Part 13

"So I perceive," said Rhodes, shortly. Then, with a change of tone and an appealing glance of his dark-brown eyes: "But, for God's sake, Shattuck, don't run away and leave me the minute I flounder into a lot of bothers! For the Lord's mercy, try to put up with me a little, and let me grumble once in a while, for I do swear to you this whole thing has put me nearly beside myself. You know it is a canvass of personalities, and there's no telling the use this will be to Devens and his friends. If I can't carry these mountain districts _I'm done_, for the party issues will beat me like hell in Colbury and round about."

He took out of the breast pocket of the old claret-colored coat the envelope of a letter, which was scrawled over with figures pertaining to the relative population of the mountain districts, with an approximative calculation of the votes which he and his opponent might respectively receive. The smoke from his pipe curled between the paper and his eyes, but not even its sinuous vagaries served to alter the obdurate result, nor had his disaffected anxious gaze any effect, however slight, although he scanned these estimates forty times a day.

"I wish to God I knew where that confounded fellow Yates was!" he exclaimed. "They'll all have it that he died on account of _my_ selfishness, being forced into Lord knows what dangers in my service." Then, with the politician's instinct for a popular pose--although at his own fireside, and with a man whom he did not care nor seek to deceive--he continued: "And for his sake, Shattuck, I'm more troubled than for my own. Why, I give you my word of honor, 1 hardly knew how to speak to his wife--I nearly said his widow--when I went to the house yesterday. And I couldn't look at that child of his. It's a calamity to them--a tremendous calamity--and I am concerned in it; and the Lord above knows I had no more to do with it than if I had been as dead as Hector!"

Shattuck had seated himself, his elbow over the back of the chair, his chin in his hand. He frowned heavily as he looked absently out of the tiny window-panes at the blue mountains, with so unseeing and troubled a gaze that Rhodes began to perceive that he had not only his own anxieties to restrain, but those of his friend as well. He sighed to assume the double load. He had a definite appreciation, however, that his position would hardly be bettered by his friend's desertion of him now, when he could not control the reasons therefore which Shattuck might give in his anger, and his opponent devise with so illimitable a license as speculation. He came to wish that he had let him go, but at that moment he exerted all his reserve force of geniality to heal the wound and frustrate his guest's departure.

"Oh, come on!" he cried out, suddenly, springing up actively, stretching both arms above his head, shaking out first one leg and then the other, that the trousers might slip down over his long boots, and seeking to rid himself of that stupor which waits on drowsing before a fire out of season--"come on! We are fairly baked before this fire. What ails that old nigger to build a big enough fire this weather to barbecue himself--and I wish he would! I'll order both the horses, and we will get out into the air, and get the cobwebs out of our brains. We'll ride up to Fee Guthrie's on the mountain, and I'll do a little electioneering, and show I bear no malice to him. And you'll see if he won't let you go digging around on his land in the cove for your pygmies. I declare I haven't treated you right, old fellow;" he clapped his hand jocularly on his guest's shoulder as they stood facing each other, and his manner of friendliness was not impaired, although he did not fail to see that Shattuck winced almost imperceptibly at his touch. "You haven't got a thing in the world but that old jug out of my mound"--and he glanced with a careless eye at a strangely decorated jar on the high mantel-piece--"and not a bone of a pygmy yet. Maybe Aunt Chancy could fool you with a beef bone or two--ha! ha! ha!--hearing you set such store on bones, hey?"

His discretion and his intuition were at fault. There is naught of which the man of science, albeit the veriest amateur, is so intolerant as ignorant ridicule. His fleering laugh jarred Shattuck's nerves, made sensitive by the ordeal of the morning, and his utter lack of appreciation of the meaning of that bit of pottery was as pitiable as if he lacked a sense--that of sight, for instance, and jeered at the idea of light. The human significance of it; the lost history of lands and peoples and civilization, of which it was a dim, vague intimation; the flight of time that it so fully expressed; the idea of death, of oblivion, of which it was so apt an exponent! Shattuck could not look at it without the thought of the hands that had carried it; the lips that had touched it; the strange, strange faces that had bent above it, reflected within its walls when full of water; the words, spoken in an unknown, forgotten language, of ambition or love or homely household usage, to which it had echoed--for a vibrant quality it had, porcelain-like. These immortal-seeming essences were all gone; yet here was the dumb insensate bit of clay left for him to turn in his foreign hands and ponder over with his foreign fancies--the idea wrung every fibre of feeling within him! And Rhodes's laugh was the vulgarity of the vandal.

The state of vacuity that does not feel and cannot know is made cognizable sometimes to the thinking and the feeling soul by a dreary sense of solitude, for which the consciousness of the finer susceptibility does not compensate. It was not that Shattuck resented the fact that his friend's limitations precluded his sharing these enthusiasms, as that that burden of isolation, that painful consciousness of a lack of congeniality, that yearning for fellowship, so poignant to the gregarious human animal, came upon him for the moment; a realization of being alone, out of the reach of his companion, beset him, and he found it bitter, albeit he recognized that his higher standpoint created the inaccessibility.

Rhodes, once more in the saddle, was infinitely conversable. He had on the face which he took about with him on his canvass--his best expression, gay, gentle, kind; his conversation was full of country jokes, which he delivered with a rural drawl, and he was about as rustic a specimen as an educated man can well personate. He never dropped the character for a moment, although he hardly cared to impress his friend with its value. Its lapses from his usual habit of speech revolted Shattuck in some sort, albeit the contorted language of the ignorant mountaineers never grated upon his somewhat nice philological prejudices. One was the voice of affectation--an aping of boorishness and rusticity and yeoman simplicity, which Shattuck called by the not inapt name of "poor-mindedness;" the other was the natural speech and manners of those deprived of opportunities of culture, and was entitled to respect as being the best they could do.

"Bless your soul, Rhodes," he said at last, with a touch of satire, "you needn't put so many negatives in a sentence with the kind object of pleasing me; I'm not a registered voter in either of your counties. And I love you so that I'd vote for you, if I could, just as willingly for three or four negatives in a single negation as for eight. Save 'em up, my dear boy. I remember the fate of the man who couldn't say 'No,' but I must say I _don't_ think it impends for you at present."

"Hello! I didn't know you were such a school-master. I'll have to mind my p's and q's, hey?" said Rhodes, with a good-natured intonation, although he had flushed darkly at the taunt.

So instilled into his blood was the instinct of policy, however, that he abated naught of his determination to conciliate his friend if possible beyond this merely outward truce. And now was illustrated how subservient is the science of propitiation to the object upon which it is exerted, for Leonard Rhodes had been held to possess the subtle art to an extreme degree, and so proficient had he become therein that he was wont to find its unctuous exercise a pleasure. He could but himself admire the dexterity with which he brought the conversation to prehistoric America, especially prehistoric Tennessee. He had paused when they had reached one of the high ridges about the base of the great mountains far above, and he called to Shattuck to observe that, looking back toward his place, they could distinctly see the mound, and that, looking forward down the multitudinous defiles amongst the ranges, the pygmy burying-ground might be located by the proximity of the cataract, a mere cascade in the distance, an emerald gleam and a glittering, white, plume-like waving. Thence the transition was easy to the many antiquities found within the state. To his surprise, Shattuck seemed incomprehensibly to hold back and to grow reticent. Rhodes had material to work upon far different from the simple unsuspecting country folk. He had not thought that divination could so keep pace with most secret and supple intention, and that his object was perfectly plain and unglossed to the man whom it sought to mislead. Shattuck was almost openly impatient of the topic on which he was wont to love to talk, and which he often could not be prevailed upon to relinquish. He would not seriously discuss it now. When Rhodes demanded of him a theory concerning the ancient aboriginal races, based upon evidences of their advanced civilization, he replied with uncharacteristic flippancy that he was never acquainted with any of them, and that he could make a pretty pot of money if he had been. And when Rhodes, with that heavy assuming ignorance which is so ready to trench upon unknown, untried ground of laborious research, deeming all things slight and of small difficulty that are strange to its meagre acquisitions, attempted to argue certain hypotheses upon which he had heard him descant, Shattuck left the disquisition to his host, not even affecting to set him right when Rhodes himself could feel that he was floundering. The candidate was wanting in any fine capacity to read character or conduct in its more delicate script, and Shattuck's state of mind was as undecipherable hieroglyphics. Thus at cross-purposes they at last reached Guthrie's home, high up on the mountain.

IX.

The house was the usual small log-cabin, so overshadowed, however, by trees, dense and dark, that not the whole structure, but only the tiny porch and door were visible up the dusky green vista. When the sun fell through the leaves it was in fleckings of abnormal lustre, so deep was the shade. Fowls pecked about in the long dank grass. From high up on the mountain-side came the clear metallic clink of a cow-bell. A spring gurgled close at hand in the yard, and a vessel, with butter or milk in it, covered with a white cloth, was visible among the gravelly banks that bounded the spring branch. An old woman, tall and stalwart, sitting upon the porch, furtively looking at the two visitors as they came through the bars and up the path, had so forbidding an aspect that Shattuck was reminded of the superstition of "an evil eye." She gave them no greeting, but listened silently as Rhodes, having pulled himself together again into his genial, rustic, canvassing identity, asked for Felix Guthrie. He broke off short.

"Now, I wonder if you ain't Mrs. Guthrie!" he exclaimed.

"Ye air a good guesser," she said, with a sneer. "Who else would I be, hyar in Fee Guthrie's house?"

She wore no cap. Her hair, luxuriant and gray, was combed plainly down over her ears and caught in a heavy coil, that betokened its great length, at the back of her head. Her face in contrast was sallow and parchment-like. The features were singularly straight; her eyes were dark, her spectacles were mounted upon her head, and her expression was unsmiling. It was hardly wonderful that Rhodes should have lost his balance, and he had a discomfited sense that Shattuck might relish the fact. Shattuck, however, was looking about with his usual keen susceptibility to the interest of new places and people.

"I mean," said Rhodes, confused, "the second Mrs. Guthrie."

"I ain't the _fust_ one, now, sure," she said, her eyes fixed upon him with a sort of pertinacious attention. "An' what's that to you?"

Rhodes made a mighty endeavor to cast off the influences that paralyzed his advances. "You'd never guess, and so I'll tell you. I have heard my grandfather talk about you enough--how he danced with you at a bran dance down on Tomahawk Creek. Remember old Len Rhodes? Young Len, he used to be; but I am young Len now, myself."

Her face changed suddenly, so unexpectedly that one might wonder that it did not creak, so stiff and immobile had the features seemed. There was a new expression in her eye--a sort of glitter of expectancy.

"What did he say, this hyar old young Len Rhodes o' yourn? What did he say 'bout'n me?" She had a cautious air, as if she reserved her opinions.

Rhodes had taken off his hat and was leaning against the post of the porch, although he still stood upon the ground. He burst into sudden laughter that seemed to startle the somnolent dark stillness of the shadows.

"Oh, no, Mrs. Guthrie," he cried, archly. "You don't catch me that way. You'll be saying next thing that because I'm running for the Legislature I'm going round the country trying to get votes by flattering the ladies. I don't know what the _t'other_ Len Rhodes said to _you_ that day at the bran dance on Tomahawk Creek years and years ago, but _this_ Len Rhodes ain't a-goin' to repeat any of his second-hand compliments, not if he knows himself, and he think he do!"

A faint color was in her parchment-like cheek, a yellow gleam in her black eyes; the woman seemed to have grown suddenly young! A moment ago the idea might have been ridiculous, but now it was easy to see that she must have been beautiful--most beautiful. And she was determined to hear the words in which old Len Rhodes--in her day young Len Rhodes, the judge's son, and the richest and most notable man in all the county--had celebrated the fact. Her vanity still burned, albeit embers. How long, how long since fuel had been brought to feed this fire, that nevertheless would die only when her breath might leave her!

"Oh, ye air jes' a-funnin'! Ye can't remember nuthin' yer gran'dad tole 'bout the gals he danced with forty-five year ago. He couldn't tell 'em one from t'other hisself arter twenty year had passed. Gals is mos'ly alike," she added, with a consciousness that Rhodes had knowledge, as far as she herself was concerned, which contradicted this humble assertion. She smiled upon him. "Ye mus' git in the habit o' tellin' a heap o' lies electioneerin'. An' ye feel like ye mought ez well bamboozle one or two old wimmin ez not 'mongst the men. A few lies mo' or less won't make much diff'ence in the long count again ye at the jedgmint-day."

"I'll tell _you_ something that's got the ear-marks of truth--something that Len Rhodes told _me_ about _you_," declared Rhodes, apparently led on and over-persuaded into loquacity--"something that I couldn't know of myself. Ain't that fair, Shattuck? This is my friend Mr. Shattuck, Mrs. Guthrie. I carry him around to keep the girls from running off with me. The other Len Rhodes had no such trouble when you knew him. I'll be bound the main thing was to keep _him_ from running off with the girls. Ha! ha! ha!"

Mrs. Guthrie bent her softened and unrecognizable face upon Shattuck, and said that he was "right welcome" and she was glad to see him. Then she turned to the candidate, with an anxiety which was almost pathetic, to hear that younger self praised in the repeated words of a man she had known forty-five years ago.

"Waal, I'll know the ear-marks of the truth whenst I hear it," she prompted his lagging resolve.

"Your name was Madeline Crayshaw," he began. He was gayly fanning himself with his hat.

"Ye could hev fund that out ennywhar," she said, expectantly.

"And your eyes were black," he went on, with an air of gallantry.

"They air yit," she interposed, flashing them at him.

"And for all your eyes were black, your hair was as yellow as gold, a yard long. Could I find that out _now_ by looking at you?"

She shook her head.

"And Len Rhodes said you looked when you danced for all the world 'like a lettuce-bird a-flying.'"

"Who would hev thunk o' hearin' that old foolishness agin?" she cried, her eyes dim with pleasure. "I don't look like a lettuce-bird now; some similar ter a ole Dominicky hen, I reckon, stiddier a lettuce-bird. But that war the word on the tip o' Len Rhodes's tongue, for he never got tired o' talkin' o' yaller hair an' black eyes. I wonder the 'oman he married at las' warn't no better favored," she added, with a sudden hardening of the lines of her features. "Sech a admirer o' beauty ez he war! But he war a admirer o' lan's an' cattle an' bank-stock ez well; an' yer granmam war mighty well off, ef she _war_ little an' lean an' hed no head o' hair at all, ter speak of."

Rhodes did not change color. There may have been those in his grandmother's days ready to break a lance in support of the supremacy of her charms, but her grandson had no mind to enter such antiquated lists. He only said, with electioneering subtlety--the development of which Shattuck watched with the admiring curiosity and wonder that he might feel concerning some acrobatic feat which he should, nevertheless, never desire to imitate or emulate--"Yes, pretty girls had mighty little need of bank-stock and lands then, as now. Beauty always will be chosen. If you had a daughter now, you might make it up to me for having given my grandad the go-by."

She looked at him with narrowing lids, wondering if he truly thought it possible that his grandfather had been her rejected suitor--a gay gallant, who had danced with all the country-side beauties, among whom he was a toast with his soft words and his flatteries sown broadcast, but who, when about to settle down, had chosen a staid, pious, educated wife, whose social status was such as to make his marriage a decided looking-up, even for him. Leonard Rhodes's claim to rank with "the quality" was largely dependent upon her side of the house. The assumptions of vanity, however, have an elastic limit. Mrs. Guthrie stretched it, convinced that he believed that the rich, dashing, flirting son of the judge was in the old days the disappointed swain of a simple mountain girl. Thenceforward, when she set herself to boast of her youth, she claimed the trophy of his heart, dust and ashes long ago in the grave of the simple-minded old gentleman, who had grown sober under life's discipline before he was forty, and had forgotten his merry youth save for a casual reminiscence.

"Yes," continued Rhodes, "I ought to be coming up here to see some lettuce-bird of a girl, instead of those hulking step-sons of yours, Fee and Ephraim, to humbug 'em into voting for me. _Make_ 'em vote for me, Mrs. Guthrie. You owe me one now--you owe me one for the old time's sake."

"They needn't kem home ter me ef they don't vote fur ye," she said, fascinated with this fictitious conquest. She bore herself more proudly for it to the day of her death, although she knew in her secret soul the falsity of what he seemed to believe. On such slight fare as this can the vanity of a woman subsist.

And when he turned casually and asked, "Where are the boys, anyhow?" she directed him to a barley field, where they were cradling barley, and told him to come back that way with his friend, and she would have a "snack" for them. Shattuck marked, as they started, the alacrity with which she was rolling up the stocking that she had been knitting, and sticking the needles into the ball of yarn, her fine head, with its wealth of gray hair, distinct against the heavy vines that draped the porch. Their way took them around the side of the house in the deep lush grass, past the beehives all ranged by the fence, which was ascended and descended by a flight of steps, and surmounted by a small platform, and thence down through the orchard. Here the birds congregated in the thickly matted foliage. Only now and then at long intervals its dark-green shadow was penetrated by the sun. The warm fragrance of the so-called June apples was on the July air; the clover bloomed underfoot, and the bees boomed; the call of the jay, the sweet pensive cooing of a dove, sounded; then all was silence, save for a mere whisper of the sibilant wind.

Rhodes took off his hat as he walked, with the air of a need to refresh himself, his richly brown hair slightly stirring in the breeze. He cast his absorbed glance at his friend.

"Ain't she tur'ble 'oman?" he said, his electioneering ellipses sticking to his speech.

"Not so very 'tur'ble,' that I can see," said his friend, with unnoticed mimicry.

"Oh, Lord! yes, she is!" And Rhodes wagged his head with an unequivocal sincerity. "I know folks say she was an awful termagant with her first husband, who was a consumptive; and they _did_ have a story"--he lowered his voice, and glanced cautiously around him--"that she hastened his end to be rid of the bother of nursing him. And then she married this fellow Guthrie's father. And she made a perfect jubilee up here a-beatin' the childern. I know the tales about it useter skeer me! I was a little shaver then, and I wouldn't go in the dark for fear of meeting her, though I had never seen her. At last one day Felix got his chance, and bit her arm nearly through, and ever afterward he clawed and bit and fought till she let him and Ephraim alone. Yes, my grandfather said she turned out exactly like he always knew she would."

"Why, I thought you said he was in love with her," exclaimed Shattuck, for Rhodes's representation had borne such verisimilitude as might deceive a casual on-looker as well as one eager to be convinced. Rhodes cast upon him an amazed glance.

"What!" he said, in his genuine "quality" voice, as if this had touched the climax of the improbabilities.

Shattuck marked the vibrations of pride and surprise ring out smartly.

Then Rhodes, hesitating for a moment, added, "My grandmother was a _lady_. As to beauty"--the sneer about beauty _had_ evidently rankled--"why, such things as prettiness and coquetry were never thought of in connection with _her_. She was a _lady_, and when you've said _that_ you've said it all. And she was such a superior woman! My grandfather outmarried himself more than any man you ever saw."

Shattuck was silent for a moment. "I thought," he remarked at length, "that it was the American eagle that fluttered most through the rhetoric of electioneering eloquence. I didn't know that the lettuce-bird had superseded the big national fowl."

"Oh," exclaimed Rhodes, who had waited on his friend's words with a knitted brow, and he drew a long breath of comprehension, "grandpa _did_ use to say the prettiest girl he ever saw was this Madeline Crayshaw. He never saw her but once. It was at a bran dance on Tomahawk Creek--some sort of a political commotion, speechifying in favor of Henry Clay or some other old cock. He said her hair was the color of nothing in this world but a lettuce-bird, and she had the disposition of a panther. He said she reminded him of a wild woman--some sort of savage--and he wondered if she _could_ look pleased, and if she were subject to the same sort of compliments that other girls like. So when she was glowering round at the other girls as if she could rend 'em with jealousy, he tried the lettuce-bird dodge. And, bless your soul, she was as pleased and sweet as pie."

"And has remembered it for forty-five years, poor thing!" said Shattuck.