Part 7

Luther was never sure whether he really came upon the old landmark earlier than he expected to see it, or whether the anticipation of something novel and incongruous colored his mind. There it was, presently, lying on the steep slope in the midst of the wilderness, as he had always known it,--a vast boulder, weighing many tons, with a cavity in it which almost pierced through its bulk, and was large enough to accommodate a man standing at full height. The slope above was bare, for it was near the bald of the mountain, and with outcropping ledges of rock; athwart these several trees were lying, one apparently old and lightning-scathed long ago, the others freshly storm-riven, for the winds had raged in a recent tempest, and instances of its fury were elsewhere visible in broken branches in the woods.

"The wind couldn't hev done it," observed Luther, as his father pointed at the boulder with a wave of the hand.

"Wind?--ye sodden idjit!"

"'Pears like ter me it air whar it always war," said Luther, seeking refuge in conservatism from the hazards of conjecture.

"Luther," said his father impressively, "I know that thar rock war the fust thing my gran'dad viewed in Tennessee, whenst he wagoned 'crost the range ter settle. I hev hearn him say that word time an' agin. He said he camped by it, 'count o' the spring close by, up over thar. I hev knowed it familiar fur better'n fifty year, an' I tell ye ez it useter war around the curve o' the bend o' the mounting up over thar, a-nigh the spring."

"Hev ye viewed that spot lately?" asked Luther, drawing his horse to one side, and gazing blankly at the big hollow boulder.

"Nuthin' ter view,--jes' rock an' laidges an' sech."

"Why, dad, how could it hev kem down hyar?" demanded Luther.

Old Cap'n Lucy broke into a high, derisive laugh.

"Ax Mr. Kenn'ston; don't ax me. I ain't 'quainted with them things he talks 'bout by the yard medjure,--'splosives an' giant powder an' daminite." (Thus Cap'n Lucy profanely denominated a certain cogent compound.) "Enny one o' them would be ekal ter fetchin' the rock 'known ez Big Hollow Boulder' down hyar whar he wants it to be."

"Whut fur, dad?" demanded Luther.

"Whut fur, ye fool? Ter make the line run ter suit him, ter take my house an' lot an' sech in his boundary, ter turn me out 'n house an' home ter suit his pleasure. He can't buy it, so he's a-fixin' ter take it,--take it by changing the corner fur the start o' the survey."

His eyes dilated with anger, and his chin shook with the weakness of age and the vehemence of his emotion.

Luther's face grew grave. "That's agin the law, ain't it?"

"Ter move corner lan'marks or monimints o' boundaries air a felony, that's whut," said Cap'n Lucy, cavalierly swinging his feet in his stirrups. "Mr. Kenn'ston hed better gin keerful heed ter his steps."

He grinned fiercely as he took up the reins, and, followed by the astounded, dismayed, and ruminating Luther, fared cheerfully enough down the mountain.

VI.

The roof beneath which Jack Espey had found shelter was the readiest expression of hospitality. Its several expansions beyond its builder's original gambrel design were betokened by the incongruity of the additions, and the varying tints and fashion of the warped and worn old clapboards. Two shed-rooms were obviously of a later date than the dank and mossy covering of the main building; a queer projection above a modern porch exhibited an aboriginal inspiration correlated to a dormer window, albeit lacking the aperture; a section of the limited porch itself was boarded up to serve further as house-room; and a valiant disregard of the possibility of leakage characterized the intrepid domestic architect. It further differed from the conventional roofs of the district in its surroundings. In lieu of the bare dooryard and the neighboring fields, or the low tangle of peach and apple orchards, great forest trees loomed above it, the gigantic poplar and white oak of the region; for the space about it was rugged with the outcropping rock that sheered off further down into the great precipice on the mountain slope, precluding the possibility of cultivation. An exhaustless freestone spring burst out from the rocks close at hand, the reason of the selection of its vicinity as a building-site, and the "gyardin spot" and the cornfields were lower down the slope at the side, out of view amidst the clustering foliage. So little industrial were the suggestions that hung about this roof, so allied was it in its rough, gray, mossy aspect to the rugged bark and gnarled boles of the great trees, that it too might have seemed some spontaneous production of the soil, as it rose from the ledges of the rock, mossy and gray and rugged, too, like the rest. It had an intimation, also, of an aspiration toward higher things, as it, like the trees, gazed out upon the environing lofty seclusion of the mountains, the very inner sanctuary of nature; for, save the mystic mist, or the sun and the pursuing shadow, or the vagrant wind, naught ventured into that vast semicircle of mountains and intermediate valleys that lay before it, refulgent with color, massive, multitudinous, illimitable, the compass of the human vision failing to trace further than the far horizon the endless ranges still rising tier upon tier.

Whether the inmates of the house consciously derived aught from the scene, from its calm, its splendor of extent that might serve to widen the imagination, its vast resources of suggestion, one of them spent many idle hours in gazing upon it. Often Jack Espey lay all the forenoon upon the hay in the loft of the little barn, watching through the bare logs, guiltless of "chinking," the shadows dwindling on the hazy indented slopes, blue in the sunshine, amethyst in the shade. The white clouds would sail when the wind was fair, or in still noontides would lie at anchor off the great shimmering domes. Sometimes these loiterings were prolonged till the pageants of sunset-tide were on the march along the great purple western slopes, and from the shipping of the skies floated every pennant of splendid color; the sun, with the burnished dazzling quality quenched in the great blood-red sphere, would go slowly dropping down behind the western ranges, leaving the sky of a delicate amber tint with scarlet strata, amongst which incongruous gorgeousness the evening star would shine with a pure, pensive white radiance. The loft of the flimsy little barn, but now all aglow with bars of gold alternating with brown shadow as the sunlight fell between the logs, gilding even the tissues of cobweb and the masses of hay, would sink into a dull, dusky monochrome. A shadow would seem to fall upon his spirit. The anxiety to which the contemplative, languorous idleness had granted surcease roused itself anew; the voices from the house, never silent, were reasserted upon his attention, and the necessity would supervene of joining the family circle,--a necessity sometimes infinitely repugnant to his troubled soul, craving solitude for its indulgence of woe, and hardly able to maintain the cheerful disguise which must needs screen it.

So poor were his arts of deception that perhaps they would scarcely have served his purpose elsewhere, but here he and his peculiarities were given scant heed. He could not have found another domicile, in all the length and breadth of the country, where he could have been installed and have excited so little attention and curiosity. And indeed, to Mrs. Larrabee, the head of the house, he was only one more in addition to the rest of the tribe that must be warmed and fed and housed, or, as she expressed it, "tucked away somewhar." She always was equal to the emergency, although whenever Espey entered the large circle about the fireside it seemed to have been recruited somewhere, and more numerous than at his last survey.

"Ye 'pear ter hev a cornsider'ble head o' humans hyar, Mis' Haight," he observed on one occasion to the old grandam who sat in the corner, the stepmother-in-law of Mrs. Larrabee, and whose reproval seemed the natural incident of all that her daughter-in-law did. The world had gone much awry with her, after the mundane manner, and in the evening of her days she had neither the softening influence of religion nor the resources of culture to mitigate the asperities of the result.

"In course,--in course!" she exclaimed rancorously, gazing at him over her spectacles with little dark eyes, the brighter for exasperation. "Thar's me an' my old man,--he's got the palsy," as if this rendered him more numerous; "an' thar's Jerushy, my darter, an' her chil'n, five, an' her husband; an' S'briny Lar'bee herself, an' her son Jasper. An' ez ef that warn't enough, she hearn ez Henrietty Timson's husband war dead, an' they war burnt out an' hed no home, so S'briny Lar'bee jes' wagons down the mounting an' brung 'em hyar ter stay, seben of 'em,--seben with thar mammy makes eight. S'briny jes' tucks 'em away somehows, ez she 'lows, in this hyar leetle house!" She sneered toothlessly, then laughed aloud. Suddenly she leaned forward, and, with her knitting-needle in her hand, pointed at the group of floundering children. "See that thar brat, the leetlest one?"

Espey, turning in his chair, descried a tow-head bobbing not far above the floor. The significant eye of the old woman fixed him as if reciting an enormity.

"He war a infant whenst he kem,--a ill-convenient infant in arms, _with the rickets_!"

As the subject of this criticism scampered out of the crowd, with a single unbleached cotton garment on, very rotund as to trunk, very fat and cherubic as to legs, very loud and blatant as to voice, very arrogant and impudent as to manner, the young man was moved to remark that he "'peared toler'ble hearty now."

"Course he do," she assented, "through a-gor-mandizin' of so much fat meat; scandalous, impident shoat,--ez well ez a bear!"

She loved a quiet life, did Mrs. Haight. She had been an only daughter. She had had only two children. She had always had her house to herself; and in this congregation of incongruous elements around her widowed daughter-in-law's hearth she beheld only inconvenience, perversity, and an unfilial disregard of her own very sage advice. It had even been advanced to exclude her own daughter.

"Let Jerushy's husband take keer o' her. She would marry him, spite o' all. Let her 'bide by her ch'ice."

But poor Jerusha's husband was a drunkard, and the forlorn household had suffered hardship and very nearly grazed starvation before they made their happy advent into this populous haven.

There were certain sensitive thrills of pride and shame in the fugitive's heart, as he listened to this arraignment of the numbers crowded about the hospitable hearth. He said to himself, in justification, that he was only one more among so many, but he felt that he was an imposition. There was no such thought, however, in Mrs. Haight's mind. She regarded him only as a visitor, a personable young man, and moreover as possessing a certain unique interest for her; for in her youth she had spent some days in Tanglefoot Cove, and, despite the wide diversity of their age, occupation, and outlook at life, they passed sundry companionable hours in gossiping of the people of that locality, and detailing the various chances that had befallen families known to both. During these sessions he was wont to hold her yarn for her to wind. She never slipped the hank across his wrists that he did not bethink himself of other wristlets destined for him, perchance, and made of sterner stuff. He was prone to be silent for a time during the winding of the skeins, but she improved the opportunity to talk to an attentive listener; for Sabrina was too liable to interruptions from her various charges to meet her somewhat exacting demands as an interlocutor, and she was at scornful variance with the other elders of the family.

"Mis' Lar'bee 'pears ter be fond o' comp'ny," said Jack, as he leaned forward, with his submissive hands outstretched for the yarn.

The old woman, peering keenly through her spectacles as she sought to find the end of the thread,--she had a cautious, skillful, alert air, as of a trapper,--paused suddenly, her knotted, withered hand poised like a claw.

"'Tain't that!" she exclaimed scornfully. "Nothin' like it! Ye reckon enny 'oman in her senses likes sech ez that?"

She nodded acrimoniously, and Jack, following the direction of her eye, glanced over his shoulder at the turmoil of tow-heads scuffling together in the flickering firelight. Supper was in course of preparation, and they were even noisier at this glad prospect than their wont. One of them, under cover of Espey's preoccupation, had approached, and, slipping his hand under the arm held out for the skein, was venturing slyly to touch the pistols in his belt, with all the greed of the small boy for deadly weapons. Espey, his white hat far back on his head, looked down upon him, his suddenly scowling face all unshaded, and the little mountaineer fell back affrighted and in dismay; for, despite his humble estate in life, he had encountered few frowns.

"Naw, S'briny's reason ain't got no reason in it." Mrs. Haight had begun the winding now, and the red ball was whirling, ever larger, in her nimble fingers. "She jes' hed a son kilt in the wars. Leastwise the tale ez kem back war that he war wounded in a scrimmage, turrible; an' his folks war all on the run. An' he crawled ter a house nigh by, an' the 'oman tuk him in. An' he died in her house stiddier on the groun' or in a fence corner. That war the tale. S'briny never could find out who war the 'oman, nor edzac'ly whar it happened. But sence then, ter pay back her debt, she takes 'em all in, an' whenst they gits too crowded she knocks up a shed or suthin' an' packs 'em in; whenst like ez not the 'oman lef' Alvin ter die on the hard, cold groun', an' mebbe sot the dogs on him ter hurry the job."

There was a silence for a few moments, while the firelight flickered upon Espey's absorbed eyes and intent, listening figure. The wrinkled, parchment-like face of the old woman was partly in the shadow as she sat in the corner, but her spectacles gleamed with unwonted brilliancy as she actively moved and nodded her head under her big ruffled cap.

"S'briny say, too, ez old pa'son Jenks say ez ye mought entertain angels unaware. An' _I_ say, then agin ye moughtn't! Fur ef enny o' these hyar that S'briny _hev_ entertained air angels, they air powerful peart at hidin' it, sure!"

Once more she cast a caustic glance at the group, and her sarcastic laughter fell upon the air, sharply treble.

If celestial visitants, these were certainly well disguised. Espey glanced at the bloated face of the inebriate husband of Jerusha, tremulous, full of sudden fits and starts; at Jerusha herself, slatternly, slothful, and down at the heel, a snuff brush in her mouth, and her forlorn discontent with life in general on her weak, flabby face; at the old, feeble-minded man dozing and muttering in the corner,--he had once in his life worked in the Lost Time mine, and he sometimes gave Espey a sudden start by bringing out the name with a deep, full, blood-curdling curse. Henrietta Timson's thankfulness had merged into a suspicion that too much gratitude was expected of her, and she was prone to magnify the lighter tasks which she selected, and went about with an overworked drudging air, and with some distinct proclivity for the rôle of martyr. It was a furtive, jealous eye which she cast upon Mrs. Larrabee, at home, competent, and emphatically in command. The children, nevertheless, were disposed to take undue advantage of their protectress; and the smaller they were, the more capable, by reason of her leniency, of imposing upon her. This disposition characterized even an infant turkey, which had contracted some disease by exposure to the inclemency of the weather, and, being put into a basket of cotton to recuperate, found its way out, from time to time, with a cotton girdle adhering about its middle, and, with a fifelike voice, made the grand tour of the hearth, in imminent danger of catching fire in its cotton gear, causing her acute anguish lest it should be baked alive and before its time.

Even Mrs. Larrabee herself,--if there were aught spiritual about her, it must have been in the ends of her fingers. She was much given to wearing a sunbonnet, in the depths of which her thin, pallid face had a look like marble, with its keen, straight features. Her busy eye had not casual observation: she looked at the children to see if they were sick or cold or hungry; at Jerusha's husband to descry if perchance he were drunk again; at Jack Espey to discover if he wanted aught, and if he had no want or ailment she noticed him not at all. He could hardly have been more free to come and go as he would, and the long hours when he and Larrabee were away at the still passed altogether without remark. It was nevertheless to her that he resolved to open his heart. The door was ajar, and he could see that the long, loitering summer night had come at last. Through the gap in the trees the stars were visible, glowing white above the sombre mountains in the distance; he could not distinguish a constellation,--only a whorl of brilliant stellular points of light in the scant interval where the black leaves of the oak, as distinct and as dark as if cut of bronze, failed to fill the space between the threshold and the zenith. It was not long now before she would be at leisure, and sleep would silence the juvenile members of the family, except indeed the turkey, which, though unclassified amongst nocturnal fowl, was wont to pipe lugubriously in the dead watches of the night, necessitating the uprising of the mistress of the house with a draught of water and a light lunch of corn-meal batter to compose it once more to slumber. As Espey observed it gadding about on its long legs, disproportioned to the size of its body even when begirt with the cotton batting, he sagely thought that Mrs. Larrabee's tolerance toward its exacting idiosyncrasies was the result of no sense of obligation to it or its kind. "She's a powerful good-hearted woman, and smart, too," he said to himself; "she's got enough sense ter hev some feelin's."

The evening, passed in winding the yarn, wore slowly away to him after his resolve. He was very taciturn and still, and Mrs. Haight, finding so acquiescent a coadjutor, grew industrious, and hank succeeded hank upon his motionless and submissive wrists. His silence did not discourage her flow of words. On the contrary, it assumed the narrative form in lieu of their usual dialogue; and as the fervor of reminiscence waxed, her small black eyes grew brighter, her parchment-like cheek flushed, and, with her red "shoulder shawl" and big white cap and snowy hair and blue apron, she looked like some fairy godmother. And indeed, as she briskly wound the thread, now blue, now red, and again gray "clouded" with white, it might have seemed that she wielded some sorcery to reduce to this humble fireside utility this wild-eyed, defiant spirit. The young desperado, his belt stuck full of weapons, was oddly at variance with the solicitude which he now and again exhibited when a troublous tangle developed, and the thread perversely knotted and broke. The firelight that flickered on his face, the fairer from his sojourn in the sunless depths of the Lost Time mine, his great boots and spurs, his pliant attitude and submissive gestures, and his aged and incongruous companion served also to show what speed was made in disposing of the youthful gentry for the night. With that perverse disinclination for bedtime which betrays the old Adam in the youngest infant, they severally resisted, each to the best of his very respectable capacity. One or two of tender years, having been hustled up the ladder to the loft, came down again in scant attire, and he who had triumphed over the rickets, and whose bed was in a box, resuscitated himself from amongst the bedclothes whenever he was stowed away, but finally was overtaken, and fell asleep on the old house-dog's neck as he lay snoring on the hearth.

Espey was of that type of man to whom juvenility is neither comical nor alluring. Duty was revealed to him in graduated doses adapted to the age of the taker, and he was disposed to make no allowance to infants for delinquency. It seemed to him that Mrs. Larrabee's patience was much misplaced, and he now and again gazed with disapproving eyes at the group. He was obliged to linger long before she was at leisure and sitting in front of the hearth with the shovel in her hand, ready to heap the ashes over the coals to keep the fire till day. The two beds in the room were edged with the tow-heads of the children, sleeping crosswise; the baby's box-crib and the turkey's basket had each its wonted occupant; and if the dreams that went up from the conclave could have been materialized, what wild display of phantasmagoria they would have made! The door had been barred up against the possible marauder of the elder's apprehension, and the black bear of juvenile dread. The shadows of the two loiterers were on the red, dully illumined ceiling, two gigantic, distorted heads of dusky brown.

"I war sorter waitin' fur Jasper," observed Espey disingenuously, having noticed that Mrs. Larrabee looked inquiringly at him. "I reckon he be a-visitin' down at Tems's."

"Mebbe so," she acquiesced succinctly, rasping the shovel on the hearth. She seemed indisposed for conversation.

"Mis' Haight's mighty good comp'ny," he continued, leaning sideways in his chair, with his elbow on its back as he supported his head in his hand. "Talkin' 'bout old times, an' her courtin' days, an' sech."

For, according to Mrs. Haight's own account, she had been a truculent heart-breaker in her hey-day. There were few names that one might mention, native to her locality, which she could not have worn had she chosen. She always alluded cavalierly to the husband she had and to the one she had lost as "toler'ble samples o' the whole b'ilin'."

Mrs. Larrabee's immobile face was more inexpressive than before, as the red light sought it out in the depths of her sunbonnet. She had her secret doubts as to this wholesale destruction of the peace of youth a half century ago.

"Toler'ble interestin' ter me!" protested Espey suddenly. "I hev been sorter in love myse'f--leastwise"--He did not continue to qualify, for Mrs. Larrabee turned her face, illumined by maternal interest, upon him. "It's gin me a heap o' trouble, too," he broke out impetuously, divining her sympathy.

She was looking at him tenderly, remembering her own youth and her own young lover, dead and gone this many a year. Jacob Larrabee had, in happier days, laughed retrospectively at his own lackadaisical woe and wakeful nights and anxious doubts. "Sech a _funny_ fool I war. Thar may hev been ez _big_ fools, but I'll swar I war the _funniest_." But his woe had always appealed to her commiseration, and she was glad she had consciously been no factor in it. "I wouldn't hev hed ye so tormented fur nuthin', Jacob, ef I hed knowed," she would say gently.

Jack's young face, worn with fiercer griefs and turmoils and keener fears, was appealing in its anxious lines; her warm motherly heart went out to him. He leaned his hands on his knees, and assumed a confidential tone.

"Now, Mis' Lar'bee," he said, "I 'lowed I'd ax ye what this hyar gal means. I hev done everything I knowed how ter please her,--even whenst she tole me ter go a-perlitin' around another gal. I done _jes' like she ordered_, an' what ye s'pose she done?"

"What?" demanded his partisan confidante angrily, knitting her brows heavily.

"She hit me."

"Did she hurt ye?" exclaimed Mrs. Larrabee sympathetically, dropping her voice in contemplation of the enormity.