffee. Meanwhile, she looked about her. Mayhew sat at a table in the rear. The light from a window beyond him, falling on his gray head, made it look like a bunch of cotton.
“I reckon he's keeping his own books now that Nelson Floyd's away?” she said, interrogatively, to the busy clerk.
“A body mought call it book-keepin',” Peters laughed, “but it's all I can do to make out his scratchin'. He writes an awful fist. The truth is, we are terribly upset by Floyd's absence, Mrs. Porter. His friends—folks that like 'im—come fer forty miles, clean across the Tennessee line, to trade with him, and when they don't see him about they go on with empty wagons to Darley. It's mighty nigh runnin' the old man crazy. He sees now who was butterin' his bread. Ef Nelson was to come back now the old cuss 'ud dress 'im out in purple an' fine linen an' keep 'im in a glass case.”
“Do you expect Floyd to come back?” Mrs. Porter was putting the damp napkin back into her empty pail. Indifference lay in her face and voice but had not reached her nervous fingers.
“Mrs. Porter”—Peters spoke lower. He came around the counter and joined her on the threshold of the door—“I'm a-goin' to let you on to some'n' that I'm afeard to tell even the old man. The Lord knows I wouldn't have Mrs. Snodgrass an' her team git hold of it fer the world. You see, ef I was to talk too much I mought lose my job. Anyway, I don't want to express an opinion jest on bare suspicion, but I know you've got a silent tongue in yore head, an' I think I know, too, why yo're interested, an' I'm in sympathy with you an'—an' Miss—an' with all concerned, Mrs. Porter.”
“You said you were going to tell me something,” the old woman reminded him, her glance on the court-house across the street, her voice tense, probing, and somewhat resentful of his untactful reference to Cynthia.
“I'm a-goin' to tell you this much,” said Peters, “but it's in strict confidence, Mrs. Porter. Thar has been a lot o' letters fer Floyd on all sorts o' business affairs accumulatin' here. Mayhew's been openin' 'em all an' keepin' 'em in a stack in a certain pigeon-hole of the desk. Now, I seed them letters thar jest last night when I closed the store, an' this mornin' early, when I opened up an' was sweepin' out, I missed 'em.”
“Ah, I see!” exclaimed Mrs. Porter, impulsively. “Well, ef you do, you see more'n me,” Peters went on, “fer I don't know how it happened. It's bothered me all day. You see, I can't talk to the old man about it, fer maybe he come down here some time last night an' got 'em fer some purpose or other. An' then ag'in—well, thar is jest three keys to the house, Mrs. Porter, the one the old man has, the one I tote, an' the one Nelson Floyd tuck off with 'im.”
“So you have an idea that maybe—”
“I hain't no idea about it, I tell you, Mrs. Porter, unless—unless Nelson Floyd come back here last night an' come in the store an' got his mail.”
“Ah, you think he may be back?”
“I don't know that he is, you understand, but I'm a-goin' to hope that he ain't dead, Mrs. Porter. Ef thar ever was a man I loved—that is to say, downrightloved—it was Nelson Floyd. La me! I could stand here from now till sundown an' not git through tellin' you the things he's done in my behalf. You remember—jest to mention one—that mother had to be tuck to Atlanta to Dr. Winston to have a cancer cut out. Well, she had no means, an' I didn't, an' we was in an awful plight—her jest cryin' an' takin' on day an' night in the fear o' death. Well, Nelson got onto it. He drawed me off behind the store one day—as white as a sheet, bless your soul! fer it mighty nigh scared the boy to death to be ketched at his good acts—an' he up an' told me he was goin' to pay the whole bill, but that I mustn't tell nobody, an' I wouldn't tell you now ef mean reports wasn't out agin 'im. I hardly knowed what to do, fer I didn't want to be beholden to 'im to sech a great extent, but he made me take the money, an', as you know, mother got well ag'in. Then what did he do but raise my wages away up higher than any clerk in this part o' the state gits. That mighty nigh caused a split betwixt him an' the old man, but Nelson had his way. I tried to pay some on the debt, but he wouldn't take it. He wouldn't even let me give 'im my note; he'd always laugh an' turn it off, an' of late it sorter made 'im mad, an' I simply had to quit talkin' about it.”
“He had his good side.” Mrs. Porter yielded the point significantly. “I never denied that. But a man that does good deeds half the time and bad half the time gets a chance to do a sort of evil that men with worse reputations don't run across.” Mrs. Porter moved away towards her buggy, and then she came back, and, looking him straight in the eye, she said, “I hardly think, Joe, the fact that those letters are missing proves that Nelson Floyd was here last night.”
“You don't think so, Mrs. Porter?” Peters' face fell.
“No; Mr. Mayhew no doubt took them to look over. I understand he and Pole Baker are trying to get track of Floyd. You see, they may have hoped to get some clew from the letters.”
“That's a fact, Mrs. Porter,” and, grown quite thoughtful, the clerk was silent as he helped her into her buggy.
“Huh!” she said to herself, as she started off.
“Floyd's done a lot o' good deeds, has he? I've known men to act like angels to set their consciences at rest after conduct that would make the bad place itself turn pink in shame. I know your kind, Nelson Floyd, and a little of you goes a long way.”
MRS. PORTER drove down the village street between the rows of scattered houses till she arrived at a modest cottage with a white paling fence in front and a few stunted flowers. Here she alighted. There was a hitching-post, with an old horseshoe nailed near the top for a hook, and, throwing the reins over it, she went into the yard. Some one came to a window and parted the curtains. It was Hillhouse. He turned and stepped quickly to the door, a startled expression of inquiry on his face.
“Come in, come in,” he said. “Really, I wasn't looking for anybody to drop in so early in the day; and this is the first time you've ever called, Sister Porter.”
With a cold nod she walked past him into the little white-walled, carpetless hall.
“You've got a parlor, haven't you?” she asked, cautiously looking around.
“Oh yes; excuse me,” he stammered, and he awkwardly opened a door on the right. “Walk in, walk in. I'm awfully rattled this morning. Seeing you so sudden made me—”
“I hope the Marshall family across the street weren't watching as I got out,” she broke in, as she preceded him into the parlor. “People talk so much here, and I wanted to see you privately. Let a woman with a grown daughter go to an unmarried preacher's house and you never hear the last of it.”
She sat down in a rocking-chair and looked about her, he thought, with an expression of subdued excitement. The room was most simply furnished. On the floor lay a rag carpet, with rugs of the same material. A cottage organ stood in one corner, and a round, marble-topped table in the centre of the room held a lamp and a plush-covered album. On the white walls hung family portraits, black-and-white enlarged photographs. The window looking towards the street had a green shade and white, stiffly starched lace curtains..
“Your mother and sister—are they in the house?” Mrs. Porter asked.
“No,” he answered, standing in front of her. “They went over to McGill's as soon as breakfast was finished. You know their little boy got kicked by a mule yesterday.”
“Yes, I heard so, and I'm glad they are not here—though you'd better tell them I came. If you don't, and the Marshalls happen to mention it to them, they might think it strange.”
“You wanted to see me alone, then?” Hillhouse put out his stiff, tentative hand and drew a chair to him and sat down in it.
“Yes, I'm in trouble—great, great trouble,” the old woman said, her steely glance on his face; “and to tell you the truth, I don't see how I'm going to get around it. I couldn't mention it to any one else but you, not even Nathan nor mother. In fact, you ought to know, for it's bound to worry you, too.”
“Oh, Sister Porter, what is it? Don't keep me waiting. I knew you were in some trouble when I saw your face as you came in at the gate. Is it about—”
“Of course it's about Cynthia,” sighed the woman—“about her and Nelson Floyd.”
“He's dead, and she—” Hillhouse began, but Mrs. Porter stopped him.
“No, that isn't it,” she went on. “He's alive. He's back here.”
“Oh, is that so?” Hillhouse leaned forward, his face white, his thin lips quivering.
“Yes, I'll tell you about it,” went on Mrs. Porter. “Of late I've been unable to sleep for thinking of Cynthia and her actions, she's seemed so reckless and despondent, and last night I left my bed and started to creep in and see if she was asleep. I had on soft slippers and made no noise, and had just got to the end of the hall, when her door opened and she went out at the front.”
“Gone? Oh, don't—don't tell me that, Mrs. Porter!”
“No, not that, quite; but wait till I am through,” Mrs. Porter said, her tone hard and crisp. “When I got to the porch I saw her just disappearing in the orchard. And then I heard somebody whistling like a whippoorwill. It was Nelson Floyd. He was standing at the grape-arbor, and the two met there. They went inside and sat down, and then, as there was a thick row of rose-bushes between the house and the arbor, I slipped up behind it. I crouched down low till I was almost flat on the ground. I heard every word that passed between them.”
Hillhouse said nothing. The veins in his forehead stood out full and dark. Drops of perspiration, the dew of mental agony, appeared on his cheeks.
“Don't form hasty judgment,” Mrs. Porter said. “If I ever doubted, or feared my child's weakness on that man's account, I don't now. She's as good and pure as the day she was born. In fact, I don't believe she would have gone out to meet him that way if she hadn't been nearly crazy over the uncertainty as to what had happened to him. I don't blame her; I'd have done it myself if I'd cared as much for a man as she does about him—or thinks she does.”
“You say you heard what passed?” Hillhouse panted.
“Yes, and never since I was born have I heard such stuff as he poured into that poor child's ears. As I listened to his talk, one instant my heart would bleed with sympathy and the next I'd want to grab him by the throat and strangle him. He was all hell and all heaven's angels bound up in one human shape to entrap one frail human being. He went over all his suffering from babyhood up, saying he had had as much put on him as he could stand. He had come back by stealth and didn't want a soul but her to know he was here; he didn't intend ever to face the sneers of these folks and let them throw up his mother's sin to him. He'd been on a long and terrible debauch, but had sobered up and promised to stay that way if she would run away with him to some far-off place where no soul would ever know his history. He had no end of funds, he said; he'd made money on investments outside of Springtown, and he promised to gratify every wish of hers. She was to have the finest and best in the land, and get away from a miserable existence under my roof. Oh, I hate him—poisoning her mind against the mother who nursed her!”
“He wanted her to elope!” gasped Hillhouse—“to elope with a man just off of a long drunk and with a record like that behind him—her, that beautiful, patient child! But what did she say?”
“At first she refused to go, as well as I could make out, and then she told him she would have to think over it. He is to meet her at the same place next Friday night, and if she decides to go between now and then she will be ready.”
“Thank God, we've discovered it ahead of time!” Hillhouse said, fervently, and he got up, and, with his head hanging low and his bony hands clutched behind him over the tails of his long, black coat, he walked back and forth from the window to the door. “I tell you, Sister Porter,” he almost sobbed, “I can't give her up to him. I can't, I tell you. It isn't in me. I'd die rather than have her go off with him.”
“So would I—so would I, fearin' what Inowdo,” Mrs. Porter said, without looking at him.
“Fearing what you now do?” Hillhouse paused in front of her.
“That's what I said.” The old woman raised her eyes to his. Hillhouse sank down into his chair, nursing a new-born alarm in his lap.
“What do you mean, Sister Porter?” he asked, in a low tone.
“Why, I mean that I never heard any thoroughly rational man on earth talk just as Floyd did last night. I may be away off. I may be wronging him badly, but not once in all his tirade did he sayright in so many wordsthat he meant actually to marry her.”
“Great God, the damnable wretch!” Hillhouse sprang again to his feet. Mrs. Porter put out her hand and caught his arm and drew him down to his chair again.
“Don't decide hastily,” she urged him. “I laid awake all night trying to get it clear in my head. He had lots to say about the awful way the world had treated him, and that he felt, having no name, that he was unworthy of anybody as sweet and good as she was, but that if she would go off with him he'd feel that she had sacrificed everything for him and that that would recompense him for all he had lost. He even said that Providence sometimes worked that way, giving people a lot to bear at first, and then lifting them out of it all of a sudden.”
Hillhouse leaned forward till his elbows rested on his knees and he covered his ghastly face with his hands. For a moment he was silent. Mrs. Porter could hear him breathing heavily. Suddenly he looked at her from eyes that were almost bloodshot.
“Iunderstand him,” he declared. “He fell into a drunkard's hell, feeling that he was justified in such a course by his ill-luck, and now he has deliberately persuaded himself that both he and she would be justified in defying social customs—being a law unto themselves as it were. It is just the sort of thing a man of his erratic character would think of, and the damnable temptation is so dazzling that he is trying to make himself believe they have a right to it.”
“Really, that was what I was afraid of,” said Mrs. Porter, with a soft groan. “I heard him tell her that he would never be called by the name of Floyd again. Surely, a man has to have a name of some sort to get legally married, doesn't he?”
“Of course he has,” said Hillhouse. “But, my God, Sister Porter, what are you going to do?”
“That's the trouble,” answered the old woman. “I understand Cynthia well enough to know that she will not be coerced in the matter. She is going to think it all over, and if she decides to go with him no power on earth will stop her. She looks already better satisfied. The only thing I can see is for me to try to stir up her sympathies in some way. She's tender-hearted; she'd hate to be the cause of my suffering. We must work together, and in secret, Brother Hillhouse.
“Work together, but how?” the preacher groaned. “I can't think of a thing to do. If I appealed to her on the score of my love for her she would only balance that off by his, and all she imagines the scoundrel suffers.”
“Oh, his trouble isrealenough,” Mrs. Porter declared. “I tell you that in spite of my hatred for him, and even in spite of his cowardly insinuations against me ringing in my ears last night, I felt sorry for him. It would pierce a heart of stone to hear him talk as he did to her. If she resists, she will be a stronger woman than I would have been at her age and under the same circumstances. Pshaw! what would I have cared if I'd loved a man with all my heart and fate had deprived him of a name to give me—what would I have cared for the opinions of a little handful of people pent up here in the mountains when he was asking me to go with him out into the wide world and take my chances along with him? I don't know, Brother Hillhouse, but that I'd have gloried in the opportunity to say I was no better than he was. That's the way most women would look at it; that's the way, I'm afraid,shewill look at it.”
The preacher turned upon her, cold fury snapping in his eyes and voice. “You talk that way—you!” he snarled—“and you her mother! You are almost arguing that becausehisfather and mother branded him as they did that he and Cynthia have a right to—to brand their—their own helpless offspring the same way. Sin can't be compromised with.”
“Ah, you are right. I wasn't looking far enough ahead,” Mrs. Porter acknowledged. “No, we must save her. Heaven could not possibly bless such a step as that. I want her to hear somebody talk on that line. Say, Brother Hillhouse, if I can get her to come to church to-morrow, could you not, in a roundabout way, touch on that idea?”
“God knows I am willing to try anything—anything!” the minister said, despondently. “Yes, bring her, if she will come. She seems to listen to me. I'll do my best.”
“Well, I'll bring her,” Mrs. Sorter promised. “Good-morning. I'd better get back. They will wonder what's keeping me.”