Chapter 19

The girl showed no surprise, said nothing--she only disengaged her hands, took his face into them, and looked with unwavering silence deep into his eyes, looked until he saw that the truth was known in hers, and then he dropped his face into her lap and she put her hands on his head and bent over him, so that her heart beat with the throbbing at his temples. For a moment she held him as though she were shielding him from every threatening danger, and then she lifted his face again.

"No, Gray--it won't do--hush, now." She paused a moment to get self-control, and then she went on rapidly, as though what she had to say had been long prepared and repeated to herself many times:

"I knew you were coming to-night. I know why you were so late. I know why you came. Hush, now--I know all that, too. Why, Gray, ever since I saw you the first time--you remember?--why, it seems to me that ever since then, even, I've been thinkin' o' this very hour. All the time I was goin' to school when I first went to the Blue-grass, when I was walkin' in the fields and workin' around the house and always lookin' to the road to see you passin' by--I was thinkin', thinkin' all the time. It seems to me every night of my life I went to sleep thinkin'--I was alone so much and I was so lonely. It was all mighty puzzlin' to me, but that time you didn't take me to that dance--hush now--I began to understand. I told Jason an' he only got mad. He didn't understand, for he was wilful and he was a man, and men don't somehow seem to see and take things like women--they just want to go ahead and make them the way they want them. But I understood right then. And then when I come here the thinkin' started all over again differently when I was goin' back and forwards from school and walkin' around in the woods and listenin' to the wood-thrushes, and sittin' here in the porch at night alone and lyin' up in the loft there lookin' out of the little window. And when I heard you were comin' here I got to thinkin' differently, because I got to hopin' differently and wonderin' if some miracle mightn't yet happen in this world once more. But I watched you here, and the more I watched you, the more I began to go back and think as I used to think. Your people ain't mine, Gray, nor mine yours, and they won't benot in our lifetime. I've seen you shrinkin' when you've been with me in the houses of some of my own kin--shrinkin' at the table at grandpap's and here, at the way folks eat an' live--shrinkin' at oaths and loud voices and rough talk and liquor-drinkin' and all this talk about killin' people, as though they were nothin' but hogs--shrinkin' at everybody but me. If we stayed here, the time would come when you'd be shrinkin' from me--don't now! But you ain't goin' to stay here, Gray. I've heard Uncle Arch say you'd never make a business man. You're too trustin', you've been a farmer and a gentleman for too many generations. You're goin' back home--you've got to--some day--I know that, and then the time would come when you'd be ashamed of me if I went with you. It's the same way with Jason and Marjorie. Jason will have to come back here--how do you suppose Marjorie would feel here, bein' a woman, if you feel the way you do, bein' a man? Why, the time would come when she'd be ashamed o' him--only worse. It won't do, Gray." She turned his face toward the gap in the hills.

"You see that star there? Well, that's your star, Gray. I named it for you, and every night I've been lookin' out at it from my window in the loft. And that's what you've been to me and what Marjorie's been to Jason--just a star--a dream. We're not really real to each other--you an' me--and Marjorie and Jason ain't. Only Jason and I are real to each other and only you and Marjorie, Jason and I have been worshippin' stars, and they've looked down mighty kindly on us, so that they came mighty nigh foolin' us and themselves. I read a book the other day that said ideals were stars and were good to point the way, but that people needed lamps to follow that way. It won't do, Gray. You are goin' back home to carry a lamp for Marjorie, and maybe Jason'll come back to these hills to carry a lantern for me."

Throughout the long speech the boy's eyes had never wavered from hers. After one or two efforts to protest he had listened quite intensely, marvelling at the startling revelation of such depths of mind and heart-the startling penetration to the truth, for he knew it was the truth. And when she rose he stayed where he was, clinging to her hand, and kissing it reverently. He was speechless even when, obeying the impulse of her hand, he rose in front of her and she smiled gently.

"You don't have to say one word, Gray--I understand, bless your dear, dear heart, I understand. Good-by, now." She stretched out her hand, but his trembling lips and the wounded helplessness in his eyes were too much for her, and she put her arms around him, drew his head to her breast, and a tear followed her kiss to his forehead. At the door she paused a moment.

"And until he comes," she half-whispered, "I reckon I'll keep my lamp burning." Then she was gone.

Slowly the boy climbed back to the little house on the spur, and to the porch, on which he sank wearily. While he and Marjorie and Jason were blundering into a hopeless snarl of all their lives, this mountain girl, alone with the hills and the night and the stars, had alone found the truth--and she had pointed the way. The camp lights twinkled below. The moon swam in majestic splendor above. The evening star still hung above the little western gap in the hills. It was his star; it was sinking fast: and she would keep her lamp burning. When he climbed to his room, the cry of the whippoorwill in the ravine came to him through his window--futile, persistent, like a human wail for happiness. The boy went to his knees at his bedside that night, and the prayer that went on high from the depths of his heart was that God would bring the wish of her heart to Mavis Hawn.

XL

Gray Pendleton was coming home. Like Jason, he, too, waited at the little junction for dawn, and swept along the red edge of it, over the yellow Kentucky River and through the blue-grass fields. Drawn up at the station was his father's carriage and in it sat Marjorie, with a radiant smile of welcome which gave way to sudden tears when they clasped hands--tears that she did not try to conceal. Uncle Robert was in bed, she said, and Gray did not perceive any significance in the tone with which she added, that her mother hardly ever left him. She did not know what the matter was, but he was very pale, and he seemed to be growing weaker. The doctor was cheery and hopeful, but her mother, she emphasized, was most alarmed, and again Gray did not notice the girl's peculiar tone. Nor did the colonel seem to be worried by the threats of the night riders. It was Jason Hawn who was worried and had persuaded the colonel to send for Gray. The girl halted when she spoke Jason's name, and the boy looked up to find her face scarlet and her eyes swerve suddenly from his to the passing fields. But as quickly they swerved back to find Gray's face aflame with the thought of Mavis. For a moment both looked straight ahead in silence, and in that silence Marjorie became aware that Gray had not asked about Jason, and Gray that Marjorie had not mentioned Mavis's name. But now both made the omission good-and Gray spoke first.

Mavis was well. She was still teaching school. She had lived a life of pathetic loneliness, but she had developed in an amazing way through that very fact, and she had grown very beautiful. She had startled him by her insight into--he halted--into everything--and how was Jason getting along? The girl had been listening, covertly watching, and had grown quite calm. Jason, too, was well, but he looked worried and overworked. His examinations were going on now. He had written his graduating speech but had not shown it to her, though he had said he would. Her mother and Uncle Robert had grown very fond of him and admired him greatly, but lately she had not seen him, he was so busy. Again there was a long silence between them, but when they reached, the hill whence both their homes were visible Marjorie began as though she must get out something' that was on her mind before they reached Colonel Pendleton's gate.

"Gray," she said hesitantly and so seriously that the boy turned to her, "did it ever cross your mind that there was ever any secret between Uncle Robert and mother?"

The boy's startled look was answer enough and she went on telling him of the question she had asked her mother.

"Sometimes," she finished, "I think that your father and my mother must have loved each other first and that something kept them from marrying. I know that they must have talked it over lately, for there seems to be a curious understanding between them now, and the sweetest peace has come to both of them."

She paused, and Gray, paralyzed with wonder, still made no answer. They had passed through the gate now and in a moment more would be at Gray's home. Around each barn Gray saw an armed guard; there was another at the yard gate, and there were two more on the steps of the big portico.

"Maybe," the girl went on naively, almost as though she were talking to herself, "that's why they've both always been so anxious to have us--" Again she stopped--scarlet.

XLI

Jason Hawn's last examination was over, and he stepped into the first June sunlight and drew it into his lungs with deep relief. Looking upward from the pavement below, the old president saw his confident face.

"It seems you are not at all uneasy," he said, and his keen old eyes smiled humorously.

Jason reddened a little.

"No, sir--I'm not."

"Nor am I," said the old gentleman, "nor will you forget that this little end is only the big beginning."

"Thank you, sir."

"You are going back home? You will be needed there."

"Yes, sir."

"Good!"

It was the longest talk Jason had ever had with the man he all but worshipped, and while it was going on the old scholar was painfully climbing the steps--so that the last word was flung back with the sharp, soldier-like quality of a command given by an officer who turned his back with perfect trust that it would be obeyed, and in answer to that trust the boy's body straightened and his very much about changing his ways, that he no longer had any resentment against Colonel Pendleton, and wanted now to live a better life. His talk might have fooled Jason but for the fact that he shrewdly noted the little effect it all had on his mother. Entering the mouth of the lane, Jason saw Steve going from the yard gate to the house, and his brows wrinkled angrily--Steve was staggering. He came to the door and glared at Jason.

"Whut you doin' out hyeh?"

"I'm goin' to see Gray through his troubles," said Jason quietly.

"I kind o' thought you had troubles enough o' yo' own," sneered the man.

Jason did not answer. His mother was seated within with her back to the door, and when she turned Jason saw that she had been weeping, and, catching sight of a red welt on her temple, he walked over to her.

"How'd that happen, mammy?"

She hesitated and Jason whirled with such fury that his mother caught him with both arms, and Steve lost no time reaching for his gun.

"I jammed it agin the kitchen door, Jasie."

He looked at her, knew that she was lying, and when he turned to go, halted at the door.

"If you ever touch my mother again," he said with terrifying quiet, "I'll kill you as sure as there is a God in heaven to forgive me."

Across the midsummer fields Jason went swiftly. On his right, half of a magnificent woodland was being laid low--on his left, another was all gone--and with Colonel Pendleton both, he knew, had been heart-breaking deeds of necessity, for his first duty, that gentleman claimed, was to his family and to his creditors, and nobody could rob him of his right to do what he pleased, much less what he ought, with his own land. And so the colonel still stood out against friend and neighbor, and open and secret foes. His tobacco beds had been raided, one of his barns had been burned, his cattle had been poisoned, and, sick as he was, threats were yet coming in that the night riders would burn his house and take his life. Across the turnpike were the fields and untouched woodlands of Marjorie, and it looked as though the hand of Providence had blessed one side of the road and withered the other with a curse. On top of the orchard fence, to the western side of the house, Jason sat a while. The curse was descending on Gray's innocent head and he had had the weakness and the folly to lift his eyes to the blessing across the way. As Mavis had pointed out the way to Gray, so Marjorie, without knowing it, had pointed the way for him. When long ago he had been helpless before her by the snow-fringed willows at the edge of the pond in the old college yard, she had been frightened and had shrunk away. When he gained his self-control, she had lost hers, and in her loneliness had come trailing toward him almost like a broken-winged young bird looking for mother help--and he had not misunderstood, though his heart ached for her suffering as it ached for her. And Marjorie had been quite right--he had never come back after that one quarrel, and he would never come. The old colonel had gone to him, but he had hardly more than opened his lips when he had both hands on the boy's shoulders with broken words of sympathy and then had turned away--so quickly had he seen that Jason fully understood the situation and had disposed of it firmly, proudly, and finally--for himself. The mountains were for Jason--there were his duty and the work of his life. Under June apples turning golden, and amid the buzzing of bees, the boy went across the orchard, and at the fence he paused again. Marjorie and her mother were coming out of the house with Gray, and Jason watched them walk to the stile. Gray was tanned, and even his blonde head had been turned copper by the mountain sun, while the girl looked like a great golden-hearted lily. But it was Gray's face as he looked at her that caught the boy's eyes and held them fast, for the face was tense, eager, and worshipping.

He saw Marjorie and her mother drive away, saw Gray wave to them and turn back to the house, and then he was so shocked at the quick change to haggard worry that draped his friend like a cloak from head to foot that he could hardly call to him. And so Jason waited till Gray had passed within, and then he leaped the fence and made for the portico. Gray himself answered his ring and with a flashing smile hurried forward when he saw Jason in the doorway. The two clasped hands and for one swift instant searched each other's eyes with questions too deep and delicate to be put into words--each wondering how much the other might know, each silent if the other did not know. For Gray had learned from his father about Steve Hawn, and Jason's suspicions of Steve he had kept to himself.

"My father would like to have you as our guest, Jason, while I am here," Gray said with some embarrassment, "but he doesn't feel like letting you take the risk."

Jason threw back the lapel of his coat that covered his badge as deputy.

"That's what I'm here for," he said with a smile, "but I think I'd better stay at home. I'll be on hand when the trouble comes."

Gray, too, smiled.

"You don't have to tell me that."

"How is the colonel?"

"He's pretty bad. He wants to see you."

Jason lowered his voice when they entered the hallway. "The soldiers have reached town to-day. If there's anything going to be done, it will probably be done to-night."

"I know."

"We won't tell the colonel."

"No."

Then Gray led the way to the sick-room and softly opened the door. In a great canopied bed lay Colonel Pendleton with his face turned toward the window, through which came the sun and air, the odors and bird-songs of spring-time, and when that face turned, Jason was shocked by its waste and whiteness and by the thinness of the hand that was weakly thrust out to him. But the fire of the brilliant eyes burned as ever; there was with him, prone in bed, still the same demeanor of stately courtesy; and Jason felt his heart melt and then fill as always with admiration for the man, the gentleman, who unconsciously had played such a part in the moulding of his own life, and as always with the recognition of the unbridgable chasm between them--between even him and Gray. The bitter resentment he had first felt against this chasm was gone now, for now he understood and accepted. As men the three were equal, but father and son had three generations the start of him. He could see in them what he lacked himself, and what they were without thought he could only consciously try to be--and he would keep on trying. The sick man turned his face again to the window and the morning air. When he turned again he was smiling faintly and his voice was friendly and affectionate:

"Jason, I know why you are here. I'm not going to thank you, but I--Gray"--he paused ever so little, and Jason sadly knew what it meant--"will never forget it. I want you two boys to be friends as long as you live. I'm sorry, but it looks as though you would both have to give up yourselves to business--particularly sorry about Gray, for that is my fault. For the good of our State I wish you both were going to sit side by side at Frankfort, in Congress, and the Senate, and fight it out"--he smiled whimsically--"some day for the nomination for the Presidency. The poor old commonwealth is in a bad way, and it needs just such boys as you two are. The war started us downhill, but we might have done better--I know I might. The earth was too rich--it made life too easy. The horse, the bottle of whiskey, and the plug of tobacco were all too easily the best--and the pistol always too ready. We've been cartooned through the world with a fearsome, half-contemptuous slap on the back. Our living has been made out of luxuries. Agriculturally, socially, politically, we have gone wrong, and but for the American sense of humor the State would be in a just, nation-wide contempt. The Ku-Klux, the burning of toll-gates, the Goebel troubles, and the night rider are all links in the same chain of lawlessness, and but for the first the others might not have been. But we are, in spite of all this, a law-abiding people, and the old manhood of the State is still here. Don't forget that--THE OLD MANHOOD IS HERE."

Jason had sat eager-eyed and listening hard. Bewildered Gray felt his tears welling, for never had he heard in all his life his father talk this way. Again Colonel Pendleton turned his face to the window and went on as though to the world outside.

"I wouldn't let anybody out there say this about us, nor would you, and maybe if I thought I was going to live many years longer I might not be saying it now, for some Kentuckian might yet make me eat my words."

At this the eyes of the two boys crossed and both smiled faintly, for though the sick man had been a generous liver, his palate could never have known the taste of one of his own words.

"I don't know--but our ambition is either dying or sinking to a lower plane, and what a pity, for the capacity is still here to keep the old giants still alive if the young men could only see, feel, and try. And if I were as young as one of you two boys, I'd try to find and make the appeal."

He turned his brilliant eyes to Jason and looked for a moment silently.

"The death-knell of me and mine has been sounded unless boys like Gray here keep us alive after death, but the light of your hills is only dawning. It's a case of the least shall be first, for your pauper counties are going to be the richest in the State. The Easterners are buying up our farms as they would buy a yacht or a motor-car, the tobacco tenants are getting their mites of land here and there, and even you mountaineers, when you sell your coal lands, are taking up Blue-grass acres. Don't let the Easterner swallow you, too. Go home, and, while you are getting rich, enrich your citizenship, and you and Gray help land-locked, primitive old Kentucky take her place among the modern sisterhood that is making the nation. To use a phrase of your own--get busy, boys, get busy after I am gone."

And then Colonel Pendleton laughed.

"I am hardly the one to say all this, or rather I am just the one because I am a--failure."

"Father."

The word came like a sob from Gray.

"Oh, yes, I am--but I have never lied except for others, and I have not been afraid."

Again his face went toward the window.

"Even now," he added in a solemn whisper that was all to himself, "I believe, and am not afraid."

Presently he lifted himself on one elbow and with Gray's assistance got to a sitting posture. Then he pulled a paper from beneath his pillow.

"I want to tell you something, Jason. That was all true, every word you said the first time Gray and I saw you at your grandfather's house, and I want you to know now that your land was bought over my protest and without my knowledge. My own interest in the general purchase was in the form of stock, and here it is."

Jason's heart began to beat violently.

"Whatever happens to me, this farm will have to be sold, but there will be something left for Gray. This stock is in Gray's name, and it is worth now just about what would have been a fair price for your land five years after it was bought. It is Gray's, and I am going to give it to him." He handed the paper to bewildered Gray, who looked at it dazedly, went with it to the window, and stood there looking out--his father watching him closely.

"You might win in a suit, Jason, I know, but I also know that you could never collect even damages."

At these words Gray wheeled.

"Then this belongs to you, Jason."

The father smiled and nodded approval and assent.

That night there was a fusillade of shots, and Jason and Gray rushed out with a Winchester in hand to see one barn in flames and a tall figure with a firebrand sneaking toward the other. Both fired and the man dropped, rose to his feet, limped back to the edge of the woods, and they let him disappear. But all the night, fighting the fire and on guard against another attack, Jason was possessed with apprehension and fear--that limping figure looked like Steve Hawn. So at the first streak of dawn he started for his mother's home, and when that early he saw her from afar standing on the porch and apparently looking for him, he went toward her on a run. She looked wild-eyed, white, and sleepless, but she showed no signs of tears.

"Where's Steve, mammy?" called Jason in a panting whisper, and when she nodded back through the open door his throat eased and he gulped his relief.

"Is he all right?"

She looked at him queerly, tried to speak, and began to tremble so violently that he stepped quickly past her and stopped on the threshold--shuddering. A human shape lay hidden under a brilliantly colored quilt on his mother's bed, and the rigidity of death had moulded its every outline.

"I reckon you've done it at last, Jasie," said a dead, mechanical voice behind him.

"Good God, mammy--it must have been Gray or me."

"One of you, shore. He said he saw you shoot at the same time, and only one of you hit him. I hope hit was you."

Jason turned--horrified, but she was calm and steady now.

"Hit was fitten fer you to be the one. Babe never killed yo' daddy, Jasie--hit was Steve."

XLII