Part 14

In the midst of his utter idleness, in the turmoil of his troublous thoughts, this review of the literature that had been dear to him was at first a resource and a distraction, and later it became a luxury. He began to be only less eager than she to resume the discourse where it had left off. Thus it was that he joined her in sundry domestic duties, so that while mechanically busy they might be mentally free, in Scotland, or Norway, or Russia, or on the wild, wild seas. He was wont to go with her to drive up the cows; and surely never in such company did the old fancies tread this New World soil,--knights in armor and ladies fair and all the glittering hordes of chivalry crowding the narrow aisles of the wilderness, and following hard the fairies and demons of many an antique legend. Once on the summit of a crag he looked out upon the world beyond the Cove, for the first time since his arrival here. Fair, oh, very fair it was, in the yellow haze of the declining springtide sunshine, and far it stretched in promissory lengths, like all the vague possibilities of the future. Parallel with the massive green heights near at hand ran others growing amethystine of hue, showing many a gray cliff and many a gleam of silver mountain streams winding amongst the divergent spurs and ravines and coves. Beyond lay the levels of a great valley, and here were brown stretches of ploughed fields, and here gleamed the emerald of winter wheat, and here swept the splendid free curves of the Tennessee River, flowing the color of burnished copper, so did the sunlight idealize the hue of the spring floods, between the keen high tints of the green foliage fringing its banks where the rocks failed. To the north a thousand minor ridges continued the parallelism which marks the great mountain system, and these were azure of an indescribably exquisite and languorous shade, rising into a silver haze that was itself like an illumination. And where it seemed that the limits of vision must surely be reached, the abrupt steeps of the eastern side of Walden’s Ridge, stretching diagonally across the whole breadth of the State, shadowy purple, reflecting naught of the sunset, rose against the west, and there the sun, all alive with scarlet fire, was tending downward, with only one vermilion flake of a cloud in all the blue and pearly-green and amber crystal sky. He paused on the verge of the cliff and gazed at it all, while she stood and looked expectantly at him. Perhaps with her woman’s intuition she divined that this moment was in some sort a crisis in his mind. She was inexplicably agitated, breathless. But as he gazed his heart did not stir the faster. Here and there he marked a brilliant slant of glitter where a steeple caught the sun, now to the north and again to the southwest, beyond a space a hand might seem to cover, but which he knew measured fifty or a hundred miles. These indicated towns. There beat the full pulses of the life he had left; and still at sight of them his heart did not plunge. He looked down at her with an expression in his eyes all new to them and which she could not interpret. Nevertheless it set her happy heart a-flutter. Nothing was said of the view, and with one accord they sat down on the verge of the cliff. His boots dangled over the sheer spaces a thousand feet below, but he could not repress a shiver at her attitude as she leaned over the brink of the precipice.

“I wish you would move farther back from the edge,” he said, with a corrugated brow. “I am afraid you may slip over, you are so little, and”--

“That would put an e-end to the readings mighty quick,” she said, as she still leaned over to peer down at the tops of the trees in the valley, and he turned sick and dizzy at her very gesture. He hardly dared to speak lest an unconsidered word might flutter her nerves and cause her to lose her hold. She had no intention of thus teasing his vicarious fright, but drew back presently to a safe distance. “Wouldn’t it?” she asked, recurring to her remark as she executed this manœuvre.

“You mean if you should slip over into this dreadful abyss? I should never, never have the heart to read another word as long as I should live!” he protested.

He caught the look of exultant joy in her surprised and widely opened eyes for one moment, and then she turned them discreetly on the splendid vastness of that great landscape in its happiest mood. He realized that she had no difficulty in comprehending the obvious inference. Her experience as a rural beauty and belle heretofore had doubtless served to acquaint her with the hyperbole of a lover’s language. There were Haines and Ormsby within his own knowledge, and he could not guess how many suitors hitherto,--confound them all! he muttered as he thought of them. He had not intended to win her heart. In view of her feeling for Owen Haines he had not deemed it possible. With the suspicion, which he would fain call realization, for it had all the importunacy of hope, he experienced a rush of elation, of soft delight, which amazed him, while it almost swept him off his feet. Had not he too fallen in love during his “readings”?--for thus they both called his recitals. He knew that he had only to look into her eyes to make his heart flutter; but then it was a susceptible heart and easily stirred. She had grown dear to him in many ways, and he had learned this even when he did not dream of other result of their companionship than the broadcast impression that he lingered here for her sake. He began to strive to separate his ideal of womanhood from those merely arbitrary values which fashion and artificial life bestow. Is it a French man milliner only who establishes the criterion of beauty? He had but to glance at the face and form beside him. She was beautiful; she was good; she was of a singularly strong and individual character; her natural mind was quick and retentive and discerning, and of a remarkable aptness. She was so endowed with a keen perception of real excellence that knowledge had but to open its doors to her, for she possessed as a gift the capacity of worthy choice. She loved with spontaneous affection those things which other people are trained to love; she seized on the best of her own devout accord, unaware of aught of significance save her own preference. She could easily acquire all he could teach her. With her quick grasp and greed of learning there would soon be little disparity. He began to meditate on the arbitrary methods of appraisement in the world. How sadly do we richly rate, not our own preference, but that which is valued by others: hence the vyings, the heart-burnings, the ignoble strife, the false pride, of many mundane miseries. He knew her real identity. Her nature would befit any station. Her beauty,--even the reference to the immutable standards of his own world could avail no detraction here,--it was preëminent. Having lived his life in one sphere, why should he, being dead to it forever, let its rigid conventionalities follow him into his new world? As to the coming years and the monotony of rounding out a long life in this narrow circuit, let the coming years take thought for themselves. For a moment the words pressed to his lips. Then he realized that this was no ordinary self-committal. To pledge himself to marry a woman of her degree in life--an ignorant mountain girl of an inexpressible rusticity and lack of sophistication, as far removed from a comprehension of the conventions in which he had been reared and the cultivated ideals still dear to him as if she were a denizen of a different planet--was a serious step indeed; he winced, and was silent.

This day marked a change. When they reached home the sky was red, and a white star was alight in the zenith. Spot stood lowing at the bars, and Mrs. Sims’s dimples deeply indented her plumpness as she addressed the young people in pretended reproof.

“I sent you-uns arter Spot. From now on I be a-goin’ ter sen’ Spot arter you-uns.”

Summoned by the sound of her chuckle out came briskly Tubal Cain, venomous with fault-finding and repining. “Hyar ye be, Euphemy Sims,” he said, more harshly than he had ever before spoken to her, “a-foolin’ away yer time huntin’ fur a cow what war standin’ at the bars sence long ’fore sundown, ez sensible ez grown folks, an’ Pa’son Tynes a-settin’ an’ a-settin’ hyar waitin’ ter see ye.”

Euphemia answered with an affronted coolness: “Pa’son Tynes? An’ what do I keer ter see Pa’son Tynes fur?”

“Pa’son Tynes keer ter see you-uns, Phemie: that’s what makes yer dad hop roun’ like a pea on a hot shovel,” said Mrs. Sims.

Royce began to have an illuminating sense that “Daddy Sims” was flattered to have so distinguished a guest as Pa’son Tynes, with his widespread oratorical fame, awaiting by the hour Euphemia’s return, and that he could hardly forgive his idol that these precious moments had been wasted in the juggler’s society. Royce perceived the farcical antithesis of the theory which he had been arguing all the afternoon, and realized that there are arbitrary gradations in less sophisticated society than that on which he had predicated the proposition. He felt very small indeed, being thus called upon to look up to Pa’son Tynes.

“I dunno what he be wantin’ ter see _me_ fur,” said Euphemia, still with the resentment of being esteemed dilatory, and evidently apprehending a purpose in the call other than the enjoyment of her conversation.

“Me nuther,” chuckled Mrs. Sims; “you-uns bein’ seen a outdacious ugly gal ez all the menfolks be compelled ter shade thar eyes whenst ye kem about.”

Mrs. Sims’s vicarious coquetry was unblushingly fickle. She did not wait for Euphemia to be quit of the old love before she was on with the new. Nay, in the very presence of the superseded swain she prospectively and speculatively flirted with his problematic successor.

“A plague on all fat old women!” thought the juggler, ill at ease and out of countenance.

“I hev got my religion,” said Euphemia stiffly, her pride revolting at the idea that perchance Pa’son Tynes had presumed her to be still unconverted, and that his call was pastoral. “I _dunno what_ he kin be a-comin’ pesterin’ round about me fur.”

“Waal,” said her mother, still chuckling, “he be a-comin’ agin ter-morrer ter see you-uns. He axed me special ter keep ye home ter view him--no, that wasn’t the way; he knows thar’s better things ter be viewed in this world ’n a lantern-jawed, tallow-faced preacher-man, though from thar own account thar’ll be a power o’ nangels featured like that in heaven--he axed me special ter keep ye home till he could _view you-uns_!” And Mrs. Sims’s chuckle of enjoyment broke from its habitual bounds and into the jolliest of obese laughter. It might have been termed infectious had any one present been sufficiently in spirits to be susceptible to its influence. The juggler was disconcerted and strangely cast down; Euphemia, doubtful, antagonistic, prophetically affronted; and old Tubal Cain’s interest still hinged on the topics of the conversation during the several hours while he had borne the parson somewhat weary company.

“He hev hed great grace in the pertracted meet-in’,” her father rattled on, still flustered by the occurrence. “He hev converted fifteen sinners; some hardened cases, too. An’ he hev preached wunst a day reg’lar, an’ sometimes twict.”

“Let him go preach some mo’, then,” retorted Euphemia, vaguely resentful.

She was silent during the serving of supper, carrying her head high, with her cheeks flushed and her eyes alight. Royce’s glance forbore to follow her. He ate little, and with a downcast, thoughtful mien he found his pipe after supper and took it out upon the rocky slope that led to the river. The moon was up; long, glamourous slants of light lay athwart the Cove; the shadows of the pines were dense along the slope, but through their fringed branches the light filtered like a shower of molten silver. The river was here touched with a crystalline glitter, and here a lustrous darkness told of its shaded depths. Looking across the levels of the Cove, one had a sense of the dew in the glister and sparkle of the humid leaves. Above all rose the encompassing mountains, imposing, dark, and stern. The little log cabin with the swaying hopvines and the window flaringly alight, and the glittering reflection so far in the swift current below, had its idyllic suggestions in the moonlight, but he was not alive to the interests of the picturesque in humble environment, and had no fibre that responded to the enthusiasm of the _genre_ painter. He looked toward the house not to mark how the silver-gray hue of its weathered logs was heightened by the smooth effect of the moonbeams. He did not even feign to care that one of the clay-and-stick chimneys leaning from the wall was so awry against the sky as to give a positive value of individuality in composing; what it did in regard to the proper emission of smoke was of no consequence, since it so served the airy designs of the possible painter. He approved of the cant of the roof no more than if he had been an architectural precisian. He looked with all his eyes for what he presently saw,--a shadowy figure stole out and sat down on the step of the passage and gazed disconsolately, as he fancied, up at the moon.

“Euphemia, come down here,” he called in a low voice.

She started, stared out into the mingled shadow and sheen with dilated eyes; then, as he advanced she rose and went down toward him.

As they stood there together, the girl looked out from the shadow of the tree above them at the blended dew and glimmer, and he looked imperiously down at her.

“See here, Phemie, why is that man coming to see you to-morrow?”

“I dunno,” she responded vaguely.

“Ah, but you guess;” he caught both her hands. “Tell me why you think he is coming.”

She lifted her eyes to his, which had a constraining quality for her. “He be kemin’ ter see me--’bout--’bout Owen Haines--him--him ez prayed fur the power--I reckon. They be mighty close friends.”

He gave a short laugh of ridicule.

She could not join in his mirth. Only so short a time ago its cause had been the tragedy of the world to her. She could hardly bring herself to admit even to herself that now, scarcely three weeks later, she cared as little for it as if it had never been. But her world had changed. How it had developed! There were new countries; strange peoples had been discovered; a marvelous scope of emotion had been evolved. Romance had unfolded its wondrous page. She had seen Poetry trim its pinions and wing its flight. She had lived a new life; she was a changeling. Where was her old self? Her fancied love for the young religionist, her wounded pride for his sake, her scorching, fiery compassion for her own--all had fled. She remembered herself in these emotions as if she were another being. She could hardly pity Owen Haines. If he did not care for the fleer of ridicule, why should she? For since--she had lived an enchanted life.

“What will he want of you?” demanded Royce gravely.

She faltered. She feared Tynes and his powers of argument. She dreaded, not being convinced, but the rigors of the contest. And if Owen Haines should, as a sacrifice to love, agree to relinquish his “praying fur the power,” she dreaded the renewal of their old status of “keepin’ comp’ny.”

“He will want me ter take Owen Haines back.”

“But you wouldn’t, Phemie, you wouldn’t?” urged Royce breathlessly.

“He mought gin up prayin’ fur the power. I turned him off fur that,” she hesitated.

Royce’s scheme was complete. All the Cove and the mountain regarded him as a dangler after Euphemia Sims. He could feign a hopeless jealousy. He could hold aloof for a time, and the old status would doubtless readjust itself with the ease and security imparted by habit. He had gone as far as he had ever planned. Now he could leave the rest to chance.

But if the life here had afforded so arid a prospect heretofore, how could he contemplate it without Euphemia? His very speech no other creature could understand. He felt that he would be as isolated as if he were on a desert island, and he had a fiery impatience of time,--the years that were coming seemed such long years. He had never been more in earnest in his life, as he looked down into her beautiful illumined face.

“But you will not, Euphemia,” he said, slipping his arm around her waist. “You don’t love him.”

Beyond a start, half surprise and half coyness, she had not moved.

“Tell me--you care nothing for him?”

“Not now,” she faltered. And she felt anew a pang for her lack of constancy.

He revolted at the partial admission with all a lover’s insistence on preëminence. “Never--never! You _could_n’t care for such a fool. And he doesn’t love you, or he would have given up that folly at once--or anything you wished.”

Even now he hesitated. The breeze swayed the branches above them, and all the draping pendent wild grapevines that clung about the tree were suddenly astir. The circle of dark shadow in which they stood was inlaid with silver glintings as the moonlight struck through the foliage; the soft radiance fell full in her eyes.

“_I_ would give up all the world for you,” he cried impulsively, “because I love you!”

She drew back a trifle, and looked over her shoulder into the glittering idealization of the familiar scenes of her life in the glamours of the moonlight and of love. She heard the low dryadic song of the leaves; she heard the beating of her own heart.

“Tell me that you love me, Euphemia,” he pleaded. “Tell me that.”

Amidst all the joy in her face there was a flash of triumph. She was withdrawing her hands from his, and the realization how like she was to women of a higher sphere, despite her limitations, came to him with a certain surprise. No sooner did she feel her power than she had the will to wield it. The humble little rustic was expressed only in her outer guise. No finished coquette could have given him a more bewildering broadside of beautiful eyes as she said, joyously laughing, “What makes you ask such impossible questions?”

The phrase was borrowed of him, in his frequent despair of elucidating the whole scheme of civilization to her ignorance, in their readings. He could not laugh when it was so dexterously turned on himself. “Tell me,” he persisted earnestly, “tell me, Phemie--or I’ll--I’ll”--the assertion had little humility, but he divined its effectiveness--“I’ll go away, and never come back again.”

She was still laughing, but he marked that she no longer drew back. “Do you have to be told _everything_?” she quoted anew from his remonstrances because of her catechistic insistence. “Can’t you see through anything without having it point-blank?” with his own impatient intonation.

He allowed himself to be decoyed into a hasty smile. “And you’ll send that fellow to the right-about to-morrow?” he urged gravely.

“Oh, I’ll be glad enough ter git rid of him!” she cried, in the extremity of her relief.

He realized with a momentary qualm that the new situation must be avowed openly to justify the position which Euphemia would sustain in case Owen Haines should offer to relinquish, as a sacrifice to love, the pernicious practice of “prayin’ fur the power” in public. He recognized this step as a certain riveting of his chains; yet had he not been eager but a moment ago to assume them? And even now, as he looked down into her face, radiant with that joyous sense of supremacy in his heart, and seeming to him the most beautiful he had ever seen, the most tender, as it responsively looked up to his, he wondered that his untoward fate had so relented as to bestow upon him, in his forlorn exile, this creature, so delicately endowed, so choicely gifted, that even his alien estimate of values wrought no discord in the simple happiness that had come to him.

And it was he who revealed to Jane Ann Sims the altered state of things when the two went presently back to the little cabin on the slope. There she sat in bulky oblivion of the things of this world, and especially the dish-pan. Her spectacles were awry on her nodding head. The dish-towel was limp in her nerveless hand. The tallow dip was guttering in the centre of the table, and about it the moths circled in fond delusions, regardless of the winged cinders that lay, now still, and now with a quiver of departing life, on the cloth. She made a spasmodic offer to resign the dish-towel to Euphemia, waving it mechanically at her with a fat, dimpled hand and a gesture of renunciation; but the girl, all unallured, passed without a word into the shed-room beyond, and the juggler sat down on the opposite side of the table with one elbow on it as he looked steadily across at Mrs. Sims’s face, which was all lined with the creases of fat that were usually dimples. She had roused into that half-dazed condition characteristic of the sudden and unwelcome termination of the sleep of fatigue, and the tallow dip swayed reduplicated before her eyes like a chandelier. Mentally she seemed no clearer of perception. Royce had realized her maternal fondness for him, ungratefully requited, and he could not altogether reconcile this with the agitated and alarmed mien with which she received his disclosure.

“Marry Phemie!” she exclaimed in a sort of drowsy affright, as if her mental capacities had not yet laid hold on something that had roused her more alert apprehensions.

He was irritated for a moment. He knew in his secret soul that he forswore much, overlooked much, bestowed much, in this mad resolution, and this knowledge, quiescent under the immediate influence of the girl’s beauty and charm and his loneliness, became tumultuously assertive in the society of Mrs. Sims.

“Why not? I love her, and I want to marry her. Is there anything so astonishing in that?”

“Laws-a-massy, no, honey!” Mrs. Sims sputtered, her eyelids faltering before the myriad-flamed tallow dip. She apprehended his rising wrath, and, somnambulistically waving her hand, seemed to seek to appease it. “Mighty nigh every young fool ez ever seen her sets up the same chune. ’Tain’t astonishin’--but--honey”--she looked at him with sleepy admonition, still waving her hand--“don’t talk ’bout sech so brazen an’ loud.” Then sinking her voice to a husky whisper that could have been heard in South America, “Shet that thar door ahint ye. Tubal Cain be asleep in thar.” Her gesture, indicating the door, was accompanied by a premonitory jerk of her body which usually preceded rising.

“Don’t disturb yourself, I beg,” said Royce, still nettled.

He leaned back in his chair, and catching the door by the latch brought it to with a brisk bang. Mrs. Sims pursed up her mouth with a warning hiss imposing silence to preserve the gentle slumbers of old Tubal Cain, and neither noticed that the latch had failed to catch, and that the door, although apparently closed, stood slightly ajar.

“Phemie says--at least she gives me to understand that my affection is returned,” Royce went on, in better humor.

“I hope she ain’t tellin’ no lies ’bout’n it this time, ennyhow,” said Mrs. Sims waggishly; and it seemed to Royce that he was capable of singular temerity when he had risked the perils of seriously falling in love by simulating the tender passion in any instance in which Mrs. Sims was to be considered, however remotely. To be good-natured in ridicule by no means implies good nature in being ridiculed.

“You have a right to say anything you like, I suppose, about your own daughter,” he rejoined angrily. “She doesn’t look like a liar. For my part, I believe her.”

“Shucks! Shucks!” Mrs. Sims shook a mildly admonitory head at him. “I’m jes’ funnin’. An’ yit I kin ’member tellin’ Tubal Cain things cornsider’ble short o’ the truth whenst I war a young gal like Euphemy, an’ he war a-sparkin’ round.”