You Hain't Never Goin' to Marry Him.', 0242
“Mebbe you think I'm goin' to marry YOU.” A mist of rage swept before the lad's eyes so that he could hardly see, but he repeated steadily:
“You hain't goin' to marry HIM.” June looked at the boy long and steadily, but his black eyes never wavered—she knew what he meant.
“An' he kept the Falins from killin' you,” she said, quivering with indignation at the shame of him, but Dave went on unheeding:
“You pore little fool! Do ye reckon as how he's EVER goin' to axe ye to marry him? Whut's he sendin' you away fer? Because you hain't good enough fer him! Whar's yo' pride? You hain't good enough fer him,” he repeated scathingly. June had grown calm now.
“I know it,” she said quietly, “but I'm goin' to try to be.”
Dave rose then in impotent fury and pointed one finger at her. His black eyes gleamed like a demon's and his voice was hoarse with resolution and rage, but it was Tolliver against Tolliver now, and June answered him with contemptuous fearlessness.
“YOU HAIN'T NEVER GOIN' TO MARRY HIM.”
“An' he kept the Falins from killin' ye.”
“Yes,” he retorted savagely at last, “an' I kept the Falins from killin' HIM,” and he stalked away, leaving June blanched and wondering.
It was true. Only an hour before, as Hale turned up the mountain that very afternoon at the mouth of Lonesome Cove, young Dave had called to him from the bushes and stepped into the road.
“You air goin' to court Monday?” he said.
“Yes,” said Hale.
“Well, you better take another road this time,” he said quietly. “Three o' the Falins will be waitin' in the lorrel somewhar on the road to lay-way ye.”
Hale was dumfounded, but he knew the boy spoke the truth.
“Look here,” he said impulsively, “I've got nothing against you, and I hope you've got nothing against me. I'm much obliged—let's shake hands!”
The boy turned sullenly away with a dogged shake of his head.
“I was beholden to you,” he said with dignity, “an' I warned you 'bout them Falins to git even with you. We're quits now.”
Hale started to speak—to say that the lad was not beholden to him—that he would as quickly have protected a Falin, but it would have only made matters worse. Moreover, he knew precisely what Dave had against him, and that, too, was no matter for discussion. So he said simply and sincerely:
“I'm sorry we can't be friends.”
“No,” Dave gritted out, “not this side o' Heaven—or Hell.”
And still farther into that far silence about which she used to dream at the base of the big Pine, went little June. At dusk, weary and travel-stained, she sat in the parlours of a hotel—a great gray columned structure of stone. She was confused and bewildered and her head ached. The journey had been long and tiresome. The swift motion of the train had made her dizzy and faint. The dust and smoke had almost stifled her, and even now the dismal parlours, rich and wonderful as they were to her unaccustomed eyes, oppressed her deeply. If she could have one more breath of mountain air!
The day had been too full of wonders. Impressions had crowded on her sensitive brain so thick and fast that the recollection of them was as through a haze. She had never been on a train before and when, as it crashed ahead, she clutched Hale's arm in fear and asked how they stopped it, Hale hearing the whistle blow for a station, said:
“I'll show you,” and he waved one hand out the window. And he repeated this trick twice before she saw that it was a joke. All day he had soothed her uneasiness in some such way and all day he watched her with an amused smile that was puzzling to her. She remembered sadly watching the mountains dwindle and disappear, and when several of her own people who were on the train were left at way-stations, it seemed as though all links that bound her to her home were broken. The face of the country changed, the people changed in looks, manners and dress, and she shrank closer to Hale with an increasing sense of painful loneliness. These level fields and these farm-houses so strangely built, so varied in colour were the “settlemints,” and these people so nicely dressed, so clean and fresh-looking were “furriners.” At one station a crowd of school-girls had got on board and she had watched them with keen interest, mystified by their incessant chatter and gayety. And at last had come the big city, with more smoke, more dust, more noise, more confusion—and she was in HIS world. That was the thought that comforted her—it was his world, and now she sat alone in the dismal parlours while Hale was gone to find his sister—waiting and trembling at the ordeal, close upon her, of meeting Helen Hale.
Below, Hale found his sister and her maid registered, and a few minutes later he led Miss Hale into the parlour. As they entered June rose without advancing, and for a moment the two stood facing each other—the still roughly clad, primitive mountain girl and the exquisite modern woman—in an embarrassment equally painful to both.
“June, this is my sister.”
At a loss what to do, Helen Hale simply stretched out her hand, but drawn by June's timidity and the quick admiration and fear in her eyes, she leaned suddenly forward and kissed her. A grateful flush overspread the little girl's features and the pallor that instantly succeeded went straight-way to the sister's heart.
“You are not well,” she said quickly and kindly. “You must go to your room at once. I am going to take care of you—you are MY little sister now.”
June lost the subtlety in Miss Hale's emphasis, but she fell with instant submission under such gentle authority, and though she could say nothing, her eyes glistened and her lips quivered, and without looking to Hale, she followed his sister out of the room. Hale stood still. He had watched the meeting with apprehension and now, surprised and grateful, he went to Helen's parlour and waited with a hopeful heart. When his sister entered, he rose eagerly:
“Well—” he said, stopping suddenly, for there were tears of vexation, dismay and genuine distress on his sister's face.
“Oh, Jack,” she cried, “how could you! How could you!”
Hale bit his lips, turned and paced the room. He had hoped too much and yet what else could he have expected? His sister and June knew as little about each other and each other's lives as though they had occupied different planets. He had forgotten that Helen must be shocked by June's inaccuracies of speech and in a hundred other ways to which he had become accustomed. With him, moreover, the process had been gradual and, moreover, he had seen beneath it all. And yet he had foolishly expected Helen to understand everything at once. He was unjust, so very wisely he held himself in silence.
“Where is her baggage, Jack?” Helen had opened her trunk and was lifting out the lid. “She ought to change those dusty clothes at once. You'd better ring and have it sent right up.”
“No,” said Hale, “I will go down and see about it myself.”
He returned presently—his face aflame—with June's carpet-bag.
“I believe this is all she has,” he said quietly.
In spite of herself Helen's grief changed to a fit of helpless laughter and, afraid to trust himself further, Hale rose to leave the room. At the door he was met by the negro maid.
“Miss Helen,” she said with an open smile, “Miss June say she don't want NUTTIN'.” Hale gave her a fiery look and hurried out. June was seated at a window when he went into her room with her face buried in her arms. She lifted her head, dropped it, and he saw that her eyes were red with weeping. “Are you sick, little girl?” he asked anxiously. June shook her head helplessly.
“You aren't homesick, are you?”
“No.” The answer came very faintly.
“Don't you like my sister?” The head bowed an emphatic “Yes—yes.”
“Then what is the matter?”
“Oh,” she said despairingly, between her sobs, “she—won't—like—me. I never—can—be—like HER.”
Hale smiled, but her grief was so sincere that he leaned over her and with a tender hand soothed her into quiet. Then he went to Helen again and he found her overhauling dresses.
“I brought along several things of different sizes and I am going to try at any rate. Oh,” she added hastily, “only of course until she can get some clothes of her own.”
“Sure,” said Hale, “but—” His sister waved one hand and again Hale kept still.
June had bathed her eyes and was lying down when Helen entered, and she made not the slightest objection to anything the latter proposed. Straightway she fell under as complete subjection to her as she had done to Hale. Without a moment's hesitation she drew off her rudely fashioned dress and stood before Helen with the utmost simplicity—her beautiful arms and throat bare and her hair falling about them with the rich gold of a cloud at an autumn sunset. Dressed, she could hardly breathe, but when she looked at herself in the mirror, she trembled. Magic transformation! Apparently the chasm between the two had been bridged in a single instant. Helen herself was astonished and again her heart warmed toward the girl, when a little later, she stood timidly under Hale's scrutiny, eagerly watching his face and flushing rosy with happiness under his brightening look. Her brother had not exaggerated—the little girl was really beautiful. When they went down to the dining-room, there was another surprise for Helen Hale, for June's timidity was gone and to the wonder of the woman, she was clothed with an impassive reserve that in herself would have been little less than haughtiness and was astounding in a child. She saw, too, that the change in the girl's bearing was unconscious and that the presence of strangers had caused it. It was plain that June's timidity sprang from her love of Hale—her fear of not pleasing him and not pleasing her, his sister, and plain, too, that remarkable self-poise was little June's to command. At the table June kept her eyes fastened on Helen Hale. Not a movement escaped her and she did nothing that was not done by one of the others first. She said nothing, but if she had to answer a question, she spoke with such care and precision that she almost seemed to be using a foreign language. Miss Hale smiled but with inward approval, and that night she was in better spirits.
“Jack,” she said, when he came to bid her good-night, “I think we'd better stay here a few days. I thought of course you were exaggerating, but she is very, very lovely. And that manner of hers—well, it passes my understanding. Just leave everything to me.”
Hale was very willing to do that. He had all trust in his sister's judgment, he knew her dislike of interference, her love of autocratic supervision, so he asked no questions, but in grateful relief kissed her good-night.
The sister sat for a long time at her window after he was gone. Her brother had been long away from civilization; he had become infatuated, the girl loved him, he was honourable and in his heart he meant to marry her—that was to her the whole story. She had been mortified by the misstep, but the misstep made, only one thought had occurred to her—to help him all she could. She had been appalled when she first saw the dusty shrinking mountain girl, but the helplessness and the loneliness of the tired little face touched her, and she was straightway responsive to the mute appeal in the dark eyes that were lifted to her own with such modest fear and wonder. Now her surprise at her brother's infatuation was abating rapidly. The girl's adoration of him, her wild beauty, her strange winning personality—as rare and as independent of birth and circumstances as genius—had soon made that phenomenon plain. And now what was to be done? The girl was quick, observant, imitative, docile, and in the presence of strangers, her gravity of manner gave the impression of uncanny self-possession. It really seemed as though anything might be possible. At Helen's suggestion, then, the three stayed where they were for a week, for June's wardrobe was sadly in need of attention. So the week was spent in shopping, driving, and walking, and rapidly as it passed for Helen and Hale it was to June the longest of her life, so filled was it with a thousand sensations unfelt by them. The city had been stirred by the spirit of the new South, but the charm of the old was distinct everywhere. Architectural eccentricities had startled the sleepy maple-shaded rows of comfortable uniform dwellings here and there, and in some streets the life was brisk; but it was still possible to see pedestrians strolling with unconscious good-humour around piles of goods on the sidewalk, business men stopping for a social chat on the streets, street-cars moving independent of time, men invariably giving up their seats to women, and, strangers or not, depositing their fare for them; the drivers at the courteous personal service of each patron of the road—now holding a car and placidly whistling while some lady who had signalled from her doorway went back indoors for some forgotten article, now twisting the reins around the brakes and leaving a parcel in some yard—and no one grumbling! But what was to Hale an atmosphere of amusing leisure was to June bewildering confusion. To her his amusement was unintelligible, but though in constant wonder at everything she saw, no one would ever have suspected that she was making her first acquaintance with city scenes. At first the calm unconcern of her companions had puzzled her. She could not understand how they could walk along, heedless of the wonderful visions that beckoned to her from the shop-windows; fearless of the strange noises about them and scarcely noticing the great crowds of people, or the strange shining vehicles that thronged the streets. But she had quickly concluded that it was one of the demands of that new life to see little and be astonished at nothing, and Helen and Hale surprised in turn at her unconcern, little suspected the effort her self-suppression cost her. And when over some wonder she did lose herself, Hale would say:
“Just wait till you see New York!” and June would turn her dark eyes to Helen for confirmation and to see if Hale could be joking with her.
“It's all true, June,” Helen would say. “You must go there some day. It's true.” But that town was enough and too much for June. Her head buzzed continuously and she could hardly sleep, and she was glad when one afternoon they took her into the country again—the Bluegrass country—and to the little town near which Hale had been born, and which was a dream-city to June, and to a school of which an old friend of his mother was principal, and in which Helen herself was a temporary teacher. And Rumour had gone ahead of June. Hale had found her dashing about the mountains on the back of a wild bull, said rumour. She was as beautiful as Europa, was of pure English descent and spoke the language of Shakespeare—the Hon. Sam Budd's hand was patent in this. She had saved Hale's life from moonshiners and while he was really in love with her, he was pretending to educate her out of gratitude—and here doubtless was the faint tracery of Miss Anne Saunder's natural suspicions. And there Hale left her under the eye of his sister—left her to absorb another new life like a thirsty plant and come back to the mountains to make his head swim with new witcheries.
The boom started after its shadow through the hills now, and Hale watched it sweep toward him with grim satisfaction at the fulfilment of his own prophecy and with disgust that, by the irony of fate, it should come from the very quarters where years before he had played the maddening part of lunatic at large. The avalanche was sweeping southward; Pennsylvania was creeping down the Alleghanies, emissaries of New York capital were pouring into the hills, the tide-water of Virginia and the Bluegrass region of Kentucky were sending in their best blood and youth, and friends of the helmeted Englishmen were hurrying over the seas. Eastern companies were taking up principalities, and at Cumberland Gap, those helmeted Englishmen had acquired a kingdom. They were building a town there, too, with huge steel plants, broad avenues and business blocks that would have graced Broadway; and they were pouring out a million for every thousand that it would have cost Hale to acquire the land on which the work was going on. Moreover they were doing it there, as Hale heard, because they were too late to get control of his gap through the Cumberland. At his gap, too, the same movement was starting. In stage and wagon, on mule and horse, “riding and tying” sometimes, and even afoot came the rush of madmen. Horses and mules were drowned in the mud holes along the road, such was the traffic and such were the floods. The incomers slept eight in a room, burned oil at one dollar a gallon, and ate potatoes at ten cents apiece. The Grand Central Hotel was a humming Real-Estate Exchange, and, night and day, the occupants of any room could hear, through the thin partitions, lots booming to right, left, behind and in front of them. The labour and capital question was instantly solved, for everybody became a capitalist-carpenter, brick-layer, blacksmith, singing teacher and preacher. There is no difference between the shrewdest business man and a fool in a boom, for the boom levels all grades of intelligence and produces as distinct a form of insanity as you can find within the walls of an asylum. Lots took wings sky-ward. Hale bought one for June for thirty dollars and sold it for a thousand. Before the autumn was gone, he found himself on the way to ridiculous opulence and, when spring came, he had the world in a sling and, if he wished, he could toss it playfully at the sun and have it drop back into his hand again. And the boom spread down the valley and into the hills. The police guard had little to do and, over in the mountains, the feud miraculously came to a sudden close.
So pervasive, indeed, was the spirit of the times that the Hon. Sam Budd actually got old Buck Falin and old Dave Tolliver to sign a truce, agreeing to a complete cessation of hostilities until he carried through a land deal in which both were interested. And after that was concluded, nobody had time, even the Red Fox, for deviltry and private vengeance—so busy was everybody picking up the manna which was dropping straight from the clouds. Hale bought all of old Judd's land, formed a stock company and in the trade gave June a bonus of the stock. Money was plentiful as grains of sand, and the cashier of the bank in the back of the furniture store at the Gap chuckled to his beardless directors as he locked the wooden door on the day before the great land sale:
“Capital stock paid in—thirteen thousand dollars;
“Deposits—three hundred thousand;
“Loans—two hundred and sixty thousand—interest from eight to twelve per cent.” And, beardless though those directors were, that statement made them reel.
A club was formed and the like of it was not below Mason and Dixon's line in the way of furniture, periodicals, liquors and cigars. Poker ceased—it was too tame in competition with this new game of town-lots. On the top of High Knob a kingdom was bought. The young bloods of the town would build a lake up there, run a road up and build a Swiss chalet on the very top for a country club. The “booming” editor was discharged. A new paper was started, and the ex-editor of a New York Daily was got to run it. If anybody wanted anything, he got it from no matter where, nor at what cost. Nor were the arts wholly neglected. One man, who was proud of his voice, thought he would like to take singing lessons. An emissary was sent to Boston to bring back the best teacher he could find. The teacher came with a method of placing the voice by trying to say “Come!” at the base of the nose and between the eyes. This was with the lips closed. He charged two dollars per half hour for this effort, he had each pupil try it twice for half an hour each day, and for six weeks the town was humming like a beehive. At the end of that period, the teacher fell ill and went his way with a fat pocket-book and not a warbling soul had got the chance to open his mouth. The experience dampened nobody. Generosity was limitless. It was equally easy to raise money for a roulette wheel, a cathedral or an expedition to Africa. And even yet the railroad was miles away and even yet in February, the Improvement Company had a great land sale. The day before it, competing purchasers had deposited cheques aggregating three times the sum asked for by the company for the land. So the buyers spent the night organizing a pool to keep down competition and drawing lots for the privilege of bidding. For fairness, the sale was an auction, and one old farmer who had sold some of the land originally for a hundred dollars an acre, bought back some of that land at a thousand dollars a lot.
That sale was the climax and, that early, Hale got a warning word from England, but he paid no heed even though, after the sale, the boom slackened, poised and stayed still; for optimism was unquenchable and another tide would come with another sale in May, and so the spring passed in the same joyous recklessness and the same perfect hope.
In April, the first railroad reached the Gap at last, and families came in rapidly. Money was still plentiful and right royally was it spent, for was not just as much more coming when the second road arrived in May? Life was easier, too—supplies came from New York, eight o'clock dinners were in vogue and everybody was happy. Every man had two or three good horses and nothing to do. The place was full of visiting girls. They rode in parties to High Knob, and the ring of hoof and the laughter of youth and maid made every dusk resonant with joy. On Poplar Hill houses sprang up like magic and weddings came. The passing stranger was stunned to find out in the wilderness such a spot; gayety, prodigal hospitality, a police force of gentlemen—nearly all of whom were college graduates—and a club, where poker flourished in the smoke of Havana cigars, and a barrel of whiskey stood in one corner with a faucet waiting for the turn of any hand. And still the foundation of the new hotel was not started and the coming of the new railroad in May did not make a marked change. For some reason the May sale was postponed by the Improvement Company, but what did it matter? Perhaps it was better to wait for the fall, and so the summer went on unchanged. Every man still had a bank account and in the autumn, the boom would come again. At such a time June came home for her vacation, and Bob Berkley came back from college for his. All through the school year Hale had got the best reports of June. His sister's letters were steadily encouraging. June had been very homesick for the mountains and for Hale at first, but the homesickness had quickly worn off—apparently for both. She had studied hard, had become a favourite among the girls, and had held her own among them in a surprising way. But it was on June's musical talent that Hale's sister always laid most stress, and on her voice which, she said, was really unusual. June wrote, too, at longer and longer intervals and in her letters, Hale could see the progress she was making—the change in her handwriting, the increasing formality of expression, and the increasing shrewdness of her comments on her fellow-pupils, her teachers and the life about her. She did not write home for a reason Hale knew, though June never mentioned it—because there was no one at home who could read her letters—but she always sent messages to her father and Bub and to the old miller and old Hon, and Hale faithfully delivered them when he could.
From her people, as Hale learned from his sister, only one messenger had come during the year to June, and he came but once. One morning, a tall, black-haired, uncouth young man, in a slouch hat and a Prince Albert coat, had strode up to the school with a big paper box under his arm and asked for June. As he handed the box to the maid at the door, it broke and red apples burst from it and rolled down the steps. There was a shriek of laughter from the girls, and the young man, flushing red as the apples, turned, without giving his name, and strode back with no little majesty, looking neither to right nor left. Hale knew and June knew that the visitor was her cousin Dave, but she never mentioned the incident to him, though as the end of the session drew nigh, her letters became more frequent and more full of messages to the people in Lonesome Cove, and she seemed eager to get back home. Over there about this time, old Judd concluded suddenly to go West, taking Bud with him, and when Hale wrote the fact, an answer came from June that showed the blot of tears. However, she seemed none the less in a hurry to get back, and when Hale met her at the station, he was startled; for she came back in dresses that were below her shoe-tops, with her wonderful hair massed in a golden glory on the top of her head and the little fairy-cross dangling at a woman's throat. Her figure had rounded, her voice had softened. She held herself as straight as a young poplar and she walked the earth as though she had come straight from Olympus. And still, in spite of her new feathers and airs and graces, there was in her eye and in her laugh and in her moods all the subtle wild charm of the child in Lonesome Cove. It was fairy-time for June that summer, though her father and Bud had gone West, for her step-mother was living with a sister, the cabin in Lonesome Cove was closed and June stayed at the Gap, not at the Widow Crane's boarding-house, but with one of Hale's married friends on Poplar Hill. And always was she, young as she was, one of the merry parties of that happy summer—even at the dances, for the dance, too, June had learned. Moreover she had picked up the guitar, and many times when Hale had been out in the hills, he would hear her silver-clear voice floating out into the moonlight as he made his way toward Poplar Hill, and he would stop under the beeches and listen with ears of growing love to the wonder of it all. For it was he who was the ardent one of the two now.
June was no longer the frank, impulsive child who stood at the foot of the beech, doggedly reckless if all the world knew her love for him. She had taken flight to some inner recess where it was difficult for Hale to follow, and right puzzled he was to discover that he must now win again what, unasked, she had once so freely given.
Bob Berkley, too, had developed amazingly. He no longer said “Sir” to Hale—that was bad form at Harvard—he called him by his first name and looked him in the eye as man to man: just as June—Hale observed—no longer seemed in any awe of Miss Anne Saunders and to have lost all jealousy of her, or of anybody else—so swiftly had her instinct taught her she now had nothing to fear. And Bob and June seemed mightily pleased with each other, and sometimes Hale, watching them as they galloped past him on horseback laughing and bantering, felt foolish to think of their perfect fitness—the one for the other—and the incongruity of himself in a relationship that would so naturally be theirs. At one thing he wondered: she had made an extraordinary record at school and it seemed to him that it was partly through the consciousness that her brain would take care of itself that she could pay such heed to what hitherto she had had no chance to learn—dress, manners, deportment and speech. Indeed, it was curious that she seemed to lay most stress on the very things to which he, because of his long rough life in the mountains, was growing more and more indifferent. It was quite plain that Bob, with his extreme gallantry of manner, his smart clothes, his high ways and his unconquerable gayety, had supplanted him on the pedestal where he had been the year before, just as somebody, somewhere—his sister, perhaps—had supplanted Miss Anne. Several times indeed June had corrected Hale's slips of tongue with mischievous triumph, and once when he came back late from a long trip in the mountains and walked in to dinner without changing his clothes, Hale saw her look from himself to the immaculate Bob with an unconscious comparison that half amused, half worried him. The truth was he was building a lovely Frankenstein and from wondering what he was going to do with it, he was beginning to wonder now what it might some day do with him. And though he sometimes joked with Miss Anne, who had withdrawn now to the level plane of friendship with him, about the transformation that was going on, he worried in a way that did neither his heart nor his brain good. Still he fought both to little purpose all that summer, and it was not till the time was nigh when June must go away again, that he spoke both. For Hale's sister was going to marry, and it was her advice that he should take June to New York if only for the sake of her music and her voice. That very day June had for the first time seen her cousin Dave. He was on horseback, he had been drinking and he pulled in and, without an answer to her greeting, stared her over from head to foot. Colouring angrily, she started on and then he spoke thickly and with a sneer:
“'Bout fryin' size, now, ain't ye? I reckon maybe, if you keep on, you'll be good enough fer him in a year or two more.”
“I'm much obliged for those apples, Dave,” said June quietly—and Dave flushed a darker red and sat still, forgetting to renew the old threat that was on his tongue.
But his taunt rankled in the girl—rankled more now than when Dave first made it, for she better saw the truth of it and the hurt was the greater to her unconquerable pride that kept her from betraying the hurt to Dave long ago, and now, when he was making an old wound bleed afresh. But the pain was with her at dinner that night and through the evening. She avoided Hale's eyes though she knew that he was watching her all the time, and her instinct told her that something was going to happen that night and what that something was. Hale was the last to go and when he called to her from the porch, she went out trembling and stood at the head of the steps in the moonlight.
“I love you, little girl,” he said simply, “and I want you to marry me some day—will you, June?” She was unsurprised but she flushed under his hungry eyes, and the little cross throbbed at her throat.
“SOME day—not NOW,” she thought, and then with equal simplicity: “Yes, Jack.”
“And if you should love somebody else more, you'll tell me right away—won't you, June?” She shrank a little and her eyes fell, but straight-way she raised them steadily:
“Yes, Jack.”
“Thank you, little girl—good-night.”
“Good-night, Jack.”
Hale saw the little shrinking movement she made, and, as he went down the hill, he thought she seemed to be in a hurry to be alone, and that she had caught her breath sharply as she turned away. And brooding he walked the woods long that night.
Only a few days later, they started for New York and, with all her dreaming, June had never dreamed that the world could be so large. Mountains and vast stretches of rolling hills and level land melted away from her wondering eyes; towns and cities sank behind them, swift streams swollen by freshets were outstripped and left behind, darkness came on and, through it, they still sped on. Once during the night she woke from a troubled dream in her berth and for a moment she thought she was at home again. They were running through mountains again and there they lay in the moonlight, the great calm dark faces that she knew and loved, and she seemed to catch the odour of the earth and feel the cool air on her face, but there was no pang of homesickness now—she was too eager for the world into which she was going. Next morning the air was cooler, the skies lower and grayer—the big city was close at hand. Then came the water, shaking and sparkling in the early light like a great cauldron of quicksilver, and the wonderful Brooklyn Bridge—a ribbon of twinkling lights tossed out through the mist from the mighty city that rose from that mist as from a fantastic dream; then the picking of a way through screeching little boats and noiseless big ones and white bird-like floating things and then they disappeared like two tiny grains in a shifting human tide of sand. But Hale was happy now, for on that trip June had come back to herself, and to him, once more—and now, awed but unafraid, eager, bubbling, uplooking, full of quaint questions about everything she saw, she was once more sitting with affectionate reverence at his feet. When he left her in a great low house that fronted on the majestic Hudson, June clung to him with tears and of her own accord kissed him for the first time since she had torn her little playhouse to pieces at the foot of the beech down in the mountains far away. And Hale went back with peace in his heart, but to trouble in the hills.
* * * * * * *
Not suddenly did the boom drop down there, not like a falling star, but on the wings of hope—wings that ever fluttering upward, yet sank inexorably and slowly closed. The first crash came over the waters when certain big men over there went to pieces—men on whose shoulders rested the colossal figure of progress that the English were carving from the hills at Cumberland Gap. Still nobody saw why a hurt to the Lion should make the Eagle sore and so the American spirit at the other gaps and all up the Virginia valleys that skirt the Cumberland held faithful and dauntless—for a while. But in time as the huge steel plants grew noiseless, and the flaming throats of the furnaces were throttled, a sympathetic fire of dissolution spread slowly North and South and it was plain only to the wise outsider as merely a matter of time until, all up and down the Cumberland, the fox and the coon and the quail could come back to their old homes on corner lots, marked each by a pathetic little whitewashed post—a tombstone over the graves of a myriad of buried human hopes. But it was the gap where Hale was that died last and hardest—and of the brave spirits there, his was the last and hardest to die.
In the autumn, while June was in New York, the signs were sure but every soul refused to see them. Slowly, however, the vexed question of labour and capital was born again, for slowly each local capitalist went slowly back to his own trade: the blacksmith to his forge, but the carpenter not to his plane nor the mason to his brick—there was no more building going on. The engineer took up his transit, the preacher-politician was oftener in his pulpit, and the singing teacher started on his round of raucous do-mi-sol-dos through the mountains again. It was curious to see how each man slowly, reluctantly and perforce sank back again to his old occupation—and the town, with the luxuries of electricity, water-works, bath-tubs and a street railway, was having a hard fight for the plain necessities of life. The following spring, notes for the second payment on the lots that had been bought at the great land sale fell due, and but very few were paid. As no suits were brought by the company, however, hope did not quite die. June did not come home for the summer, and Hale did not encourage her to come—she visited some of her school-mates in the North and took a trip West to see her father who had gone out there again and bought a farm. In the early autumn, Devil Judd came back to the mountains and announced his intention to leave them for good. But that autumn, the effects of the dead boom became perceptible in the hills. There were no more coal lands bought, logging ceased, the factions were idle once more, moonshine stills flourished, quarrelling started, and at the county seat, one Court day, Devil Judd whipped three Falins with his bare fists. In the early spring a Tolliver was shot from ambush and old Judd was so furious at the outrage that he openly announced that he would stay at home until he had settled the old scores for good. So that, as the summer came on, matters between the Falins and the Tollivers were worse than they had been for years and everybody knew that, with old Judd at the head of his clan again, the fight would be fought to the finish. At the Gap, one institution only had suffered in spirit not at all and that was the Volunteer Police Guard. Indeed, as the excitement of the boom had died down, the members of that force, as a vent for their energies, went with more enthusiasm than ever into their work. Local lawlessness had been subdued by this time, the Guard had been extending its work into the hills, and it was only a question of time until it must take a part in the Falin-Tolliver troubles. Indeed, that time, Hale believed, was not far away, for Election Day was at hand, and always on that day the feudists came to the Gap in a search for trouble. Meanwhile, not long afterward, there was a pitched battle between the factions at the county seat, and several of each would fight no more. Next day a Falin whistled a bullet through Devil Judd's beard from ambush, and it was at such a crisis of all the warring elements in her mountain life that June's school-days were coming to a close. Hale had had a frank talk with old Judd and the old man agreed that the two had best be married at once and live at the Gap until things were quieter in the mountains, though the old man still clung to his resolution to go West for good when he was done with the Falins. At such a time, then, June was coming home.
Hale was beyond Black Mountain when her letter reached him. His work over there had to be finished and so he kept in his saddle the greater part of two days and nights and on the third day rode his big black horse forty miles in little more than half a day that he might meet her at the train. The last two years had wrought their change in him. Deterioration is easy in the hills—superficial deterioration in habits, manners, personal appearance and the practices of all the little niceties of life. The morning bath is impossible because of the crowded domestic conditions of a mountain cabin and, if possible, might if practised, excite wonder and comment, if not vague suspicion. Sleeping garments are practically barred for the same reason. Shaving becomes a rare luxury. A lost tooth-brush may not be replaced for a month. In time one may bring himself to eat with a knife for the reason that it is hard for a hungry man to feed himself with a fork that has but two tines. The finger tips cease to be the culminating standard of the gentleman. It is hard to keep a supply of fresh linen when one is constantly in the saddle, and a constant weariness of body and a ravenous appetite make a man indifferent to things like a bad bed and worse food, particularly as he must philosophically put up with them, anyhow. Of all these things the man himself may be quite unconscious and yet they affect him more deeply than he knows and show to a woman even in his voice, his walk, his mouth—everywhere save in his eyes, which change only in severity, or in kindliness or when there has been some serious break-down of soul or character within. And the woman will not look to his eyes for the truth—which makes its way slowly—particularly when the woman has striven for the very things that the man has so recklessly let go. She would never suffer herself to let down in such a way and she does not understand how a man can.
Hale's life, since his college doors had closed behind him, had always been a rough one. He had dropped from civilization and had gone back into it many times. And each time he had dropped, he dropped the deeper, and for that reason had come back into his own life each time with more difficulty and with more indifference. The last had been his roughest year and he had sunk a little more deeply just at the time when June had been pluming herself for flight from such depths forever. Moreover, Hale had been dominant in every matter that his hand or his brain had touched. His habit had been to say “do this” and it was done. Though he was no longer acting captain of the Police Guard, he always acted as captain whenever he was on hand, and always he was the undisputed leader in all questions of business, politics or the maintenance of order and law. The success he had forged had hardened and strengthened his mouth, steeled his eyes and made him more masterful in manner, speech and point of view, and naturally had added nothing to his gentleness, his unselfishness, his refinement or the nice consideration of little things on which women lay such stress. It was an hour by sun when he clattered through the gap and pushed his tired black horse into a gallop across the valley toward the town. He saw the smoke of the little dummy and, as he thundered over the bridge of the North Fork, he saw that it was just about to pull out and he waved his hat and shouted imperiously for it to wait. With his hand on the bell-rope, the conductor, autocrat that he, too, was, did wait and Hale threw his reins to the man who was nearest, hardly seeing who he was, and climbed aboard. He wore a slouched hat spotted by contact with the roof of the mines which he had hastily visited on his way through Lonesome Cove. The growth of three days' beard was on his face. He wore a gray woollen shirt, and a blue handkerchief—none too clean—was loosely tied about his sun-scorched column of a throat; he was spotted with mud from his waist to the soles of his rough riding boots and his hands were rough and grimy. But his eye was bright and keen and his heart thumped eagerly. Again it was the middle of June and the town was a naked island in a sea of leaves whose breakers literally had run mountain high and stopped for all time motionless. Purple lights thick as mist veiled Powell's Mountain. Below, the valley was still flooded with yellow sunlight which lay along the mountain sides and was streaked here and there with the long shadow of a deep ravine. The beech trunks on Imboden Hill gleamed in it like white bodies scantily draped with green, and the yawning Gap held the yellow light as a bowl holds wine. He had long ago come to look upon the hills merely as storehouses for iron and coal, put there for his special purpose, but now the long submerged sense of the beauty of it all stirred within him again, for June was the incarnate spirit of it all and June was coming back to those mountains and—to him.