Part 10

They called to him, as he passed the forge, for news of Eli Strobe. He shook his head; he had no news to give. The votes had been counted, and the local politicians, even in this hour of stress, did not fail to communicate the fact, and one or two triumphant souls shouted to him, as he spurred away, that Eli Strobe was reëlected. He did not slacken his speed, for all the rough road, nor draw rein in fording the plunging torrent. The mare’s neck was vainly downstretched toward the limpid swiftness; its very breath, the dank perfumes of its banks, indescribably refreshing at the end of the sultry day. The sun was slowly withdrawing its fervid presence. The wind rode abreast up and up the mountain. Jepson seemed to go to meet the night, for the shadows trooped from the east, and only the lengthening miles of valley and steeps behind him were pensively splendid in the rich afterglow of the prodigal day; to meet the night, heralded in the melancholy gloom under the pines, in the vague, indefinable pain with which we loose our hold on each successive day, in the sense of quiet and silence lacking in the gorgeous, albeit noiseless, pageant of sunset-tide; to meet the night, with its pensive presentiments of sorrow, its prophetic intimation of some longer space of null and dark futurity. The mare climbed the rugged ways now with a freshened will. Home, that even the animals cherish, lay at the end of the road, and she began to recognize her rider’s intention thither. As she threaded the tangles of the laurel, a faint, blood-curdling sound smote her quick senses. A wolf was howling afar off in these primeval fastnesses. She snorted as she went, and trembled. A star was at the zenith. A great fir seemed to touch it with the dark, slender line of its spire. An open, rocky space, and Jepson could see the dark western mountains, all glooming, the sunset faded out save for a lingering red streak along the horizon,—a dull and dusky tint in the closing obscurity. Below, mists were a-stalking down the valley ways, spectral in the vague light that barely made them visible. They claimed that weird and ghostly hour; and now and then one peered out from amongst the crags hard by, and drew back aghast, it might seem, at the sight of a human being in these preëmptions of solitude, where it should meet only its own disembodied kindred. The mare shied from them with dilated eyes, and chafed at the bit, and plunged and fretted because of the momentary pause.

Jepson marked, far as it was, the lights in the depression where Broomsedge lay,—like a skein of fireflies,—and he gazed down with a pained and throbbing heart, a troublous remorse and a contradictory sense of self-exculpation, a poignant sympathy with Marcella, and, nevertheless, a pulsing, sensitive resentment. “’Twar a accident,—nuthin’ but a accident,” he muttered to himself. And then he bit his lip, remembering her caustic jeer of utilizing this interpretation. Once more the howl of the wolf, strangely nearer than before.

“How them critters kin travel!” he said.

Then even his strong hand had much ado to hold the mare, snorting and plunging, and pushing now through the laurel, now amidst the gaunt and sterile cliffs on the toilsome homeward way, whether he would or no. The rocks echoed her hoof-beats; she seemed to the listening ear the first of a file of horse,—a phantom file, for here and there, where the road was open, and the dull light still showed its curves, it was visibly vacant, for all the measured pace that sounded between the crags. How lonely were these great rocks in the wilderness and the vast silences! With what precipitate avidity they caught at a sound, repeating it from one to another, as if it had some strange significance, some prophecy, perchance, that they should hoard against its fulfillment. Of all the forms of inanimate nature, they alone seemed to him sentient in some sort; and appealing from their isolation, they alone sought to communicate with creatures endowed with a motor life, through those mysteries of the elastic air, set vibrating with a word.

“Marcelly!” he cried out, with some wild desire to hear the wilderness voice her name. The whole world seemed to respond with a subdued acclaim.

“Marcelly!” the mellow tone rang from the heights above. “Marcelly!” the tender echoes of the valley replied. And now a crystalline fine vibration from the upper atmosphere, “Marcelly!” as if the magic word were spoken in the strange scenes of that lucent and glittering star.

He recovered in a moment his normal stolidity. He would have hushed, if he could, the voices he had summoned. The mare quickened her pace anew. As he emerged from the densities of the wilderness into the high vantage-ground of Bowles’s clearing, the vast splendor of the thickly instarred, moonless sky was before him,—so far and foreign it was, so dark the earth lay beneath, so drear. And he hardly cared that the dull orange glow coming from the notch was the light of his hearth-stone, although the young mare whickered gleefully at the sight, and went up the long, steep hill at a prancing pace, and with sundry plunges that threatened to unseat her practiced rider.

He took the saddle from her back as soon as he dismounted,—none too quickly, for she instantly rolled over upon the ground, her iron-shod feet awkwardly waving in the air. Then, as she gathered herself up with a snort of satisfaction, she set out for the barn and the water-trough with a capable air, evidently used to serving her own supper and making her own bed.

As Jepson entered the firelit room, Ben Bowles, sitting beside the hearth, his elbows on his knees, his pipe in his mouth, roused himself from a sort of lethargy of idleness, and a slow smile began to make more distinctly indented the many wrinkles around his mouth and hay-colored beard. His mild eyes shone with such pleasure as so definite a clod might be presumed to feel, but he glanced dubiously at his wife before he ventured to speak.

“Air that you-uns, Teck? Powerful glad ter see ye back hyar,” he said cordially.

“I ain’t company enough fur him, Teck,” said Mrs. Bowles, with an assertive smile, displaying all her fine teeth.

“Laws-a-massy, jes’ listen at M’ria, now!” Her husband gallantly scouted the idea, but he looked somewhat deprecatory of having laid himself liable to this interpretation.

Jepson glanced about him, heedless of both.

“Whar’s the chill’n?” he demanded. “Gone ter bed?”

“Whar ye reckon?” retorted Mrs. Bowles, with a flash of her bead-like eyes. “Ye s’pose I hev made sassingers or minch-meat out’n ’em?”

“Ye air ekal ter it,” her brother-in-law ruthlessly declared.

The mild Ben Bowles deserved, perhaps, a better fate than the continual futility of his efforts to preserve the peace about him. So much tact, so perfected by practice, seemed wasted here.

“Ha, ha!” He forced a laugh, affecting to interpret facetiously the retort and the counter-retort. “Nare one o’ ’em hev got meat enough on thar bones ter be wuth the scrapin’, ’ceptin’ it air Bob. Ha, ha! Bob’s fat enough.”

Jepson’s only rejoinder was a glance of scorn. He strode over to the shadowy corner where the children lay, and looked down at Sim’s pale, unhappy face, with its marks of sullen sorrow all undispelled, even in its absent, far-away expression. Aminty’s had the solemnity of sleep upon it, and her tossed and tangled hair about it. Bob’s wide-open twinkling hazel eyes shut instantly in feigned slumber the moment they encountered Jepson’s. The diplomatist of four snored gently.

Jepson made no comment, but turned back to the broad hearth, slowly divesting himself of his powder-horn and shot-pouch. The firelight glanced upon his full blue eyes; the fairness of his brow contrasted sharply with his sun-embrowned cheeks, and had a definite line across it where the brim of his hat had ceased to cast its shade. The spurs on the heels of his long boots, that reached to his knee, gave out a dull metallic glitter. His brown jeans coat was begirt by a broad leather belt, and his massive, well-formed figure seemed taller than usual, since the others, seated, were fain to look up. Mrs. Bowles’s eyes had a certain speculation in their bead-like brightness, as she sat silently gazing at him for a time.

Then suddenly, “Ye needn’t be holdin’ yer jaw, Teck. I know jes’ ez well ez ef I hed seen him ez that thar Bob air a-lyin’ thar broad awake, like a fox, or possum, or suthin’, though he hev been tole forty times”—she lifted her voice that the youth should hear—“ez the devil will kem arter him an’ ketch him ef he waits ter go ter sleep till the house be dark. I tell ye now what I’m a-goin’ ter do. I’m a-goin’ ter put him out’n doors, ter keep company with them t’other night rampagers,—bars, ez eat fat boys, an ’painters, an’ sech. An’ Bob’ll feel powerful lonesome out thar in the dark mountings, a-tryin’ ter git away from ’em, this road an’ that. His legs air short, an’ he can’t run fas’. An’ he be so fat he mus’ be toler’ble heavy ter hisself ter tote.”

There was a vague stir under the quilts. Even the small stoic could but writhe a little in prophetic anguish at this prospect.

Jepson turned abruptly, strode again to the bed, caught the child by the collar of his nightgown, and the next moment Bob was sitting in his chair before the fire, looking very rotund in his straight garment, and gazing with wide, apprehensive eyes at his stepmother, expectant of the blow that always came when she was thwarted. She did not deal it now. She was constrained by the eye of the man as he stood once more on the hearth, busying himself with the strap that held his powder-horn.

“An’ when enny bars, or painters, or devils, or folks take arter ye, Bob, jes’ call on me, sir, an’ I’ll tend ter ’em.” He glanced down, and nodded convincingly.

Bob looked up at the big man with a grave and plump countenance. He gave a little sigh of relief, but he did not venture upon words. His pink toes were more rosy in the light of the fire, and now and then curled in the enjoyment of the warmth, for the night was chilly on the mountain. His great wakeful eyes dwelt on the flames. He filled his little armchair very comfortably, and his hair, standing up straight in front, gave him a quaintly grotesque look.

Ben Bowles skillfully preserved an air of unconsciousness of the clashing in the domestic circle. Mrs. Bowles seemed for a moment likely to acquiesce without demur in the rule of the stronger. Then a flush rose through her clear olive skin, and overspread her blunt features. Her strong white teeth showed in a satiric smile. That added significant glitter in her small dark eyes struck Jepson’s attention. As he held the powder-horn in his hand he paused, and looked down intently at her. She noted his glance. Her desire to harass was strong, but she could not restrain her caustic tongue, or she might have baffled his curiosity.

“Keep on, Teck,” she said sarcastically, “keep on the way ye air a-goin’. Set pore leetle Bob up thar ter ketch his death o’ cold, an’ take an axe an’ hack me an’ Ben up, an’ set the house afire, an’—_ennything_! Ye air ekal ter _ennything_ arter what we hev hearn ter-day.”

“Hearn what, ter-day?” he asked, marveling how the news of the disaster had reached these untrodden, secluded wilds.

“Oh, nuthin’,” she said, flashing her eyes at him.

“Laws-a-massy, M’ria,” Ben Bowles ventured to remonstrate,—he would fain have ignored the whole incident,—“let Teck tell us just what did happen. Mought be some mistake.”

She laughed, and sneered too. “Toler’ble large-sized mistake, sartin, ter kill Eli Strobe jes’ kase his darter wouldn’t marry ye—turned ye off! Gals air choosers one time in thar lives, ennyhow.” She tossed her head with a lively relish of this limited ascendency.

Jepson was shaken with a wild fear that they had had later news from the Cove than he. Then he remembered that no one had entered or left the room since his return.

“Eli Strobe warn’t dead whenst I left Brumsaidge,” he replied calmly.

“Thar, now, M’ria, what did I tell ye?” expostulated Bowles.

“Ye tole me,” she perversely retorted, “ez Teck war too sharp an’ smart ter git inter enny sech trouble, even ef he warn’t none too good fur it.”

Jepson recognized the facile temporizing of Bowles in this, and he noted the quick flush on the cheek of the master of the house, attesting the veracity of his wife’s speech.

Jepson did not resent it, for he had a certain scornful indulgence of the cowardly amiability of his half-brother, and a contemptuous pity for the hardship of his position in his own house. He quietly hung the powder-horn and shot-pouch upon a prong of the deer antlers that formed the rack for his gun. Then he sat down before the fire, his eyes on the blaze, his legs crossed, bringing one of his heavy boots so near Bob that the fat baby could not refrain from leaning forward, and with both chubby hands making the rowel whirl. His teeth shone, his eyes gleamed, he chuckled with glee, till, catching Mrs. Bowles’s gaze, a sudden gravity settled upon his open mouth, and he leaned back in his armchair, affecting to rub his eyes, but now and then glancing furtively at her. The cat came and purred about him, and rubbed against his dimpled legs; then, suddenly bethinking herself, stood erect on her hind feet and put her fore-paws on his knees to beg. He was not eating, but she watched for some moments with stern and vigilant eyes every movement of his chubby hands, that they should not undetected convey some unshared delicacy to his lips. Finally even feline patience was exhausted, and with an inaudible motion of mewing once or twice she sprang into the child’s lap, curled up, and composed herself to slumber.

Bowles moved uneasily in his chair. The aggressive silence weighed hardly less heavily upon his spirit than the more active expressions of antagonism which he had sought to avert or annul. Now he glanced at his wife with an urgent remonstrance in his face, of which he was unaware, or he would have suppressed it in his timorous policy, and now at Teck Jepson with an air of appeal.

Presently, in desperation, he broke the pause:—

“War ye a-axin’ jes’ now, Teck, who fetched the news hyar? I warn’t payin’ much ’tention.”

Jepson did not take his eyes from the flames. “Naw, I didn’t ax,” he said.

Bowles subsided into silence, and his wife turned and cast a contemptuous glance upon him, which he comprehended as a rebuke that he should interfere.

The fire burned the freer and the clearer for the draught from the open door; the circle sat well back from the hearth in the alternate red flare and white fluctuations; the dark night looked in through the black aperture of window and door; the awful solitude of the unpeopled mountain was close without. Sometimes a dallying white presence was visible, and one might know that a mist was skulking close at hand, clearing away again to show the glimmer of a lonely star through a dark pine bough. A tree-toad trilled; the woods sighed, and lapsed again to soundless solitude.

Mrs. Bowles, too, chafed at the silence. Once or twice she visibly restrained herself. Then returning to her first impulse, she observed, “Teck don’t want ter know, Ben. Them ez he don’t like he jes’ won’t see nor hear, an’ it does him mighty nigh ez well ez ef they war dead. He knows somehow ez ’twar Jake Baintree ez hev been hyar this evenin’”—

Jepson lifted his head. “Jake Baintree!” he ejaculated, in evident surprise.

Mrs. Bowles rejoiced in her opportunity. “Yes, sir, ’twar Jake Baintree.” Her dark bead-like eyes flashed. She smiled flexibly; her white teeth glittered.

“What call hed he ter kem hyar?” Jepson demanded, puzzled.

“What call hedn’t he?” Mrs. Bowles retorted. “He be a free man! He travels the mountings whar his will leads him,—same ez a fox or a deer. He be ekal ter them dumb sinners, ennywise, I reckon, though he ain’t ’lowed ter git baptized.”

She relapsed into silence, with an obvious satisfaction to have shot this arrow. She expected him to inquire further. But he only rose, looked on the rude shelf, that served as mantel-piece, for his pipe, filled it, scooped up a coal from the edge of the fire, and smoked thoughtfully, with no show of desire to hear more; and this stimulated infinitely Mrs. Bowles’s intention to continue the detail of the visit. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, gazed smilingly into the fire, apparently meditating on these things, and once she broke out “Waal, waal!” as if in reminiscent wonder and interest.

Her husband, always alert to take an acceptable part, looked first at her, with her patent bid to be interrogated, and then at Jepson’s impassive and lofty face, with its proud indifference. He reflected that Jake Baintree was in one sense his half-brother’s enemy, and in another the object of his persecution, and he said nothing.

Mrs. Bowles flushed with a dull red glow, but still persistently smiled and gazed into the fire; then shaking her head slowly and gently, she presently broke forth again:—

“Waal, waal, I never hearn the beat o’ Jake’s talk! He ’peared plumb rej’iced over the happenings in the Cove. An’ I ’lowed ter him—I said, ‘I’ll thanky ter remember it be my cousin—yes, sir, own blood relation—ez Teck, Jepson hev murdered, so don’t git ter glorifyin’ over it hyar.’ An’ he say, ‘I can’t holp it. Mis’ Bowles. I’m sorry fur Eli an’ his darters, but ’tain’t mine ter question the Lord’s devices, nor what He ’lows that a day shell bring forth. The Lord suffered it,’ he says, ‘so Eli mus’ submit, an’ his kinfolks too. But,’ he says, ‘the Lord hain’t done nuthin’ so much ter my taste fur the las’ ten year! We-uns’ll see how the mate o’ Daniel will look in a cage hisself,’ Jake say; ‘no other lion nor other wild cattle thar, but he kin cavort around an’ rage fur twenty. We-uns will see how the friend o’ Moses, the Lawgiver, will stand agin them lawgivers down ter the criminal court. We-uns will git a chance ter rest our ears ’bout them folks in the Bible fur one while, sure, fur the livin’ will gin Teck all he kin tend ter, ’thout studyin’ on them ez be dead an’ gone so long they oughter be furgot, ef they ain’t.’ An’ I ax Jake, I jes’ riz up an’ axed him, ef he warn’t ’shamed ter talk that-a-way, whenst he purtended ter hev got religion. An’ he ’lowed he hed got through with wantin’ religion. Whenst the pa’son declared he wouldn’t baptize him, it jes’ kem on him like a flood o’ light ez he hed ruther go ter hell ’n ter heaven along o’ sech Christians ez pa’son an’ Teck. An’ sence that minit his soul hed troubled him no mo’.”

Jepson slowly blew the smoke from between his lips; the hand that held the corn-cob pipe did not tremble. There was no suggestion of anger in his dark blue eyes, the color of the iris distinct as he gazed meditatively into the fire. The flicker of the flames fluctuated upon his regular, definite features, and he showed no consciousness of his surroundings save that he kept his former attitude rigidly, in order that Bob, leaning forward with the excited eye of achievement and the quick breath of effort, might triumphantly accomplish the feat of unbuckling and taking off the large spur. The child’s posture incommoded the slumbers of Aminty’s yellow cat that lay in his lap, and she held her green eyes half open that she might guard against the danger of being too much compressed as he bent over. More than once she put up her paw against the breast of his nightgown, with an admonitory claw extended; but he only peremptorily caught it and put it down, and went on with his enterprise as before.

Mrs. Bowles seemed disposed to despair and desist, as she gazed speculatively at the impassive Jepson. Her husband stirred uneasily, and then remarked non-committally, “_Some_ say Jake Baintree air a bad aig.”

His wife did not often condescend to a dialogue with him alone. But this was the only prospect of covering her retreat with dignity, as she relinquished her attack on Jepson. She turned her face with a commingling animation and benignity toward her husband, and rejoined in a tone of interest, “Yes, folks say so; but what s’prised me war the cur’ous way he behaved hyar this evenin’. I wisht ye or Teck, one, hed been hyar, jes’ ter see how he ’peared. He sot thar in that cheer,—’twar gittin’ on toward dark,—an’ his face war sharp an’ clear, somehows, an’ white, an’ his hair so slick an’ shinin’, an’ his looks so keen, like he war studyin’ ’bout a heap he never would tell in this worl’. An’ he say, ‘I ain’t got no mo’ use fur religion, Mis’ Bowles. I hev got no use fur rivers, ’ceptin’ ter go swimmin’ in ’em.’ An’ I say, ‘Hev ye traded off yer soul, ez ye don’t ’pear ter ’low ye hev got none ter save?’ An’ he say, ‘Ye look out fur me at the Jedgmint Day, Mis’ Bowles, an’ ye’ll ’low I stan’ toler’ble high amongst the n’angels.’ He say, ‘I hev got suthin’ else ter look arter now. Folks in the mountings dunno ez much ez they think they do, Mis’ Bowles. I fund that out whilst I war in jail in Glaston an’ larnin’ so much o’ town ways.’ An’ I say, ‘It’s good ye air pleased with yer smartness, Jake, fur ye air the fust one I ever hearn accuse ye o’ sech.’ An’ I jes’ up-ed an’ set about gittin’ supper, an’ lef him thar ter brag by hisself. An’ whenst I looked at him, arter a minit, he hed tuk a paper out’n his pocket an’ war a-purtendin’ ter read. His eyes war jes’ set sorter cross-eyed onter it, an’ his lips a-movin’ like he war a-talkin’ ter hisself, an’ he looked so plumb foolish ez I jes’ drapped the bowl what I war stirrin’ batter in, an’ hollered an’ laffed. An’ he say, ‘Ye don’t b’lieve I kin read, Mis’ Bowles; jes’ listen, an’ I’ll read ye ’bout a man what got tired o’ livin’ in the world, an’ got onter a raft on the ruver.’ An’ sure enough Jake did.”

Jepson suddenly lifted his head. “What did the man do?” His eyes were alert with the interest of the incomplete suggestion, the promise of a narrative; he held his pipe in his hand; the feeblest tissue of smoke stole upward from it. He had forgotten her antagonism.

She broke into a discordant laugh. “Laws-a-massy, ye reckon I kin remember all that thar! Naw, sir. I didn’t mo’n half listen, bein’ all tuk up ter see Jake readin’ like a preacher! An’ Jake say, ‘I reckon ye won’t see Teck no mo’, Mis’ Bowles, bein’ as they mus’ hev ’rested him by this time. Else I wouldn’t hev kem inter this house, it bein’ sorter his’n, ez he lives hyar an’ hev put his stock with yourn. An’ I’ll say ye air mighty well rid o’ him, in my idee.’ Arter that he went.”

She had unburdened her mind. She had spent her quiver,—not a barbed shaft remained. She was glancing about the room, meditating upon certain arrangements to be providently made over night for the early breakfast; now and again her gaze rested on Bob, still serenely awake in his nightgown, and holding up before eyes that squinted in the eager intensity of their interest the spur which he had taken from the boot.

She was altogether unprepared for aught of moment when Jepson said slowly, “Ye hed better lay off ter milk the cow-critters sooner ’n common, ter-morrer, M’ria, kase I be goin’ ter drive my stock off from hyar by daylight. I hev hed in an’ about enough o’ this place.”

Her small eyes dilated; she changed color; her jaw dropped. Her lethargic husband was suddenly tense and alert, looking at Jepson with a dismayed deprecation, aghast at the prospect of this collapse of their partnership. Mild as he was and weak, he was man enough in this emergency to upbraid his wife.

“Thar now, M’ria!” he said, temperately, however.