Heretofore the settlement, poor and forlorn as it was, had escaped the curse of drunkenness. No liquor was sold in the vicinity, and David had succeeded in keeping his scholars from wandering aimlessly about the country from place to place—often the first use the blacks made of their freedom. Jubilee did not go to the liquor; but, at last, the liquor had come to Jubilee. Shall they not have all rights and privileges, these new-born citizens of ours? The bringer of these doctrines, and of the fluids to moisten them, was a white man, one of that class which has gone down on the page of Americanhistory, knighted with the initials C. B. "The Captain" the negroes called him; and he was highly popular already, three hours of the Captain being worth three weeks of David, as far as familiarity went. The man was a glib-tongued, smartly dressed fellow, well supplied with money; and his errand was, of course, to influence the votes at the next election. David, meanwhile, had so carefully kept all talk of politics from his scholars that they hardly knew that an election was near. It became now a contest between the two higher intelligences. If the schoolmaster had but won the easily won and strong affections of his pupils! But, in all those months, he had gained only a dutiful attention. They did not even respect him as they had respected their old masters, and the cause (poor David!) was that very thrift and industry which he relied upon as an example.
"Ole Mars Ammerton wouldn't wash his dishes ef dey was nebber washed," confided Maum June to Elsy, as they caught sight of David's shining pans.
The schoolmaster could have had a retinue of servants for a small price, or no price at all; but, to tell a truth which he never told, he could not endure them about him.
"I must have one spot to myself," he said feverishly, after he had labored all day among them, teaching, correcting untidy ways, administering simple medicines, or binding up a bruised foot. But he never dreamed that this very isolation of his personality, this very thrift, were daily robbing him of the influence which he so earnestly longed to possess. In New England every man's house was his castle, and every man's hands were thrifty. He forgot the easy familiarity, the lordly ways, the crowded households, and the royal carelessness to which the slaves had always been accustomed in their old masters' homes.
At first the Captain attempted intimacy.
"No reason why you and me shouldn't work together," he said with a confidential wink. "This thing's being done all over the South, and easy done, too. Now's the time forsmart chaps like us—'transition,' you know. The old Southerners are mad, and won't come forward, so we'll just sail in and have a few years of it. When they're ready to come back—why, we'll give 'em up the place again, of course, if our pockets are well lined. Come, now, just acknowledge that the negroes have got to have somebody to lead 'em."
"It shall not be such as you," said David indignantly. "See those two men quarreling; that is the work of the liquor you have given them!"
"They've as good a right to their liquor as other men have," replied the Captain carelessly; "and that's what I tell 'em; they ain't slaves now—they're free. Well, boss, sorry you don't like my ideas, but can't help it; must go ahead. Remember, I offered you a chance, and you would not take it. Morning."
The five months had grown into six and seven, and Jubilee Town was known far and wide as a dangerous and disorderly neighborhood. The old people and the children still came to school, but the young men and boys had deserted in a body. The schoolmaster's cotton-field was neglected; he did a little there himself every day, but the work was novel, and his attempts were awkward and slow. One afternoon Harnett Ammerton rode by on horseback; the road passed near the angle of the field where the schoolmaster was at work.
"How is your experiment succeeding?" said the planter, with a little smile of amused scorn as he saw the lonely figure.
"Not very well," replied David.
He paused and looked up earnestly into the planter's face. Here was a man who had lived among the blacks all his life, and knew them: if he would but give honest advice! The schoolmaster was sorely troubled that afternoon. Should he speak? He would at least try.
"Mr. Ammerton," he said, "do you intend to vote at the approaching election?"
"No," replied the planter; "nor any person of my acquaintance."
"Then incompetent, and, I fear, evil-minded men will be put into office."
"Of course—the certain result of negro voting."
"But if you, sir, and the class to which you belong, would exert yourselves, I am inclined to think much might be done. The breach will only grow broader every year; act now, while you have still influence left."
"Then you think that we have influence?" said the planter.
He was curious concerning the ideas of this man, who, although not like the typical Yankee exactly, was yet plainly a fanatic; while as to dress and air—why, Zip, his old valet, had more polish.
"I know at least that I have none," said David. Then he came a step nearer. "Do you think, sir," he began slowly, "that I have gone to work in the wrong way? Would it have been wiser to have obtained some post of authority over them—the office of justice of the peace, for instance, with power of arrest?"
"I know nothing about it," said the planter curtly, touching his horse with his whip and riding on. He had no intention of stopping to discuss ways and means with an abolition schoolmaster!
Things grew from bad to worse at Jubilee. Most of the men had been field-hands; there was but little intelligence among them. The few bright minds among David's pupils caught the specious arguments of the Captain, and repeated them to the others. The Captain explained how much power they held; the Captain laid before them glittering plans; the Captain said that by good rights each family ought to have a plantation to repay them for their years of enforced labor; the Captain promised them a four-story brick college for their boys, which was more than King David had ever promised, teacher though he was. They found out that they were tiredof King David and his narrow talk; and they went over to Hildore Corners, where a new store had been opened, which contained, among other novelties, a bar. This was one of the Captain's benefactions. "If you pay your money for it, you've as good a right to your liquor as any one, I guess," he observed. "Not that it's anything to me, of course; but I allow I like to see fair play!"
It was something to him, however: the new store had a silent partner; and this was but one of many small and silent enterprises in which he was engaged throughout the neighborhood.
The women of Jubilee, more faithful than the men, still sent their children to school; but they did it with discouraged hearts, poor things! Often now they were seen with bandaged heads and bruised bodies, the result of drunken blows from husband or brother; and, left alone, they were obliged to labor all day to get the poor food they ate, and to keep clothes on their children. Patient by nature, they lived along as best they could, and toiled in their small fields like horses; but the little prides, the vague, grotesque aspirations and hopes that had come to them with their freedom, gradually faded away. "A blue-painted front do'," "a black-silk apron with red ribbons," "to make a minister of little Job," and "a real crock'ry pitcher," were wishes unspoken now. The thing was only how to live from day to day, and keep the patched clothes together. In the mean while trashy finery was sold at the new store, and the younger girls wore gilt ear-rings.
The master, toiling on at his vain task, was at his wit's end. "They will not work; before long they must steal," he said. He brooded and thought, and at last one morning he came to a decision. The same day in the afternoon he set out for Hildore Corners. He had thought of a plan. As he was walking rapidly through the pine-woods Harnett Ammerton on horseback passed him. This time the Northerner had no questions to ask—nay, he almost hung his head, so ashamed was he of the reputation that had attached itself tothe field of his labors. But the planter reined in his horse when he saw who it was: he was the questioner now.
"Schoolmaster," he began, "in the name of all the white families about here, I really must ask if you can do nothing to keep in order those miserable, drinking, ruffianly negroes of yours over at Jubilee? Why, we shall all be murdered in our beds before long! Are you aware of the dangerous spirit they have manifested lately?"
"Only too well," said David.
"What are you going to do? How will it end?"
"God knows."
"God knows! Is that all you have to say? Of course he knows; but the question is, Do you know? You have brought the whole trouble down upon our heads by your confounded insurrectionary school! Just as I told you, your negroes, with the little smattering of knowledge you have given them, are now the most dangerous, riotous, thieving, murdering rascals in the district."
"They are bad; but it is not the work of the school, I hope."
"Yes, it is," said the planter angrily.
"They have been led astray lately, Mr. Ammerton; a person has come among them—"
"Another Northerner."
"Yes," said David, a flush rising in his cheek; "but not all Northerners are like this man, I trust."
"Pretty much all we see are. Look at the State."
"Yes, I know it; I suppose time alone can help matters," said the troubled teacher.
"Give up your school, and come and join us," said the planter abruptly. "You, at least, are honest in your mistakes. We are going to form an association for our own protection; join with us. You can teach my grandsons if you like, provided you do not put any of your—your fanaticism into them."
This was an enormous concession for Harnett Ammertonto make; something in the schoolmaster's worn face had drawn it out.
"Thank you," said David slowly; "it is kindly meant, sir. But I can not give up my work. I came down to help the freedmen, and—"
"Then stay with them," said the planter, doubly angry for the very kindness of the moment before. "I thought you were a decent-living white man, according to your fashion, but I see I was mistaken. Dark days are coming, and you turn your back upon those of your own color and side with the slaves! Go and herd with your negroes. But, look you, sir, we are prepared. We will shoot down any one found upon our premises after dark—shoot him down like a dog. It has come to that, and, by Heaven! we shall protect ourselves."
He rode on. David sat down on a fallen tree for a moment, and leaned his head upon his hand. Dark days were coming, as the planter had said; nay, were already there. Was he in any way responsible for them? He tried to think. "I know not," he said at last; "but I must still go on and do the best I can. I must carry out my plan." He rose and went forward to the Corners.
A number of Jubilee men were lounging near the new store, and one of them was reading aloud from a newspaper which the Captain had given him. He had been David's brightest scholar, and he could read readily; but what he read was inflammable matter of the worst kind, a speech which had been written for just such purposes, and which was now being circulated through the district. Mephistopheles in the form of Harnett Ammerton seemed to whisper in the schoolmaster's ears, "Do you take pride to yourself that you taught that man to read?"
The reader stopped; he had discovered the new auditor. The men stared; they had never seen the master at the Corners before. They drew together and waited. He approached them, and paused a moment; then he began to speak.
"I have come, friends," he said, "to make a proposition to you. You, on your side, have nothing laid up for the winter, and I, on my side, am anxious to have your work. I have a field, you know, a cotton-field; what do you say to going to work there, all of you, for a month? I will agree to pay you more than any man about here pays, and you shall have the cash every Monday morning regularly. We will hold a meeting over at Jubilee, and you shall choose your own overseer; for I am very ignorant about cotton-fields; I must trust to you. What do you say?"
The men looked at each other, but no one spoke.
"Think of your little children without clothes."
Still silence.
"I have not succeeded among you," continued the teacher, "as well as I hoped to succeed. You do not come to school any more, and I suppose it is because you do not like me."
Something like a murmur of dissent came from the group. The voice went on:
"I have thought of something I can do, however. I can write to the North for another teacher to take my place, and he shall be a man of your own race; one who is educated, and, if possible, also a clergyman of your own faith. You can have a little church then, and Sabbath services. As soon as he comes, I will yield my place to him; but, in the mean time, will you not cultivate that field for me? I ask it as a favor. It will be but for a little while, for, when the new teacher comes, I shall go—unless, indeed," he added, looking around with a smile that was almost pathetic in its appeal, "you should wish me to stay."
There was no answer. He had thrown out this last little test question suddenly. It had failed.
"I am sorry I have not succeeded better at Jubilee," he said after a short pause—and his voice had altered in spite of his self-control—"but at least you will believe, I hope, that I have tried."
"Dat's so"; "Dat's de trouf," said one or two; the reststood irresolute. But at this moment a new speaker came forward; it was the Captain, who had been listening in ambush.
"All gammon, boys, all gammon," he began, seating himself familiarly among them on the fence-rail. "The season for planting's over, and your work would be thrown away in that field of his. He knows it, too; he only wants to see you marching around to his whistling. And he pays you double wages, does he? Double wages for perfectly useless work! Doesn't that show, clear as daylight, what he's up to? If he hankers so after your future—your next winter, and all that—why don't he give yer the money right out, if he's so flush? But no; he wants to put you to work, and that's all there is of it. He can't deny a word I've said, either."
"I do not deny that I wish you to work, friends," began David—
"There! he tells yer so himself," said the Captain; "he wants yer back in yer old places again.Iseen him talking to old Ammerton the other day. Give 'em a chance, them two classes, and they'll have you slaves a second time before you know it."
"Never!" cried David. "Friends, it is not possible that you can believe this man! We have given our lives to make you free," he added passionately; "we came down among you, bearing your freedom in our hands—"
"Come, now—I'm a Northerner too, ain't I?" interrupted the Captain. "There's two kinds of Northerners, boys.Iwas in the army, and that's more than he can say. Much freedomhebrought down inhishands, safe at home in his narrer-minded, penny-scraping village! He wasn't in the army at all, boys, and he can't tell you he was."
This was true; the schoolmaster could not. Neither could he tell them what was also true, namely, that the Captain had been anattachéof a sutler's tent, and nothing more. But the sharp-witted Captain had the whole history of his opponent at his fingers' ends.
"Come along, boys," said this jovial leader; "we'll have suthin' to drink the health of this tremenjous soldier in—this fellow as fought so hard for you and for your freedom. I always thought he looked like a fighting man, with them fine broad shoulders of his!" He laughed loudly, and the men trooped into the store after him. The schoolmaster, alone outside, knew that his chance was gone. He turned away and took the homeward road. One of his plans had failed; there remained now nothing save to carry out the other.
Prompt as usual, he wrote his letter as soon as he reached his cabin, asking that another teacher, a colored man if possible, should be sent down to take his place.
"I fear I am not fitted for the work," he wrote. "I take shame to myself that this is so; yet, being so, I must not hinder by any disappointed strivings the progress of the great mission. I will go back among my own kind; it may be that some whom I shall teach may yet succeed where I have failed." The letter could not go until the next morning. He went out and walked up and down in the forest. A sudden impulse came to him; he crossed over to the schoolhouse and rang the little tinkling belfry-bell. His evening class had disbanded some time before; the poor old aunties and uncles crept off to bed very early now, in order to be safely out of the way when their disorderly sons and grandsons came home. But something moved the master to see them all together once more. They came across the green, wondering, and entered the schoolroom; some of the younger wives came too, and the children. The master waited, letter in hand. When they were all seated—
"Friends," he said, "I have called you together to speak to you of a matter which lies very near my own heart. Things are not going on well at Jubilee. The men drink; the children go in rags. Is this true?"
Groans and slow assenting nods answered him. One old woman shrieked out shrilly, "It is de Lord's will," and rocked her body to and fro.
"No, it is not the Lord's will," answered the schoolmaster gently; "you must not think so. You must strive to reclaim those who have gone astray; you must endeavor to inspire them with renewed aspirations toward a higher plane of life; you must—I mean," he said, correcting himself, "you must try to keep the men from going over to the Corners and getting drunk."
"But dey will do it, sah; what can we do?" said Uncle Scipio, who sat leaning his chin upon his crutch and peering at the teacher with sharp intelligence in his old eyes. "If dey won't stay fo' you, sah, will dey stay fo' us?"
"That is what I was coming to," said the master. (They had opened the subject even before he could get to it! They saw it too, then—his utter lack of influence.) "I have not succeeded here as I hoped to succeed, friends; I have not the influence I ought to have." Then he paused. "Perhaps the best thing I can do will be to go away," he added, looking quickly from face to face to catch the expression. But there was nothing visible. The children stared stolidly back, and the old people sat unmoved; he even fancied that he could detect relief in the eyes of one or two, quickly suppressed, however, by the innate politeness of the race. A sudden mist came over his eyes; he had thought that perhaps some of them would care a little. He hurried on: "I have written to the North for a new teacher for you, a man of your own people, who will not only teach you, but also, as a minister, hold services on the Sabbath; you can have a little church of your own then. Such a man will do better for you than I have done, and I hope you will like him"—he was going to say, "better than you have liked me," but putting down all thought of self, he added, "and that his work among you will be abundantly blessed."
"Glory! glory!" cried an old aunty. "A color'd preacher ob our own! Glory! glory!"
Then Uncle Scipio rose slowly, with the aid of his crutches, and, as orator of the occasion, addressed the master.
"You see, sah, how it is; you see, Mars King David," he said, waving his hand apologetically, "a color'd man will unnerstan us, 'specially ef he hab lib'd at de Souf; we don't want no Nordern free niggahs hyar. But a 'spectable color'd preacher, now, would be de makin' ob Jubilee, fo' dis worl' an' de nex'."
"Fo' dis worl' and de nex'," echoed the old woman.
"Our service to you, sah, all de same," continued Scipio, with a grand bow of ceremony; "but you hab nebberquiteunnerstan us, sah, nebber quite; an' you can nebber do much fo' us, sah, on 'count ob dat fack—ef you'll scuse my saying so. But it is de trouf. We give you our t'anks and our congratturrurlations, an' we hopes you'll go j'yful back to your own people, an' be a shining light to 'em for ebbermore."
"A shinin' light for ebbermore," echoed the rest. One old woman, inspired apparently by the similarity of words, began a hymn about "the shining shore," and the whole assembly, thinking no doubt that it was an appropriate and complimentary termination to the proceedings, joined in with all their might, and sang the whole six verses through with fervor.
"I should like to shake hands with you all as you go out," said the master, when at last the song was ended, "and—and I wish, my friends, that you would all remember me in your prayers to-night before you sleep."
What a sight was that when the pale Caucasian, with the intelligence of generations on his brow, asked for the prayers of these sons of Africa, and gently, nay, almost humbly, received the pressure of their black, toil-hardened hands as they passed out! They had taught him a great lesson, the lesson of a failure.
The schoolmaster went home, and sat far into the night, with his head bowed upon his hands. "Poor worm!" he thought—"poor worm! who even went so far as to dream of saying, 'Here am I, Lord, and these brethren whom thou hast given me!'"
The day came for him to go; he shouldered his bag and started away. At a turn in the road, some one was waiting for him; it was dull-faced Esther with a bunch of flowers, the common flowers of her small garden-bed. "Good-by, Esther," said the master, touched almost to tears by the sight of the solitary little offering.
"Good-by, mars," said Esther. But she was not moved; she had come out into the woods from a sort of instinct, as a dog follows a little way down the road to look after a departing carriage.
"David King has come back home again, and taken the district school," said one village gossip to another.
"Has he, now? Didn't find the blacks what he expected, I guess."
"INSTEADof going through the whole book, you can read this abstract, Miss Honor."
The speaker drew forth five or six sheets of paper, closely covered with fine, small handwriting. The letters were not in the least beautiful, or even straight, if you examined them closely, for they carried themselves crookedly, and never twice alike; but, owing to their extreme smallness, and the careful way in which they stood on the line, rigidly particular as to their feet, although their spines were misshapen, they looked not unlike a regiment of little humpbacked men, marching with extreme precision, and daring you to say that they were crooked. Stephen Wainwright had partly taught himself this hand, and partly it was due to temperament. He despised a clerkly script; yet he could not wander down a page, or blur his words, any more than he could wander down a street, or blur his chance remarks; in spite of himself, he always knew exactly where he was going, and what he intended to say. He was not a man who attracted attention in any way. Hewas small, yet not so small as to be noticed for smallness; he was what is called plain-looking, yet without that marked ugliness which, in a man, sometimes amounts to distinction. As to his dress, he was too exact for carelessness; you felt that the smallest spot on his loose flannel coat would trouble him; and yet he was entirely without that trim, fresh, spring-morning appearance which sometimes gives a small man an advantage over his larger brethren, as the great coach-dogs seem suddenly coarse and dirty when the shining little black-and-tan terrier bounds into the yard beside them. Stephen was a man born into the world with an over-weight of caution and doubt. They made the top of his head so broad and square that Reverence, who likes a rounded curve, found herself displaced; she clung on desperately through his schoolboy days, but was obliged at last to let go as the youth began to try his muscles, shake off extraneous substances, and find out what he really was himself, after the long succession of tutors and masters had done with him.
The conceit of small men is proverbial, and Stephen was considered a living etching of the proverb, without color, but sharply outlined. He had a large fortune; he had a good intellect; he had no vices—sufficient reasons, the world said, why he had become, at forty, unendurably conceited. His life, the world considered, was but a succession of conquests: and the quiet manner with which he entered a drawing-room crowded with people, or stood apart and looked on, was but another indication of that vanity of his which never faltered, even in the presence of the most beautiful women or the most brilliant men. The world had no patience with him. If he had not gone out in society at all, if he had belonged to that large class of men who persistently refuse to attire themselves in dress-coats and struggle through the dance, the world would have understood it; but, on the contrary, Stephen went everywhere, looking smaller and plainer than usual in his evening-dress, asked everybody to dance, and fulfilled every social obligation with painstaking exactitude. The world had no patience with him;he was like a golden apple hanging low; but nobody could pull him off the branch.
Stephen's conversation-friend (every unmarried man, though an octogenarian, has his conversation-friend) was Adelaide Kellinger, the widow of his cousin and favorite boyhood-companion, Ralph Kellinger. Adelaide was now thirty-five years of age, an agreeable woman, tall, slender, and exquisitely dressed—a woman who made people forget that an arm should be round, or a cheek red, when her slim, amber-colored gracefulness was present with them. Adelaide's house was Stephen's one lounging-place. Here he came to hear her talk over last evening's party, and here he delivered fewer of those concise apropos remarks for which he was celebrated, and which had been the despair of a long series of young ladies in turn; for what can you do with a man who, on every occasion, even the most unexpected, has calmly ready for you a neat sentence, politely delivered, like the charmingly folded small parcels which the suave dry-goods clerk hands to you across the counter? Stephen was never in a hurry to bring out these remarks of his; on the contrary, he always left every pause unbroken for a perceptible half moment or two, as if waiting for some one else to speak. The unwary, therefore, were often entrapped into the idea that he was slow or unprepared; and the unwary made a mistake, as the more observing among them soon discovered.
Adelaide Kellinger had studied her cousin for years. The result of her studies was as follows: She paid, outwardly, no especial attention to him, and she remained perfectly natural herself. This last was a difficult task. If he asked a question, she answered with the plainest truth she could imagine; if he asked an opinion, she gave the one she would have given to her most intimate woman-friend (if she had had one); if she was tired, she did not conceal it; if she was out of temper, she said disagreeable, sharp-edged things. She was, therefore, perfectly natural? On the contrary, she was extremely unnatural. A charming woman does not go aroundat the present day in a state of nature mentally any more than physically; politeness has become a necessary clothing to her. Adelaide Kellinger never spoke to her cousin without a little preceding pause, during which she thought over what she was going to say; and, as Stephen was slow to speak also, their conversations were ineffective, judged from a dramatic point of view. But Adelaide judged by certain broad facts, and left drama to others. Stephen liked to be with her; and he was a creature of habit. She intended that he should continue to like to be with her; and she relied upon that habit.
Afar off, counting by civilization, not by parallels of latitude, there are mountains in this country of ours, east of the Mississippi, as purple-black, wild, and pathless, some of them, as the peaks of the Western sierras. These mountains are in the middle South. A few roads climb from the plain below into their presence, and cautiously follow the small rivers that act as guides—a few roads, no more. Here and there are villages, or rather farm-centers, for the soil is fertile wherever it is cleared; but the farms are old and stationary: they do not grow, stretch out a fence here, or a new field there; they remain as they were when the farmers' sons were armed and sent to swell George Washington's little army. To this day the farmers' wives spin and weave, and dye and fashion, with their own hands, each in her own house, the garments worn by all the family; to this day they have seen nothing move by steam. The locomotive waits beyond the peaks; the water-mill is the highest idea of force. Half a mile from the village of Ellerby stands one of these water-mills; to it come farmers and farmers' boys on horseback, from miles around, with grist to be ground. And sometimes the women come too, riding slowly on old, pacing cart-horses, their faces hidden in the tubes of deep, long sun-bonnets, their arms moving up and down, up and down, as the old horse stretches his head to his fore-feet and back with every step. When twofarm-women meet at the mill-block there is much talking in the chipped-off mountain dialect; but they sit on their horses without dismounting, strong, erect, and not uncomely, with eyes like eagles', yet often toothless in their prime, in the strange rural-American way, which makes one wonder what it was in the life of the negro slaves which gives their grandchildren now such an advantage in this over the descendants alike of the whites of Massachusetts Bay and the plantations of the Carolinas. When the farmers meet at the mill-block, they dismount and sit down in a row, not exactly on their heels, but nearly so: in reality, they sit, or squat, on their feet, nothing of them touching the ground save the soles of their heavy shoes, the two tails of their blue homespun coats being brought round and held in front. In this position they whittle and play with their whips, or eat the giant apples of the mountains. Large, iron-framed men, they talk but slowly; they are content apparently to go without those finer comprehensions and appreciations which other men covet; they are content to be almost as inarticulate as their horses—honest beasts, with few differences save temper and color of hide. Across the road from the mill, but within sound and sight of its wheel, is Ellerby Library. It is a small wooden building, elevated about five feet above the ground, on four corner supports, like a table standing on four legs. Daylight shines underneath; and Northern boys, accustomed to close foundations, would be seized with temptations to run under and knock on the floor: the mountain boys who come to the mill, however, are too well acquainted with the peculiarities of the library to find amusement in them; and, besides, this barefooted cavalry cherishes, under its homespun jacket, an awkward respect for the librarian.
This librarian is Honor Dooris, and it is to her Stephen Wainwright now presents his sheets of manuscript.
"You think I have an odd handwriting?" he said.
"Yes," answered the librarian; "I should not think you would be proud of it."
"I am not."
"Then why not try to change it? I might lend you my old copies—those I used myself and still use. Here they are." And she took from her desk a number of small slips of paper, on which were written, in a round hand with many flourishes and deeply-shaded lines, moral sentences, such as "He that would thrive must rise at five"; "Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day"; and others of like hilarious nature.
"Thanks," said Stephen; "I will take the copies, and try—to improve."
The librarian then began to look through the abstract, and Stephen did not break the silence.
"Would it not be a good idea for me to read it aloud?" she said, after a while. "I can always remember what I have read aloud."
"As you please," replied Stephen.
So the librarian began, in a sweet voice, with a strong Southern accent, and read aloud, with frowning forehead and evidently but half-comprehension, the chemical abstract which Stephen had prepared.
"It is very hard," she said, looking up at him, with a deep furrow between her eyebrows.
"But not too hard for a person of determined mind."
The person of determined mind answered to the spur immediately, bent forward over the desk again, and went on reading. Stephen, motionless, sat with his eyes fixed on a spider's web high up in the window. When, too deeply puzzled to go on, the girl stopped and asked a question, he answered it generally without removing his eyes from the web. When once or twice she pushed the manuscript away and leaned back in her chair, impotent and irritated, he took the sheets from her hand, explained the hard parts with clear precision, gave them back, and motioned to her to continue. She read on for half an hour. When she finished, there was a flush on her cheeks, the flush of annoyance and fatigue.
"I must go now," she said, placing the manuscript in her desk, and taking down her broad-brimmed Leghorn hat, yellow as old corn, adorned with a plain band of white ribbon.
"You are not, of course, foiled by a little chemistry," said Wainwright, rising also, and looking at her without change of expression.
"Oh, no," she answered; but still she crossed the room and opened the door, as if rather glad to escape, and, with a parting salutation, left him.
Wainwright sat down again. He did not watch her through the window; he took up a late volume of Herbert Spencer, opened it at the mark, and began reading with that careful dwelling upon each word which is, singularly enough, common alike to the scientific and the illiterate. The mass of middle-class readers do not notice words at all, but take only the general sense.
Honor went down the road toward Ellerby village, which was within sight around the corner, walking at first rapidly, but soon falling into the unhurrying gait of the Southern woman, so full of natural, swaying grace. At the edge of the village she turned and took a path which led into a ravine. The path followed a brook, and began to go up hill gradually; the ravine grew narrow and the sides high. Where the flanks met and formed the main hillside, there was, down in the hollow, a house with a basement above ground, with neither paint without nor within. No fences were required for Colonel Eliot's domain—the three near hillsides were his natural walls, a ditch and plank at the entrance of the ravine his moat and drawbridge. The hillsides had been cleared, and the high corn waved steeply all around and above him as he stood in front of his house. It went up to meet the sky, and was very good corn indeed—what he could save of it. A large portion, however, was regularly stolen by his own farm-hands—according to the pleasant methods of Southern agriculture after the war. The Colonel was glad when he could safely house one half of it. He was a cripple, havinglost a leg at Antietam. He had married a second wife, and had a house overflowing with children. He was poor as a squirrel, having a nest in these woods and the corn for nuts, and little else besides. He was as brave as a lion, courteous as an old cavalier, hot-headed when aroused, but generally easy-tempered and cheery. He went to church every Sunday, got down on his one knee and confessed his sins honestly; then he came home in the old red wagon, sat on the piazza, and watched the corn grow. Honor was his niece, she shared in his love and his poverty like his own children. Mrs. Eliot, a dimpled, soft-cheeked, faded woman, did not quite like Honor's office of librarian, even if it did add two hundred dollars to their slender income: none of Honor's family, none of her family, had ever been librarians.
"But we are so poor now," said Honor.
"None the less ladies, I hope, my dear," said the elder woman, tapping her niece's shoulder with her pink-tipped, taper fingers.
Honor's hands, however, showed traces of work. She had hated to see them grow coarse, and had cried over them; and then she had gone to church, flung herself down upon her knees, offered up her vanity and her roughened palms as a sacrifice, and, coming home, had insisted upon washing out all the iron pots and saucepans, although old Chloe stood ready to do that work with tears in her eyes over her young mistress's obstinacy. It was when this zeal of Honor's was burning brightest, and her self-mortifications were at their height—which means that she was eighteen, imaginative, and shut up in a box—that an outlet was suddenly presented to her. The old library at Ellerby Mill was resuscitated, reopened, endowed with new life, new books, and a new floor, and the position of librarian offered to her.
In former days the South had a literary taste of its own unlike anything at the North. It was a careful and correct taste, founded principally upon old English authors; and it would have delighted the soul of Charles Lamb, who, beingconstantly told that he should be more modern, should write for posterity, gathered his unappreciated manuscripts to his breast, and declared that henceforth he would write only for antiquity. Nothing more unmodern than the old-time literary culture of the South could well be imagined; it delighted in old editions of old authors; it fondly turned their pages, and quoted their choice passages; it built little libraries here and there, like the one at Ellerby Mill, and loaded their shelves with fine old works. In the cities it expanded into associations, and large, lofty chambers were filled to the ceiling with costly tomes, which now look so dark, and rich, and ancient to Northern visitors, accustomed to the lightly bound, cheap new books constantly succeeding each other on the shelves of Northern libraries. These Southern collections were not for the multitude; there was no multitude. Where plantations met, where there was a neighborhood, there grew up the little country library. No one was in a hurry; the rules were lenient; the library was but a part of the easy, luxurious way of living which belonged to the planters. The books were generally imported, an English rather than a New York imprint being preferred; and, without doubt, they selected the classics of the world. But they stopped, generally, at the end of the last century, often at a date still earlier; they forgot that there may be new classics.
The library at Ellerby Mill was built by low-country planters who came up to the mountains during the warm months, having rambling old country-houses there. They had their little summer church, St. Mark's in the Wilderness, and they looked down upon the mountain-people, who, plain folk themselves, revered the old names borne by their summer visitors, names known in their State annals since the earliest times. The mountain-people had been so long accustomed to see their judges, governors, representatives, and senators chosen from certain families, that these offices seemed to them to belong by inheritance to those families; certainly the farmers never disputed the right. For the mountain-peoplewere farmers, not planters; their slaves were few. They were a class by themselves, a connecting link between the North and the South. The old names, then, placed Ellerby Library where it stood full thirty years before Honor was born. They did not care for the village, but erected the small building at a point about equidistant from their country-houses, and near the mill for safety, that boys or idle slaves, drawn by the charm which any building, even an empty shed, possesses in a thinly settled country, might not congregate there on Sundays and holidays, or camp there at night. But the library had been closed now for thirteen years; the trustees were all dead, the books moldy, the very door-key was lost. The low-country planters no longer came up to the mountains; there were new names in the State annals, and the mountain-farmers, poorer than before, and much bewildered as to the state of the world, but unchanged in their lack of the questioning capacity, rode by to and from the mill, and gave no thought to the little building with its barred shutters standing in the grove. What was there inside? Nothing save books, things of no practical value, and worthless. So the library stood desolate, like an unused lighthouse on the shore; and the books turned blue-green and damp at their leisure.
Stephen Wainwright traveled, on principle. He had been, on principle, through Europe more than once, and through portions of Asia and Africa; in the intervals he made pilgrimages through his own country. He was not a languid traveler; he had no affectations; but his own marked impersonality traveled with him, and he was always the most indistinct, unremembered person on every railroad-car or steamboat. He was the man without a shadow. Of course, this was only when he chose to step out of the lime-light which his wealth threw around his every gesture. But he chose to step out of it very often, and always suffered when he did.He was for ever adding up different opinions to find the same constantly recurring sum total of "no consequence." After each experience of the kind he went back into lime-light, and played at kingship for a while. He had been doing this for twenty years.
One day he came to Ellerby on the top of the stage. Nine Methodist ministers in the inside, returning from a missionary meeting, had made the lonely road over the mountains echo with their hearty hymns. One small brother climbed out at the half-way station on the summit, and, after drinking copiously from the spring, clasped his hands behind him and admired the prospect. Wainwright looked at him, not cynically, but with his usual expressionless gaze. The little minister drank again, and walked up and down. After a few moments he drank a third time, and continued to admire the prospect. Wainwright recalled vaguely the Biblical injunction, "Take a little wine for thy stomach's sake," when, behold! the small minister drank a fourth time hastily, and then, as the driver gathered up the reins, a last and hearty fifth time, before climbing up to the top, where Wainwright sat alone.
"I am somewhat subject to vertigo," he explained, as he took his seat; "I will ride the rest of the way in the open air, with your permission, sir."
Wainwright looked at him. "Perhaps he was weighting himself down with water," he thought.
The brother had, indeed, very little else to make weight with: his small body was enveloped in a long linen duster, his head was crowned with a tall hat; he might have weighed one hundred pounds. He could not brace himself when they came to rough places, because his feet did not reach the floor; but he held on manfully with both hands, and begged his companion's pardon for sliding against him so often.
"I am not greatly accustomed to the stage," he said; "I generally travel on horseback."
"Is there much zeal in your district?" said Wainwright.It was the question he always asked when he was placed next to a clergyman, varying it only by "parish," "diocese," or "circuit," according to appearances.
"Zeal," said his companion—"zeal, sir? Why, there isn't anything else!"
"I am glad to hear it," replied Wainwright.
The little minister took the remark in good faith.
"A believer?" he asked.
"Certainly," replied Stephen.
"Let me shake you by the hand, brother. This is a noble country in which to believe. Among these great and solemn peaks, who can disbelieve or who go contrary to the will of the Lord?"
Stephen made no answer, and the brother, lifting up his voice after a silence, cried again, "Who?" And, after a moment's pause, and more fervently, a second "Who?" Then a third, in a high, chanting key. It seemed as if he would go on for ever.
"Well," said Stephen, "if you will have answer, I suppose I might say the moonlight whisky-makers."
The little brother came down from the heights immediately, and glanced at his companion. "Acquainted with the country, sir?" he asked in a business-like tone.
"Not at all," said Stephen.
"Going to stay at Ellerby awhile, perhaps?"
"Perhaps."
"Reckon you will like to ride about; you will need horses. They will cheat you in the village; better apply to me. Head is my name—Bethuel Head; everybody knows me." Then he shut his eyes and began to sing a hymn of eight or ten verses, the brethren below, hearing him chanting alone on the top, joining in the refrain with hearty good will. As soon as he had finished, he said again, in a whisper, "Better apply to me," at the same time giving his companion a touch with the elbow. Then he leaned over and began a slanting conversation with the brother who occupied the window-seat onhis side; but, whenever he righted himself for a moment, he either poked Wainwright or winked at him, not lightly or jocularly, but with a certain anxious, concealed earnestness which was evidently real. "Head is my name," he whispered again; "better write it down—Bethuel Head." And when Wainwright, who generally did imperturbably whatever other people asked him to do, finding it in the end the least trouble, finally did write it down, the little man seemed relieved. "Their blood has dyed the pure mountain-streams," he whispered solemnly, as the coach crept down a dark gorge with the tree-branches sweeping its sides; "but I shall go out, yea, I shall go out as did David against Goliath, and save one man—one!"
"Do," said Stephen. What the little brother meant he neither knew nor cared to know; going through life without questions he had found to be the easiest way. Besides, he was very tired. He had never "rejoiced in his strength," even when he was young; he had always had just enough to carry him through, with nothing over. The seven hours on the mountain-road, which climbed straight up on one side of the Blue Ridge, and straight down on the other, now over solid rock, now deep in red clay, now plunging through a break-neck gorge, now crossing a rushing stream so often that the route seemed to be principally by water, had driven him into the dull lethargy which was the worst ailment he knew; for even his illnesses were moderate. He fell asleep mentally, and only woke at the sound of a girl's voice.
It was twilight, and the stage had stopped at Ellerby Mill. Two of the ministers alighted there, to take horse and go over solitary roads homeward to small mountain-villages, one ten, one fifteen miles away. Brother Bethuel was leaning over the side, holding on to his tall hat, and talking down to a young girl who stood at the edge of the roadway on a bank of ferns.
"Masters is better, Miss Honor," he said, "or was the last time I saw him; I do not think there is any present danger."
"I am very glad," answered the girl with earnestness; her eyes did not swerve from the little minister's face, although Wainwright was now looking down too. "If we could only have him entirely well again!"
"He will be!—he will be!" answered Brother Bethuel. "Pray for him, my sister."
"I do pray," said the girl—"daily, almost hourly." Into her dark eyes, uplifted and close to him, Wainwright could look directly, himself unnoticed as usual; and he read there that she did pray. "She believes it," he thought. He looked at her generally; she did not appear to be either extremely young, or ignorant, or commonplace, exactly. "About eighteen," he thought.
"He has asked if his father has been told," continued the minister.
"No, no; it is better he should know nothing," said the girl. "Can you take a package, Mr. Head?"
"Yes, to-morrow. I abide to-night with Brother Beetle."
"I will have it ready, then," said the girl.
The stage moved on, she waved her hand, and the minister nodded energetically in return until the road curved and he could see her no longer. His tall hat was tightly on his head all this time; politeness in the mountains is not a matter of hat. They were but half a mile from Ellerby now, and the horses began to trot for the first time in eight hours. Brother Bethuel turned himself, and met Wainwright's eyes. Now those eyes of Wainwright were of a pale color, like the eyes of a fish; but they had at times a certain inflexibility which harassed the beholder, as, sometimes, one fish in an aquarium will drive a person into nervousness by simply remaining immovable behind his glass wall, and staring out at him stonily. Brother Bethuel, meeting Wainwright's eyes, immediately began to talk:
"A fine young lady that: Miss Honor Dooris, niece of Colonel Eliot—the low-country Eliots, you know, one of our most distinguished families. I venture to say, sir, that strikeat an Eliot, yes, strike at an Eliot, and a thousand will rise to beat back the blow. It would be dangerous, sir, most dangerous, to strike at that family."
"Are they troubled by—by strikers?" asked Stephen.
"Nobody ever harms anybody in this blessedly peaceful country of ours," said the little minister in a loud, chanting voice. Then he dropped to a conversational tone again. "Miss Honor has been to the library; she is writing some 'Reflections on the Book of Job,' and is obliged of course to consult the authorities. You noticed the old library, did you not?—that small building in the grove, opposite the mill; her father was one of the trustees. The front steps are down, and she is obliged to climb in by a back window—allowable, of course, to a trustee's daughter—in order to consult the authorities."
"And on Job they are such as—?"
"Well, the dictionaries, I reckon," said Brother Bethuel, after considering a moment. "She is not of my flock; the Eliots are, of course, Episcopalians," he continued, with an odd sort of pride in the fact. "But I have aided her—I have aided her."
"In the matter of Masters, perhaps?"
Brother Bethuel glanced at his companion quickly in the darkening twilight. He caught him indulging in a long, tired yawn.
"I was about to say, general charity; but the matter of Masters will do," he said carelessly. "The man is a poor fellow up in the mountains, in whom Miss Dooris is interested. He is often ill and miserable, and always very poor. She sends him aid when she can. I am to take a bundle to-morrow."
"And she prays for him," said Wainwright, beginning to descend as the stage stopped at the door of the village inn.
"She prays for all," replied Brother Bethuel, leaning over, and following him down with the words, delivered in a full undertone. Brother Bethuel had a good voice; he had preachedunder the open sky among the great peaks too long to have any feeble tones left.
"I do not believe anybody ever prays for me," was Wainwright's last thought before he came sharply into personal contact with the discomforts of the inn. And, as his mother died when he was born, perhaps he was right.
The next morning he wandered about and gazed at the superb sweep of the mountains. Close behind him rose the near wall of the Blue Ridge; before him stretched the line of the Alleghanies going down toward Georgia, the Iron Mountains, the Bald Mountains, and the peaks of the Great Smoky, purple and soft in the distance. A chain of giant sentinels stretched across the valley from one range to the other, and on these he could plainly see the dark color given by the heavy, unmixed growth of balsam-firs around and around up to the very top, a hue which gives the name Black Mountain to so many of these peaks.
It was Sunday, and when the three little church-bells rang, making a tinkling sound in the great valley, he walked over to the Episcopal church. He had a curiosity to see that girl's eyes again by daylight. Even there, in that small house of God where so few strangers ever came, he was hardly noticed. He took his seat on one of the benches, and looked around. Colonel Eliot was there, in a black broadcloth coat seventeen years old, but well brushed, and worn with an air of unshaken dignity. The whole congregation heard him acknowledge every Sunday that he was a miserable sinner; but they were as proud of him on his one leg with his crutch under his arm as if he had been a perfected saint, and they would have knocked down any man who had dared to take him at his Sunday word. The Colonel's placid, dimpled wife was there, fanning herself with the slowly serene manner of her youth; and two benches were full of children. On the second bench was Honor, and the man of the world watched her closely in his quiet, unobserved way. This was nothing new: Wainwright spent his life in watching people. He hadstudied hundreds of women in the same way, and he formed his conclusions with minutest care. He judged no one by impulse or intuition, or even by liking or disliking. What personssaidwas not of the slightest importance to him in any way: he noted what theydid. The service was in progress, and Honor was down upon her knees. He saw her confess her sins; he saw her bow her head to receive the absolution; he saw her repeat the psalms; he watched her through every word of the Litany; he heard her sing; and he noted her clasped hands and strong effort of recollection throughout the recital of the Commandments. Then he settled himself anew, and began to watch her through the sermon. He had seen women attentive through the service before now: they generally became neutral during the sermon. But this girl never swerved. She sat with folded arms looking at the preacher fixedly, a slight compression about the mouth showing that the attention was that of determination. The preacher was uninteresting, he was tautological; still the girl followed him. "What a narrow little round of words and phrases it is!" thought the other, listening too, but weary. "How can she keep up with him?" And then, still watching her, he fell to noticing her dress and attitude. Poor Honor wore a gown of limp black alpaca, faithful, long-enduring servant of small-pursed respectability; on her head was a small black bonnet which she had fashioned herself, and not very successfully. A little linen collar, a pair of old gloves, and her prayer-book completed the appointments of her costume. Other young girls in the congregation were as poorly dressed as she, but they had a ribbon, a fan, an edge of lace here and there, or at least a rose from the garden to brighten themselves withal; this girl alone had nothing. She was tall and well rounded, almost majestic, but childishly young in face. Her dark hair, which grew very thickly—Wainwright could see it on the temples—seemed to have been until recently kept short, since the heavy braid behind made only one awkward turn at the back of the head. She had a boldly cutprofile, too marked for regular beauty, yet pleasant to the eye owing to the delicate finish of the finer curves and the distinct arch of the lips. Her cheeks were rather thin. She had no grace; she sat stiffly on the bench, and resolutely listened to the dull discourse. "A good forehead," thought Wainwright, "and, thank Fortune! not disfigured by straggling ends of hair. 'Reflections on the Book of Job,' did he say? Poor little soul!"
At last the service was ended, the sermon of dull paraphrases over; but Wainwright did not get his look. Honor sat still in her place without turning. He lingered awhile; but, as he never did anything, on principle, that attracted attention, he went out with the last stray members of the congregation, and walked down the green lane toward the inn. He did not look back: certain rules of his he would not have altered for the Queen of Sheba (whoever she was). But Brother Bethuel, coming from the Methodist meeting-house, bore down upon him, and effected what the Queen of Sheba could not have done: himself openly watching the church-door, he took Wainwright by the arm, turned him around, and, holding him by a buttonhole, stood talking to him. The red wagon of the Eliots was standing at the gate; Mrs. Eliot was on the front seat, and all the space behind was filled in with children. Black Pompey was assisting his master into the driver's place, while Honor held the crutch. A moment afterward the wagon passed them, Pompey sitting at the end with his feet hanging down behind. Brother Bethuel received a nod from the Colonel, but Madame Eliot serenely failed to see him. The low-country lady had been brought up to return the bows and salutations of all the blacks in the neighborhood, but whites below a certain line she did not see.
Evidently Honor was going to walk home. In another moment she was close to them, and Stephen was having his look. The same slight flush rose in her face when she saw Brother Bethuel which had risen there the day before; the same earnestness came into her eyes, and Stephen becamehaunted by the desire to have them turned upon himself. But he was not likely to have this good fortune; all her attention was concentrated upon the little minister. She said she had the package ready; it would be at the usual place. He would take it up, he replied, at sunset. She hoped the moon would not be hidden by clouds. He hoped so too; but old Marcher knew the way. She had heard that the East Branch was up. He had heard so also; but old Marcher could swim very well. All this was commonplace, yet it seemed to Wainwright that the girl appeared to derive a certain comfort from it, and to linger. There was a pause.
"This is my friend," said Brother Bethuel at last, indicating Stephen with a backward turn of his thumb; "Mr.—Mr.—"
"Wainwright," said Stephen, uncovering; then, with his straw hat in his hand, he made her a low bow, as deliberate as the salutations in a minuet, coming up slowly and looking with gravity full in her face. He had what he wanted then—a look; she had never seen such a bow before. To tell the truth, neither had Stephen; he invented it for the occasion.
"Met him on the stage," said Brother Bethuel, "and, as he is a stranger, I thought, perhaps, Miss Honor, the Colonel would let him call round this afternoon; he'd take it as a favor, I know." There was a concealed determination in his voice. The girl immediately gave Stephen another look. "My uncle will be happy to see you," she said quickly. Then they all walked on together, and Stephen noted, under his eyelashes, the mended gloves, the coarse shoe, and the rusty color of the black gown; he noted also the absolute purity of the skin over the side of the face which was next to him, over the thin cheek, the rather prominent nose, the little shell-like ear, and the rim of throat above the linen collar. This clear white went down to the edge of the arched lips, and met the red there sharply and decidedly; the two colors were not mingled at all. What was there about her that interestedhim? It was the strong reality of her religious belief. In the character-studies with which he amused his life he recognized any real feeling, no matter what, as a rarity, a treasure-trove. Once he had spent six weeks in studying a woman who slowly and carefully planned and executed a revenge. He had studied what is called religion enormously, considering it one of the great spiritual influences of the world: he had found it, in his individual cases so far, mixed. Should he study this new specimen? He had not decided when they came to the porch of the inn. There was no hurry about deciding, and this was his place to stop; he never went out of his way. But Honor paused too, and, looking at him, said, with a mixture of earnestness and timidity: "You will come and see uncle, I hope, Mr. Wainwright. Come this afternoon." She even offered her hand, and offered it awkwardly. As Wainwright's well-fitting, well-buttoned glove touched for an instant the poor, cheap imitation, wrinkled and flabby, which covered her hand, he devoutly hoped she would not see the contrast as he saw it. She did not: a Dooris was a Dooris, and the varieties of kid-skin and rat-skin could not alter that.
Brother Bethuel went on with Honor, but in the afternoon he came back to the inn to pilot Stephen to the Eliot ravine. Stephen was reading a letter from Adelaide Kellinger—a charming letter, full of society events and amusing little comments, which were not rendered unintelligible either by the lack of commas, semicolons, and quotation-marks, and the substitution of the never-failing dash, dear to the feminine pen. The sheets, exhaling the faintest reminiscence of sandalwood, were covered with clear handwriting, which went straight from page to page in the natural way, without crossing or doubling or turning back. There was a date at the top; the weather was mentioned; the exact time of arrival of Stephen's last letter told. It can be seen from this that Adelaide was no ordinary correspondent.
Stephen, amused and back in New York, did not caremuch about the Eliot visit; but Brother Bethuel cared, and so, with his usual philosophy, Stephen went. They talked of the mountains, of the mountain-people, of the villagers; then Brother Bethuel took up the subject of the Eliot family, and declaimed their praises all the rest of the way. They were extremely influential, they were excessively hot-tempered; the State was in a peculiar condition at present, but the Eliots held still the old wires, and it would be extremely dangerous to attack the family in any way. Stephen walked along, and let the little man chant on. He had heard, in this same manner, pages and volumes of talk from the persons who insist upon telling you all about people in whom you have not the remotest interest, even reading you their letters and branching off farther and farther, until you come to regard those first mentioned as quite near friends when the talker comes back to them (if he ever does), being so much nearer than the outside circles into which he has tried to convey you. Stephen never interrupted these talkers; so he was a favorite prey of theirs. Only gradually did it dawn upon them that his stillness was not exactly that of attention. The only interest he showed now was when the minister got down to what he called the present circumstances of the family. It seemed that they were very poor; Brother Bethuel appeared determined that the stranger should know precisely how poor. He brought forward the pathetic view.
"They have nothing to eat sometimes but corn-meal and potatoes," he said. This made no impression.
"The brook rises now and then, and they live in a roaring flood; all the small articles have more than once been washed away."
"Any of the children?" inquired Wainwright.
"Once, when the horses were lame, I saw Honor go to the mill herself with the meal-sack."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, and carry it home again. And I have seen her scrubbing out the kettles."
Wainwright gave an inward shudder. "Has she any education at all?" he asked, with a feeling like giving her money, and getting away as fast as possible: money, because he had for twenty-four hours made her in a certain way a subject of study, and felt as if he owed her something, especially if he went disappointed.
"Sir, she has a finished education," responded the little minister with dignity; "she can play delightfully upon David's instrument, the harp."
At this moment they came to the plank and the ditch.
"I will go no farther," said Brother Bethuel, "and—and you need not mention to the Colonel, if you please, that I accompanied you hither." Then he stood on tiptoe, and whispered mysteriously into Stephen's ear: "As to horses, remember to apply to me—Brother Head, Bethuel Head. A note dropped into the post-office will reach me, a man on horseback bringing the mail up our way twice each week. Bethuel Head—do not forget." He struck himself on the breast once or twice as if to emphasize the name, gave Stephen a wink, which masqueraded as knowing but was more like entreaty, and, turning away, walked back toward the village.
"An extraordinary little man," thought the other, crossing the plank, and following the path up the ravine by the side of the brook.
The Colonel sat on his high, unrailed piazza, with the red wagon and a dilapidated buggy drawn up comfortably underneath; Honor was with him. He rose to greet his visitor, and almost immediately asked if he was related to Bishop Wainwright. When Stephen replied that he was not, the old gentleman sat down, and leaned his crutch against the wall, with a good deal of disappointment: being a devoted churchman, he had hoped for a long ecclesiastical chat. But, after a moment, he took up with good grace the secondary subject of the mountains, and talked very well about them. With the exception of the relationship to the Bishop, he, with thecourtesy of the South, did not ask his guest a single question: Stephen could have been a peddler, a tenor-singer, a carpet-bag politician, or a fugitive from justice, with perfect safety, as far as questions were concerned.
Honor said nothing. It was refreshing to be with a girl who did not want to go anywhere or do anything. She had really asked him to come, then, merely to please the old Colonel. A girl of gold. But, alas! the girl of gold proved herself to be of the usual metal, after all; for, when half an hour had passed, she deliberately proposed to her uncle that she should take their visitor up the hill to see the view. Now, Stephen had been taken numerous times in his life to see views; the trouble was that he always looked directly at the real landscape, whatever it was, and found a great deal to say about it, to the neglect of the view nearer his side. He did not think it necessary now to play his usual part of responsive politeness to this little country-girl's open manœuvre; he could go if she insisted upon it, he supposed. So he sat looking down at the brim of his hat; but noted, also, that even the Colonel seemed surprised. Honor, however, had risen, and was putting on her ugly little bonnet; she looked quietly determined. Stephen rose also, and took leave formally; he would go homeward from the hill. They started, he by this time weary of the whole State, and fast inclining toward departure early the next morning.
He did not say much to her, or look at her; but, in truth, the path through the corn was too steep and narrow for conversation: they were obliged to walk in single file. When they had reached the summit, and Stephen was gathering together his adjectives for his usual view-remarks, he turned toward his companion, and was surprised to see how embarrassed she appeared; he began to feel interested in her again—interested in her timid, dark eyes, and the possibilities in their depths. She was evidently frightened.
"If," she commenced once, twice—then faltered and stopped.
"Well?" said Stephen encouragingly: after all, she was very young.
"If you intend to stay in Ellerby any length of time—do you?"
"I really have not decided," said Stephen, relapsing into coolness.
"I was only going to say that if youdostay, we, that is, I—we, I mean—shall be happy to see you here often."
"Thanks."
"The view is considered fine," faltered the girl, pulling off her gloves in desperate embarrassment, and putting them deep down in her pocket.
Stephen began his view-remarks.
"But what I was going to say," she continued, breaking in at the first pause, "was, that if you should stay, and need—needhorses, or a—guide, I wish you would apply to Mr. Head."
"They are in a conspiracy against me with their horses," thought Stephen. Then he threw a hot shot: "Yes; Mr. Head asked me the same thing. He also asked me not to mention that he brought me here."
"No; pray do not," said Honor quickly.
He turned and looked at her: she began to blush—pink, crimson, pink; then white, and a very dead white too.
"You think it strange?" she faltered.
"Not at all. Do not be disturbed, Miss Dooris; I never think anything."
"Mr. Head is poor, and—and tries to make a little money now and then with his horses," she stammered.
"So I—judged."
"And I—try to help him."
"Very natural, I am sure."
He was beginning to feel sorry for the child, and her poor little efforts to gain a few shillings: he had decided that the Colonel's old horses were the wagon-team of this partnership, and "Marcher" the saddle-horse.
"I shall certainly need horses," he said aloud.
"And you will apply to Mr. Head?"
She was so eager that he forgot himself, and smiled.
"Miss Dooris," he said, bowing, "I will apply to Mr. Head, and only to him; I give you my word."
She brightened at once.
The golden shafts of the setting sun shone full in her face: her dark eyes did not mind them; she did not put up her hand to shield herself, but stood and looked directly into the glittering, brilliant western sky. He put his quizzical expression back out of sight, and began to talk to her. She answered him frankly. He tested her a little; he was an old hand at it. Of coquetry she gave back not a sign. Gradually the conviction came to him that she had not asked him up there for personal reasons at all. It was, then, the horses.
When he had decided this, he sat down on a stump, and went on talking to her with renewed interest. After a while she laughed, and there came into her face that peculiar brilliancy which the conjunction of dark eyes and the gleam of white, even teeth can give to a thin-cheeked brunette. Then he remembered to look at her hands, and was relieved to find them, although a little roughened by toil, charmingly shaped and finely aristocratic—fit portion of the tall, well-rounded figure, which only needed self-consciousness to be that of a young Diana. The girl seemed so happy and radiant, so impersonal in the marked attention she gave to him, which was not unlike the attention she might have given to her grandfather, that Wainwright recognized it at last as only another case of his being of no consequence, and smiled to himself over it. Evidently, if he wanted notice, he must, as it were, mount the horses. He had had no especial intention of making excursions among the mountains; but that was, apparently, the fixed idea of these horse-owners. They were, for some reason, pleased to be mysterious; he would be mysterious also.
"I hope Mr. Head's horses are good ones?" he said confidentially; "I shall needverygood horses."
All her color gone instantly, and the old cloud of anxiety on her face again.
"Yes, they are good horses," she answered; and then her eyes rested upon him, and he read trouble, fear, and dislike, succeeding each other openly in their dark depths.
"Is it because I am a Northerner, Miss Dooris?" he said quietly. He had made up his mind, rather unfairly, to break down the fence between them by a close question, which so young a girl would not know how to parry.