"I reckon ye haven"t missed me much. Do ye know whut I"ve been doin"?" he said, with sudden vehemence, stopping still and resting his eyes, which glowed like an animal"s from the darkened end of the cabin, on Clayton.
"I"ve been tryin" to keep from killin" ye. Oh, don"t move-don"t fear now; ye air as safe as ef ye were down in the camp. I seed ye that night on the mount"in," he continued, pacing rapidly back and forth. "I was waitin" fer ye. I meant to tell ye jest whut I"m goin" to tell ye ter-night; "n" when Easter come a-tearin" through the bushes, "n" I seed ye-ye-a-standin" together "-the words seemed to stop in his throat-" I knowed I was too late.
"I sot thar fer a minute like a rock, "n" when ye two went back up the mount"in, before I knowed it I was hyer in the house thar at the fire mouldin" a bullet to kill ye with as ye come back. All at oncet I heerd a voice plain as my own is at this minute:
""Air you a-thinkin" "bout takin" the life of a fellow-creatur, Sherd Raines-you that air tryin" to be a servant o" the Lord?""
"But I kept on a-mouldin", "n" suddenly I seed ye a-layin" in the road dead, "n" the heavens opened "n" the face o" the Lord was thar, "n" he raised his hand to smite me with the brand o" Cain-"n" look thar!"
Clayton had sat spellbound by the terrible earnestness of the man, and as the mountaineer swept his dark hair back with one hand, he rose in sudden horror. Across the mountaineer"s forehead ran a crimson scar yet unhealed. Could he have inflicted upon himself this fearful penance?
Oh, it was only the moulds. I seed it all so plain that I throwed up my hands, fergittin" the moulds, "n" the hot lead struck me thar; but," he continued, solemnly, "I knowed the Lord hed tuk that way o" punishin" me fer the sin o havin" murder in my mind, "n" I fell on my knees right thar a-prayin" fer fergiveness: "n" since that night I hev stayed away from ye till the Lord give me power to stand ag"in the temptation o" harmin" ye. He hev showed me another way, "n"
now I hev come to ye as he hev tol" me. I hevn"t tol" ye this fer nothin". Y"u in see now whut I think o" Easter, ef I was tempted to take the life o" the man who tuk her from me, "n" I reckon ye will say I"ve got the right to ax ye whut I"m a-goin" to. I hev knowed the gal sence she was a baby. We was children together, and thar hain"t no use hidin" that I never keered a straw fer anuther woman.
She used to be mighty wilful "n" contrary, but as soon as you come I seed at oncet that a change was comm" over her. I mistrusted ye, "n" I warned her ag"in" ye. But when I l"arned that ye was a-teachin"
her, and a-doin" whut I had tried my best to do "n" failed, I let things run along, thinkin" that mebbe ever"thing would come out right, after all. Mebbe hit air all right, but I come to ye now, "n" I ax ye in the name of the livin" G.o.d, who is a-watchin" you a-guidin" me, air ye goin" to leave the po" gal to die sorrowin" fer ye, or do ye aim to come back "n" marry her?
Raines had stopped now in the centre of the cabin, and the shadows flickering slowly over him gave an unearthly aspect to his tall, gaunt figure, as he stood with uplifted arm, pale face, glowing eyes, and disordered hair.
"The gal hasn"t got no protecter-her dad, as you know, is a-hidin"
from jestice in the mount"ins-and I"m a-standin" in his place, "n" I ax ye to do only whut you know ye ought."
There was nothing threatening in the mountaineer "s att.i.tude, nor dictatorial; and Clayton felt his right to say what he had, in spite of a natural impulse to resent such interference. Besides, there sprang up in his heart a sudden great admiration for this rough, uncouth fellow who was capable of such unselfishness; who, true to the trust of her father and his G.o.d, was putting aside the strongest pa.s.sion of his life for what he believed was the happiness of the woman who had inspired it. He saw, too, that the sacrifice was made with perfect unconsciousness that it was unusual or admirable. He rose to his feet, and the two men faced each other.
"If you had told me this long ago," said Clayton, "I should have gone away, but you seemed distrustful and suspicious. I did not expect the present state of affairs to come about, but since it has, I tell you frankly that I have never thought of doing anything else than what you have asked."
And he told the truth, for he had already asked himself that question. Why should he not marry her? He must in all probability stay in the mountains for years, and after that time he would not be ashamed to take her home, so strong was his belief in her quickness and adaptibility.
Raines seemed scarcely to believe what he heard. He had not expected such ready acquiescence. He had almost begun to fear from Clayton"s silence that he was going to refuse, and then-G.o.d knows what he would have done.
Instantly he stretched out his hand.
"I hev done ye great wrong, "n" I ax yer par-din," he said, huskily.
"I want to say that I bear ye no gredge, "n" thet I wish ye well. I hope ye won"t think hard on me," he continued; "I he had a hard fight with the devil as long as I can ricolect. I hev turned back time "n" ag"in, but thar hain"t nothin" ter keep me from goin" straight ahead now."
As Clayton left the cabin, the mountaineer stopped him for a moment on the threshold.
"Thar"s another thing I reckon I ought to tell ye," he said; " Easter"s dad air powerfully sot ag"in ye. He thought ye was an officer at fust, "n" hit was hard to git him out o" the idee thet ye was spyin" fer him; "n" when he seed ye goin" to the house, he got it inter his head that ye mought be meanin" harm to Easter, who air the only thing alive thet he keers fer much. He promised not to tech ye, "n" I knowed he would keep his word as long as he was sober. It"ll be all right now, I reckon," he concluded, "when I tell him whut ye aims to do, though he hev got a spite ag"in all furriners. Far"well! I wish ye well; I wish ye well."
An hour later Clayton was in Jellico. It was midnight when the train came in, and he went immediately to his berth. Striking the curtain accidentally, he loosed it from its fastenings, and, doubling the pillows, he lay looking out on the swiftly pa.s.sing landscape. The moon was full and brilliant, and there was a strange, keen pleasure in being whirled in such comfort through the night. The mists almost hid the mountains. They seemed very, very far away. A red star trembled in the crest of Wolf Mountain. Easter"s cabin must be almost under that Star. He wondered if she were asleep. Perhaps she was out on the porch, lonely, suffering, and thinking of him. He felt her kiss and her tears upon his hand. Did he not love her? Could there be any doubt about that? His thoughts turned toRaines, and he saw the mountaineer in his lonely cabin, sitting with his head bowed in his hands in front of the dying fire. He closed his eyes, and another picture rose before him-a scene at home. He had taken Easter to New York. How brilliant the light!
what warmth and luxury! There stood his father, there his mother.
What gracious dignity they had! Here was his sister-what beauty and elegance and grace of manner! But Easter! Wherever she was placed the other figures needed readjustment. There was something irritably incongruous-Ah! now he had it-his mind grew hazy-he was asleep.
X
DURING the weeks that followed, some malignant spirit seemed to be torturing him with a slow realization of all he had lost; taunting him with the possibility of regaining it and the certainty of losing it forever.
As he stepped from the dock at Jersey City the fresh sea wind had thrilled him like a memory, and his pulses leaped instantly into sympathy with the tense life that vibrated in the air. He seemed never to have been away so long, and never had home seemed so pleasant. His sister had grown more beautiful; his mother"s quiet, n.o.ble face was smoother and fairer than it had been for years; and despite the absence of his father, who had been hastily summoned to England, there was an air of cheerfulness in the house that was in marked contrast to its gloom when Clayton was last at home.
He had been quickened at once into a new appreciation of the luxury and refinement about him, and he soon began to wonder how he had inured himself to the discomforts and crudities of his mountain life. Old habits easily resumed sway over him. At the club friend and acquaintance were so unfeignedly glad to see him that he began to suspect that his own inner gloom had darkened their faces after his father"s misfortune. Day after day found him in his favorite corner at the club, watching the pa.s.sing pageant and listening eagerly to the conversational froth of the town-the gossip of club, theatre, and society. His ascetic life in the mountains gave to every pleasure the taste of inexperience. His early youth seemed renewed, so keen and fresh were his emotions. He felt, too, that he was recovering a lost ident.i.ty, and still the new one that had grown around him would not loosen its hold. He had told his family nothing of Easter-why, he could scarcely have said-and the difficulty of telling increased each day. His secret began to weigh heavily upon him; and though he determined to unburden himself on his father"s return, he was troubled with a vague sense of deception. When he went to receptions with his sister, this sense of a double ident.i.ty was keenly felt amid the lights, the music, the flowers, the flash of eyes and white necks and arms, the low voices, the polite, clear-cut utterances of welcome and compliment.
Several times he had met a face for which he had once had a boyish infatuation. Its image had never been supplanted during his student career, but he had turned from it as from a star when he came home and found that his life was to be built with his own hands. Now the girl had grown to gracious womanhood, and when he saw her he was thrilled with the remembrance that she had once favored him above all others. One night a desire a.s.sailed him to learn upon what footing he then stood. He had yielded, and she gave him a kindly welcome. They had drifted to reminiscence, and Clayton went home that night troubled at heart and angry that he should be so easily disturbed; surprised that the days were pa.s.sing so swiftly, and pained that they were filled less and less with thoughts of Easter. With a pang of remorse and fear, he determined to go back to the mountains as soon as his father came home. He knew the effect of habit. He would forget these pleasures felt so keenly now, as he had once forgotten them, and he would leave before their hold upon him was secure.
Knowing the danger that beset him, Puritan that he was, he had avoided it all he could. He even stopped his daily visits to the club, and spent most of his time at home with his mother and sister. Once only, to his bitter regret, was he induced to go out.
Wagner"s tidal wave had reached New York; it was the opening night of the season, and the opera was one that he had learned to love in Germany. The very brilliancy of the scene threw him into gloom, so aloof did he feel from it all-the great theatre aflame with lights, the circling tiers of faces, the pit with its hundred musicians, their eyes on the leader, who stood above them with baton upraised and German face already aglow.
In his student days he had loved music, but he had little more than trifled with it; now, strangely enough, his love, even his understanding, seemed to have grown; and when the violins thrilled all the vast s.p.a.ce into life, he was shaken with a pa.s.sion newly born. All the evening he sat riveted. A rush of memories came upon him-memories of his student life, with its dreams and ideals of culture and scholarship, which rose from his past again like phantoms. In the elevation of the moment the trivial pleasures that had been tempting him became mean and unworthy. With a pang of bitter regret he saw himself as he might have been, as he yet might be.
A few days later his father came home, and his distress of mind was complete. Clayton need stay in the mountains but little longer, he said; he was fast making up his losses, and he had hoped after his trip to England to have Clayton at once in New York; but now he had best wait perhaps another year. Then had come a struggle that racked heart and brain. All he had ever had was before him again. Could it be his duty to shut himself from this life-his natural heritage-to stifle the highest demands of his nature? Was he seriously in love with that mountain girl? Had he indeed ever been sure of himself? If, then, he did not love her beyond all question, would he not wrong himself, wrong her, by marrying her? Ah, but might he not wrong her, wrong himself -even more? He was bound to her by every tie that his sensitive honor recognized among the duties of one human being to another.
He had sought her; he had lifted her above her own life. If one human being had ever put its happiness in the hands of another, that had been done. If he had not deliberately taught her to love him, he had not tried to prevent it. He could not excuse himself; the thought of gaining her affection had occurred to him, and he had put it aside. There was no excuse; for when she gave her love, he had accepted it, and, as far as she knew, had given his own unreservedly. Ah, that fatal moment of weakness, that night on the mountam-side! Could he tell her, could he tell Raines, the truth, and ask to be released? What could Easter with her devotion, and Raines with his singleness of heart, know of this subst.i.tute for love which civilization had taught him? Or, granting that they could understand, he might return home; but Easter-what was left for her?
It was useless to try to persuade himself that her love would fade away, perhaps quickly, and leave no scar; that Raines would in time win her for himself, his first idea of their union be realized, and, in the end, all happen for the best. That might easily be possible with a different nature under different conditions-a nature less pa.s.sionate, in contact with the world and responsive to varied interests; but not with Easter -alone with a love that had shamed him, with mountain, earth, and sky unchanged, and the vacant days marked only by a dreary round of wearisome tasks. He remembered Raines s last words-" Air ye goin" to leave the po" gal to die sorrowin" fer ye ? " What happiness would be possible for him with that lonely mountain-top and the white, drawn face forever haunting him?
That very night a letter came, with a rude superscription-the first from Easter. Within it was a poor tintype, from which Easter"s eyes looked shyly at him. Before he left he had tried in vain to get her to the tent of an itinerant photographer. During his absence, she had evidently gone of her own accord. The face was very beautiful, and in it was an expression of questioning, modest pride. "Aren"t you surprised? "it seemed to say-" and pleased? Only the face, with its delicate lines, and the throat and the shoulders were visible. She looked almost refined. And the note-it was badly spelled and written with great difficulty, but it touched him. She was lonely, she said, and she wanted him to come back. Lonely- that cry was in each line.
His response to this was an instant resolution to go back at once, and, sensitive and pliant as his nature was, there was no hesitation for him when his duty was clear and a decision once made. With great care and perfect frankness he had traced the history of his infatuation in a letter to his father, to be communicated when the latter chose to his mother and sister. Now he was nearing the mountains again.
XI
THE journey to the mountains was made with a heavy heart. In his absence everything seemed to have suffered a change. Jellico had never seemed so small, so coa.r.s.e, so wretched as when he stepped from the dusty train and saw it lying dwarfed and shapeless in the afternoon sunlight. The State line bisects the straggling streets of frame-houses. On the Kentucky side an extraordinary spasm of morality had quieted into local option. Just across the way in Tennessee was a row of saloons. It was "pay-day" for the miners, and the worst element of all the mines was drifting in to spend the following Sabbath in unchecked vice. Several rough, brawny fellows were already staggering from Tennessee into Kentucky, and around one saloon hung a crowd of slatternly negroes, men and women. Heartsick with disgust, Clayton hurried into the lane that wound through the valley. Were these hovels, he asked himself in wonder, the cabins he once thought so poetic, so picturesque? How was it that they suggested now only a pitiable poverty of life? From each, as he pa.s.sed, came a rough, cordial shout of greeting. Why was he jarred so strangely? Even nature had changed. The mountains seemed stunted, less beautiful. The light, streaming through the western gap with all the splendor of a mountain sunset, no longer thrilled him. The moist fragrance of the earth at twilight, the sad pipings of birds by the wayside, the faint, clear notes of a wood-thrush-his favorite-from the edge of the forest, even the mid-air song of a meadow-lark above his head, were unheeded as, with face haggard with thought and travel, he turned doggedly from the road and up the mountain toward Easter"s home. The novelty and ethnological zeal that had blinded him to the disagreeable phases of mountain life were gone; so was the pedestal from which he had descended to make a closer study of the people. For he felt now that he had gone among them with an unconscious condescension; his interest seemed now to have been little more than curiosity-a pastime to escape brooding over his own change of fortune. And with Easter-ah, how painfully clear his mental vision had grown! Was it the tragedy of wasting possibilities that had drawn him to her-to help her-or was it his own miserable selfishness, after all?
No one was visible when he reached the cabin. The calm of mountain and sky enthralled it as completely as the cliff that towered behind it. The day still lingered, and the sunlight rested lightly on each neighboring crest. As he stepped upon the porch there was a slight noise within the cabin, and, peering into the dark interior, he called Easter"s name. There was no answer, and he sank wearily into a chair, his thoughts reverting homeward. By this time his mother and sister must know why he had come back to the mountains. He could imagine their consternation and grief. Perhaps that was only the beginning; he might be on the eve of causing them endless unhappiness. He had thought to involve them as little as possible by remaining in the mountains; but the thought of living there was now intolerable in the new relations he would sustain to the people. What should he do? where go? As he bent fQrward in perplexity, there was a noise again in the cabin-this time the stealthy tread of feet-and before he could turn, a rough voice vibrated threateningly in his ears:
Say who ye air, and what yer business is, mighty quick, er ye hain"t got a minute to live."
Clayton looked up, and to his horror saw the muzzle of a rifle pointed straight at his head. At the other end of it, and standing in the door, was a short, stocky figure, a head of bushy hair, and a pair of small, crafty eyes. The fierceness and suddenness of the voice, in the great silence about him, and its terrible earnestness, left him almost paralyzed.
"Come, who air ye? Say quick, and don"t move, nother"
Clayton spoke his name with difficulty. The b.u.t.t of the rifle dropped to the floor, and with a harsh laugh its holder advanced to him with hand outstretched:
So ye air Easter"s feller, air ye? Well, I"m yer dad-that"s to be.
Shake."
Clayton shuddered. Good heavens! this was Easter"s father! More than once or twice, his name had never been mentioned at the cabin.
I tuk ye fer a raider," continued the old mountaineer, not noticing Clayton"s repulsion, ""n" ef ye had "a" been, ye wouldn"t be n.o.body now. I reckon Easter hain"t told ye much about me, "n" I reckon she hev a right to be a leetle ashamed of me. I had a leetle trouble down thar in the valley-I s"pose you"ve heerd about it-"n" I"ve had to keep kind o" quiet. I seed ye once afore, "n" I come near shootin"
ye, thinkin" ye was a raider. Am mighty glad I didn"t, fer Easter is powerful sot on ye. Sherd thought I could resk comm" down to the wed-din". They hev kind o" give up the s"arch, "n" none o" the boys won"t tell on me. We"ll have an old-timer, I tell ye. Ye folks from the settle-mints air mighty high-heeled, but old Bill Hicks don"t allus go bar"footed. He kin step purty high, "n" he"s a-goin" to do it at that weddin". Hev somefin?" he asked, suddenly pulling out a flask of colorless liquid. "Ez ye air to be one o" the fambly, I don"t mind tellin" ye thar"s the very moonshine that caused the leetle trouble down in the valley."
For fear of giving offence, Clayton took a swallow of the liquid, which burned him like fire. He had scarcely recovered from the first shock, and he had listened to the man and watched him with a sort of enthralling fascination. He was Easter"s father. He could even see a faint suggestion of Easter"s face in the cast of the features before him, coa.r.s.e and degraded as they were. He had the same nervous, impetuous quickness, and, horrified by the likeness, Clayton watched him sink back into a chair, pipe in mouth, and relapse into a stolidity that seemed incapable of the energy and fire shown scarcely a moment before. His life in the mountains had made him as s.h.a.ggy as some wild animal. He was coatless, and his trousers of jeans were upheld by a single home-made suspender.
His beard was yet scarcely touched with gray, and his black, l.u.s.treless hair fell from under a round hat of felt with ragged tdges and uncertain color. The mountaineer did not speak again until, with great deliberation and care, he had filled a cob pipe. Then he bent his sharp eyes upon Clayton so fixedly that the latter let his own fall.
"Mebbe ye don"t know that I"m ag"in" fur-riners," he said, abruptly, "
all o" ye; "n" ef the Lord hisself hed "a" tol" me thet my gal would be a-marryin" one, I wouldn"t "a" believed him. But Sherd hev told me ye air all right, "n" ef Sherd says ye air, why, ye air, I reckon, "n" I hevn"t got nothin" to say; though I hev got a heap ag"in ye-all o" ye."
His voice had a hint of growing anger under the momentary sense of his wrongs, and, not wishing to incense him further, Clayton said nothing.
Ye air back a little sooner than ye expected, ain"t ye? " he asked, presently, with an awkward effort at good-humor. "I reckon ye air gittin" anxious. Well, we hev been gittin" ready fer ye, "n" you "n"
Easter kin hitch ez soon ez ye please. Sherd Raines air gum" to do the marryin". He air the best friend I got. Sherd was a-courtin" the gal, too, but he hevn"t got no gredge ag"in ye, "n" he hev promised to tie ye. Sherd air a preacher now. He hev just got his license. He didn"t want to do it, but I told him he had to. We"ll hev the biggest weddin" ever seed in these mountains, I tell ye. Any o" yo" folks be on hand?"
No," answered Clayton, soberly, "I think not."