Part 14

The smell of the smoke from the green wood, with the pungent, aromatic suggestions of its sap, was still stronger as he stood by the door. He hesitated for a moment; then with a muttered “I hev got manners, ef ye ain’t,” the owner of the house knocked, rousing such a sound in the cavernous stillness that his heart gave a great throb as he heard. Precipitate feet seemed to hastily plod to the door, failing somehow when reaching it, and waiting in silence, while fainter footfalls followed and paused also. It was only when he knocked once more that he realized that this was but the echo of his summons on the frail battens. There seemed no one inside, but as he tried the hitch he discovered, to his infinite surprise, that the door was barred within.

“A body would ’low fur sartain ez thar war folks inside,” he said in doubt.

His eyes, with a certain freedom characteristic of the proprietary glance, turned with a canvassing attention now to the walls and chimney, and again to the closed batten shutter. The hollyhocks that his mother had planted—how they had grown!—rapped against it with peremptory iteration, as if insistently summoning her forth to see how they throve and rewarded her early care.

“Jes’ ez ye say!” he remarked loudly, for the benefit of the supposed occupants. “Ef ye don’t let me in, I’ll let myself in.”

Still there was no response save the striking back of the tones of his voice from the walls, seeming intrusive and strident in the utter silence.

He began to feel as if he were dreaming. He looked over his shoulder to see the scattered kine in the clover; his clay-bank mare standing unsaddled by the old rail fence, her bronze flanks glistening in the sun, her black mane tossing as she thrust her head over the high topmost rail, gazing with full, lustrous eyes down the slope, and snuffing with satisfaction the fresh breeze. He was awake,—very wide awake indeed, one might have thought, to see him take his pistol from the holster of the saddle on the ground and slip it into the long leg of his boot; for his faith in the efficacy of a “shootin’-iron” was hardly less pronounced than his faith in the efficacy of prayer. He walked in with a gingerly step amongst the tall, slim rods of the hollyhocks. “I hev ter be powerful partic’lar ’bout tromplin’ these hyar high weeds ez mam sets sech store by,” he said, repeating an old formula, familiar to him of yore, and distinguishing in the words, only after they were spoken, the sarcasm of the present and the past. Even in that urgent moment of action and of caution he sought to reflect that for her flowered the unfading splendors of the gardens of heaven, and he had a sudden close realization of the solace she must have found in that bloomful Paradise. A vague vision of vast multiplied fields of the Chilhowee lily was before his eyes: of these white ethereal glories were the heavenly borders, he knew. He paused as he stood; the white hollyhocks, with their garnet centres, touched his cheek. He laid his hand on the shutter, breast-high from the ground. One sudden violent wrench, and it swung open. The next instant, with the supple agility of a mountain panther, he sprang through the narrow aperture, and landed on his feet in the middle of the square, low-ceiled room. Empty,—quite empty. He stood amidst the clustering shadows, and gazed about with a dilated, excited eye. A square of yellow sunlight lay on the floor beneath the window, and in the slanting rays the motes were dancing. A new puncheon had replaced the rift in the floor; in the chimney-place were heaps of ashes, and amidst them red coals smouldered. The fire had been providently covered to last, but the task had not been well done, or the draught was stronger than usual, the wind being favorable; for a remnant of the green-wood log had begun to burn afresh, although only a timorous blaze now and then showed itself, flickering out in the steady column of smoke slowly tending up the chimney. There were pipes on the shelf that served as mantel, a rough pallet in the corner, and a few rude cooking utensils on a bench. As he looked about in increasing surprise, he noted a variety of fragments of rock, systematically ranged on the floor beside the walls. A strong spade and a pickaxe with its point broken off stood in the corner. With a mind void of even a speculation, he investigated the shed-room; then ascended to the roof-room, where the window by the chimney was open to the air. It looked out above the low branches of the orchard, where the sunshine and the shadows still alternated in the old vogue known amongst the leaves since light first dawned upon the world. It showed, too, the great dark mountains hard by, with the deeper shades amongst them that betokened ravine and chasm below the level of his eye; and there was a range afar off, appearing above their massive summits, faintly blue, known by sight only, as it were, for its name was unfamiliar, and its relative position to the other steeps was such that it could be seen only from the window of his old room. A dead tree close at hand, denuded of leaves and bark, tall and blanched to a silver tint, showed its dendritic symmetry in pallid glistening lines against the soft blue of those far slopes, and the sense of distance between the two, the leagues of sunshine, was immeasurable. The sight of the mountain, so long unseen, with the overpowering recollection of the past, had an indescribable effect upon him. His face was wistful, his nerves grew tense, his hand trembled as he leaned upon its palm on the window-sill. Another man, feeling thus, would have wished that he had not come, and would have upbraided himself, perchance, that he had been so ill content, placed as he was of late. Jepson rarely, indeed, questioned the wisdom and the policy of his own decrees. He turned himself about with a long-drawn sigh, quivering, it seemed, through the very flesh of his heart that ached physically, tramped heavily down the stairs, and without a moment’s hesitation addressed himself to removing the stranger’s effects; piling them all in a heap outside of the boundary fence, where the owner might come and take them or leave them, as he saw fit.

“Ef he hed kem an’ axed me, whoever he be, he’d hev been welcome ter bide ez long ez he wanted ter,” he observed, the sentiment of the proprietor strong within him and affronted by this lack of formality. “I hain’t been outer reach noways ez I knows on. An’ ef my kin be dead, _I_ ain’t.”

As he proceeded to put his own household effects into that perfunctory and curious disarray which the masculine mind accounts order, he glanced out of the window now and again, thinking to see the evicted tenant returning to find his household gods thus upset, and heaped together and cast out.

So bent was he upon this that after his expeditious settlement of his household affairs he seated himself on the step of the little porch, and smoked, as he leaned, with his hands behind his head, against the post, and watched the meagre treasure with intent eyes. He did not recognize his resolution in any sense as softening, but when the unknown intruder should come back, and thus learn this pointed lesson of the absolute rights of ownership, he held in contemplation the return of the cast-out gear to the house, and an invitation to abide for a time.

As he sat there the river sang,—sang aloud to the listening, silent mountains, an archaic lay, so full of a sentiment of a vital individuality, an undying spirit, that it must have been voiced by some finer essences than are known to our dull modern density. He could hear the woods declaiming in vibrant periods, although he could translate none of these dryadic tones that came from the trees. The bees droned around his mother’s flowers; a butterfly, more splendidly caparisoned than any blossom, dandered about the old neglected garden and took to wing. And as he watched, naught came down the path but the reddening sunlight, loitering along to its home in the west.

X.

It was soon bruited abroad that Jepson had come back to Broomsedge Cove to live, and to those who declined to give credence to this new instance of his boldness—having entertained the opinion that he would skulk indefinitely amongst the hidden nooks of the mountains, continuing a reproach to the denizens of the Settlement for their failure to detain him—conclusive evidence was promptly furnished by his reappearance in his old haunts. No one sought to compensate now for the previous dereliction of the community, and he was proof against the cold shoulder and the look askance, so completely did the influence of his own individuality dwarf the opinion of the disaffected. A new view of the accident began to be entertained, and there were not a few disparaging comments, especially among the adverse political faction, on Eli Strobe’s methods in office, and his own responsibility for the disaster which had befallen him. Had Jepson been a philosopher or a student of human nature, he might have found material for interesting analysis in the conduct of his ancient cronies during his absence as set forth in sundry confidences of what had been said, and thought, and threatened, and thus have sown the seeds of permanent misanthropy. He evidently gave the gossip little heed; he flouted its infinitesimal consequence. He was so validly indifferent, so serenely strong in the courage of his convictions, so arrogant in his self-esteem, that he belittled the others without even an intention of reducing their pride. Only once did the barbed shaft fail to glance off futile. “War them Pa’son Donnard’s words?” he asked, a frown upon his face, as he stood in the door of the forge and leaned against the frame, while a coterie of the gossips sat half within and half without. His eyes were dark and full of smouldering fire; his broad hat was pushed back from his brow, which had flushed to the roots of his hair. “Did _he_ ’low ez how I hed _c’mitted murder_? War them his words?”

“Jube say so,” replied Clem Sanders. He was not consciously treacherous to his friend, but he possessed an unguarded tongue, and perhaps it was the hidden workings of justice that he should betray Jube’s confidences, as Jube had failed to keep his secret.

Jepson remained silent a moment after the reiteration of the assertion. Then his whole aspect suddenly cleared.

“The Lord’ll jedge ’twixt him an’ me. I ain’t a-keerin’ so long ez the Lord be on my side. I fear no man, an’ the word o’ none!”

It was doubtless because of his mental breadth and freshness, his physical vigor and the elasticity appertaining to health, that his hope was so strong, and his courage so sound, and his nerves so accurately poised. But he believed this the result of piety, and he was not often gainsaid.

“Oh, shet up,” Bassett urged on this occasion, being a prosaic man of this world, with a discerning eye for the foibles of others, and appreciating in some sort vast rifts between these spiritual arrogations and actual possessions. “Ye talk like ez ef ye an’ the Lord war partners!”

“Ef I hed it all ter do over agin, I reckon I wouldn’t ride that race,” pursued the moralist speculatively, “knowin’ what I know now, an’ how it all turned out, kase I never wanted ter hurt nobody, much less Eli Strobe. But ef I knowed no more ’n I done then, I’d ride it agin. Tell me it’s agin the law fur me an’ Jube ter race our critters ’long the road, an’ yit it ain’t agin the law ter race yer critters on a reg’lar race-track, kase it puts suthin’ inter the State’s pocket! Thar ain’t no jestice in that law, an’ I won’t abide by it. Naw, folkses, wrong is wrong everywhar, an’ money can’t make it right. No use payin’ the State fur a license ter do wrong.”

There were few vaticinations now concerning the result of the disaster; the doctor had come and had shaken his head, the precise significance of which was variously interpreted, the majesty and solemnity of the gesture alone being open to no sort of question. The prophets imitated his caution, and reserved their opinion. Eli mought die, they said, and then agin he moughtn’t. And thus they were prepared for whatever might betide. The doctor had added to the ostensible purpose of his existence the fact of furnishing a new theme to the idle gossips who sat upon the fences, and hung about the store and the forge; he, and his big spectacles, and his bald head, and his old-fashioned buggy—a new and a wonderful vehicle in the estimation of Broomsedge—were canvassed afresh, and those who were fortunate enough to have had some necessity for his services in past times, then considered unfortunate enough, renewed their experiences in their account of the methods of his practice, the repetition of hoarded bits of his conversation, and the comparison of views as to his professional capacity. By the majority he was held to be “ekal ter raisin’ the dead,” but Mrs. Strobe did not coincide in that flattering opinion.

“Marcelly,” said the sharp little dame, “that thar old bald-headed buzzard,—an’ he looks percisely like one in them slick black store-clothes,—he knows jes’ ez much ’bout doctorin’ ez Watch thar, ef that.”

The “frequent visitor’s” dog acknowledged the mention of his name by two or three taps with his tail on the floor, as he sat in the uninclosed passage between the two rooms beside Marcella, who had dropped down on a rickety bench that stood against the wall. The girl turned upward her pale, anxious face, with a dumb despair in her eyes. She had hung on the physician’s words, as if there were healing in the very sound. Mrs. Strobe held her tiny figure very erect; there was color in her cheeks, and her eyes flashed. In fact, the professional call had been in some sort distinguished as a collision between two eminent medical authorities.

“I hev been considered ekal to doctorin’ Eli an’ ye chil’n’,” declared Mrs. Strobe, with a manner as attestive as if she were reading a diploma, “an’ he tells me I needn’t continue the yerb teas ez I hev been brewin’; they air ‘useless,’ an’ whatever air ‘useless’ air mo’ or less ‘injurious.’ How does he know?” she demanded, with sphinxine triumph; “he dunno _what_ I put inter ’em. _Me!_ ez hev fetched all ye folks through all sort’n mis’ries an’ measles with my yerb-bag! An’ he gimme these hyar leetle papers with powders in ’em,—nuthin’ in the world but sand, I’ll be bound,—an’ this hyar bottle,—‘lotium,’ he called it; smells loud enough ter knock a calf down! An’ that’s _all_ it’s good fur, ter derange yer nose tee-totally, till ye can’t smell no mo’ till kingdom come. An’ ‘stop them yerb teas,—no good;’ an’ he don’t know _what’s_ in ’em! An’ let Eli sleep, when the mo’ he sleeps the foolisher he talks whenst he wakes up. Shucks! I be goin’ ter doctor Eli Strobe myself! I hev tuk him along through a many a tight fix.”

The girl sighed with relief and renewing hope, and pushed back the tangled heavy curling hair from her brow.

“Don’t ye be oneasy, chile,” said the sturdy little dame. “I ’lowed ter Teck Jepson jes’ yestiddy, I say, ‘Eli Strobe’s my son. But what through his bein’ the dad o’ Marcelly an’ Is’bel, an’ the constable o’ Brumsaidge, an’ the patient o’ the doctor, a body mought see they didn’t ’low me ter hev _much_ sheer in him. But I be his mother, an’ ef I hev got _enny_ rights I reckon it air ter dose him ter my own taste.’ An’ Teck say, ‘Ef I war sick, Mis’ Strobe, I’d a sight ruther hev you-uns ter look arter me ’n enny doctor-man I ever see.’ Teck spoke right up.”

“Teck Jepson!” cried the girl, knitting her straight black eyebrows, “hev he hed the insurance ter kem hyar agin?”

“Ye air a idjit, Marcelly; ’course he kem ter inquire arter Eli. He ain’t studyin’ ’bout you-uns; but that’s jes’ like a gal,—vainglorious till she ’lows the man air a-contrivin’ an’ thinkin’ ’bout’n her all the time. Shucks, chile; wait till ye git ez old ez I be, an’ ye’ll find out it air the wimmin ez hev ter do the thinkin’ an’ contrivin’ ter please the men, an’ _then_ can’t keep up with ’em more’n half the time.”

“I don’t want ter please ’em,” said Marcella, with a curve of her delicate lips, and lifting her head to its habitual airy pose.

“Kase ye feel so mighty sure ye air goin’ ter ’thout tryin’,” retorted the discerning grandmother. “Let somebody tell ye now ez ye air downright ugly, an’ ef they could make ye b’lieve it, ye’d a sight ruther hear ye hed los’ yer soul’s salvation!”

She began to turn anew the papers in her hand. “‘Quit them yerb teas,’” she quoted with a cantankerous accent, as she fumbled with the tiny wrappers, mimicking the physician’s ill-judged scorn. She was letting the powders fly out in the wind. “’Gin these powders, one every hour.’ He lef’ his watch, sir, so ez ter tell the time o’ day; an’ it air in yander now, a-goin’ on like suthin’ live. ’Gin him these powders,’—I’ll gin him some yerb tea, an’ tell the doctor the powders done him a power o’ good, when he kems agin. Ye Watch,” she called out to the dog, who when a few flakes of the medicine fell upon the floor sprang up with an expectant hunger and a glistening greedy eye, as if he had not had a morsel of food for a week, “ef ye lap that up, it’ll tangle yer liver an’ gizzard up so ye’ll _never_ git ’em straight agin.” Completing the destruction of the powders, she shook the bottle, looking at it intently. “Mought be some use.” The seeming admission was as to the value of the glass vial, by no means the “lotium.”

That afternoon she demonstrated her incontestable claim, however, to some knowledge of hygiene by a mandate that Marcella, and not Isabel, should go after the cows; and as the girl reluctantly left the invalid’s bedside, Mrs. Strobe followed her out with axioms and boasts, for she had grown exceedingly prideful and exalted anew in her own opinion since she had observed the methods of the physician. “Ye oughter git some air an’ light, Marcelly; ye look like the las’ o’ pea-time,—an’ old! some similar ter Noah’s grandmother, ef the good ’oman bed lasted this long. Ef ye keep on lookin’ like that, even Clem Sanders won’t admire ye; an’ I think he air the kind o’ boy ez hev got mighty little ’scrimination in gal-folks,—all of ’em pritty ter Clem, I’ll be bound. Ye go out an’ git them cows hyar. I don’t want Is’bel ter grow no taller till she makes out ter git a little wider. She looks now like she war a-travelin’ on stilts, bein’ so long-legged. Naw, Is’bel hed better set still, an’ try ter fatten. Our folks war always knowed ter be a set o’ well-favored wimmin, an’ I don’t want ye an’ Is’bel ter gin the lie ter that report. Ez ter the men o’ the fambly, they war ugly enough ter skeer the bars in the woods; but, honey, _they never_ knowed it, an’ ez they war so powerful pleased with thar own beauty, sech ez they hed, it holped ter keep ’em satisfied, leastwise ez satisfied ez they war able ter be. Ye go ’long, an’ see ef ye can’t find yer own looks somewhar out yander in the wind an’ ’mongst the rocks. I’ll be bound ye’ll kem up with ’em tangled in the briers.”

If it were the radiance of the splendid and perfect day that was Marcella’s inalienable possession, the tint of the wild rose for her lips and her infrequent flush, the lucent shining of deep pure waters reproduced in her eyes, she seemed to have renewed all these invaluable gifts when she chanced to cross the little foot-bridge over the torrent that ran through Broomsedge Cove. The cows that she drove were fording the stream, standing flank-deep in the swirling current; the waters were a dark brownish-green tint, of a crystalline clearness, and swift and songful; the dense laurel leaned over the banks; shadowy pines rose high above; here and there a cliff towered, and a great fir stood, with wide-spreading glooms in its branches, at one end of the frail, little bridge. Above, one could see but a mere strip of the blue sky; farther up the stream, as the banks curved, the tumultuous rapids caught a sunbeam on their flashing foam, and a barren old crag on the opposite bank wore a tender roseate flush to see the sun set. But here in these shady precincts was neither beam nor pink radiance; the red cardinal flower blooming by the water’s edge had but a sombre splendor, the ripples and the wide circles that the movement of the kine sent to the margin were dark lustrous lines, and the foam dashing over the half-submerged brown rocks wore a more absolute and pallid white for the dull green and neutral tints of its vicinage.

The girl had been leaning her crossed arms upon the hand-rail of the bridge, and looking absently down at the turmoils of the current. She could see her own image in the clearer space, her sun-bonnet falling upon the shoulders of her blue dress, her curling brown hair floating free; her fair face, with its brilliant eyes and definite dark brows and grave lips, seemed all the more distinct, somehow, for the red flare of a kerchief knotted about her throat, the ends hanging down almost to her slender waist. The chant of the river filled the air; the wind was sonorously astir in the trees; now and again one of the cows, drinking no longer, but standing still, enjoying the freshness of the dusky place, lowed, and the echoes responded. Thus Marcella did not hear an approach; she saw the reflection as Teck Jepson came along the little bridge where she stood, and the timbers elastically vibrated with each consecutive step. She scarcely credited the testimony of the image in the water. She lifted her head with a sudden startled look, putting back with one hand her heavy hair, and staring frowningly at him. She did not speak; she still leaned one arm upon the hand-rail.

“Howdy,” Jepson observed calmly. “How’s Eli?”

If she could have escaped him she would not have deigned him a word, but she could not pass him upon the narrow space of the two hewn logs that served as bridge; below was the deep water, and she would not retreat. “I won’t take the back-track fur nobody,” she said to herself, with her head high.

He had evidently been hunting; his mare, with a newly killed deer laid athwart the saddle, awaited him on the bank; he had thrown the reins over a bough of a cucumber-tree. As Marcella glanced thither, she noted that the cones on the green branches were glowing red, and that the coat of the deer, whose antlers and ghastly cut throat were visible as the creature lay on its side, had already changed from the fulvous tints of summer to the duller gray of autumn; the season was surely waning. Her eyes came back reluctantly to Jepson. He was booted and spurred; he carried his rifle; his hunting-knife was in his broad leather belt; he wore his shot-pouch and powder-horn strapped over the shoulder of his brown jeans coat; his broad wool hat was pushed far back from his face, and once more she noticed how calm and reposeful his expression was. Somehow it added rancor to her anger, for she felt it hard that he should be at ease while she was so racked with care.

“I dunno ez I hev enny call ter tell ye how he be. Ef it hadn’t been fur you-uns, he’d be powerful hearty an’ well. Mighty few folks in the Cove ez survigrous ez he’d be, ef ’twarn’t fur you-uns.”

He looked reproachfully at her. Then with an effort to mollify her, “Ye air mighty hard on me, Marcelly.”

She held her head up, relishing her cruelty. “Not half ez hard ez ye desarve,” she declared.

He sighed heavily as he looked at her, and she smiled, with satire glancing in her eyes.

“I ain’t half ez hard ez ye desarve, or ez I would like ter be,” she reiterated. “I dunno how ter be no harder, or I would.”

“Marcelly!” he remonstrated. “’Twarn’t my fault. Ye ’low I would hev done sech a purpose? Even s’pose I war jes’ mean, look how it hev turned out fur me. I hed ’lowed, ef it hedn’t happened, ez ye an’ me mought marry some day. An’ now ye can’t abide me.”

“I never could!” she retorted.