Part 4

The elders of the party stared at one another. The fire roared suddenly as a log broke, burned in twain; the limestone fragments, still crude, went rattling down into the crevices its fall had made. Peter Knowles’s arm, with the free ministerial gesticulation which he was wont to copy, fixed the absurdity upon Ormsby even before he spoke.

“Don’t ye know that thar Philistine ain’t got sech speech ez them ez lives in Happy Valley, nor thar clothes, nor thar raisin’, nor thar manners, nor thar ways, nor thar--nuthin’? Don’t you-uns sense that?”

“I ’lowed ez much ter him,” replied Ormsby, a trifle browbeaten by the seniority of his interlocutor and the difficulty of the subject. “I up-ed an’ said, ‘Ye ain’t nowise like folks ez live in Happy Valley. Ter look at ye, I’d set it down fur true ez ye hed never been in the shadder o’ Chilhowee all yer days.’”

“An’ what did he say, bub?” demanded old man Cobbs gently, after a moment of waiting.

“Great Gosh, yes!” exclaimed Peter Knowles explosively. “We-uns ain’t a-waitin’ hyar ter hear you-uns tell yer talk; ennybody could hev said that an’ mo’. What did the man say?”

Ormsby turned doubtfully toward the descending sun and the reddening sky. “We-uns war a-huntin’, me an’ that juggler. I seen him yestiddy mornin’. I went down thar ter Mis’ Sims’ an’ happened ter view him. An’ I loant him my brother’s gun. An’ whenst I said that ’bout his looks an’ sech, we war a-huntin’, an’ he ’peared not ter know thar war enny Happy Valley ’way over yander by Chilhowee. An’ I tuk him up high on the mounting whar he could look over fur off an’ see the Rich Woods an’ Happy Valley, an’--an’”--He paused.

“An’ what did he say?” inquired Knowles eagerly.

Ormsby looked embarrassed. “He jes’ say,” he went on suddenly, as if with an effort, “he jes’ say, ‘Oh, Dr. Johnson!’ an’ bust out a-laffin’. I dunno what the critter meant.”

Once more Ormsby turned, swinging his axe in his strong right hand, and glanced absently over the landscape.

The sun was gone. The mountains, darkly glooming, rose high above the Cove on every side, seeming to touch the translucent amber sky that, despite the sunken sun, conserved an effect of illumination heightened by contrast with the fringes of hemlock and pine, that had assumed a sombre purple hue, waving against its crystalline concave. In this suffusion of reflected color, rather than in the medium of daylight, he beheld the scanty fields below in the funnel-like basin; for this projecting spur near the base of the range gave an outlook over the lower levels at hand. Some cows, he could discern, were still wending homeward along an undulating red clay road, which rose and fell till the woods intervened. The woods were black. Night was afoot there amongst the shadowy boughs, for all the golden glow of the feigning sky. The evening mists were adrift along the ravines. Ever and anon the flames flickered out, red and yellow, from the heap of logs. Not a sound stirred the group as they pondered on this strange reply, till Ormsby said reflectively, “The juggler be toler’ble good comp’ny, though,--nuthin’ like the devil an’ sech; leastwise, so much ez I know ’bout Satan,”--he seemed to defer to the superior acquaintanceship of Knowles. “This hyar valley-man talks powerful pleasant; an’ he kin sing,--jes’ set up an’ sing like a plumb red-headed mock-in’bird, that’s what! You-uns hearn him sing at the show,”--he turned from Knowles to appeal to the rest of the group.

“Did he ’pear ter you-uns, whilst huntin’, ter try enny charms an’ spells on the wild critters?” asked Knowles.

“They didn’t work ef he did!” exclaimed Jack Ormsby, with a great gush of laughter that startled the echoes into weird unmirthful response. “He shot one yallerhammer arter travelin’ nigh ten mile ter git him.” After a pause, “I gin him the best chance at a deer I ever hed. I never see a feller hev the ‘buck ager’ so bad. He never witched that deer. He shot plumb two feet too high. She jes’ went a-bouncin’ by him down the mounting,--bouncin’ yit, I reckon! But he kin shoot toler’ble fair at a mark.” The ready laughter again lighted his face. “He ’lows he likes a mark ter shoot at kase it stands still. He’s plumb pleasant comp’ny sure.”

“Waal, he ain’t been sech powerful pleasant comp’ny down ter my house,” protested Tubal Sims. “Ain’t got a word ter say, an’ ’pears like he ain’t got the heart ter eat a mouthful o’ vittles. Yander he hev been a-lyin’ flat on them wet rocks all ter-day, with no mo’ keer o’ the rheumatics ’n ef he war a bullfrog,--a-feeshin’ in the ruver with a hook ’thout no bait on it.”

“What’d he ketch?” demanded one of the men, with a quick glance of alarm. Miracles for the purpose of exhibition and cutting a dash they esteemed far less repellent to the moral sense than the use of uncommon powers to serve the ordinary purposes of daily life.

“Pleurisy, ef he got his deserts,” observed the disaffected host. “He caught nuthin’ with ez much sense ez a stickle-back. ’Pears ter me he ain’t well, nohow. He groaned a power in his sleep las’ night, arter the show. An’”--he felt he ventured on dangerous ground--“he talked, too.”

There was a significant silence. “That thar man hev got suthin’ on his mind,” muttered Peter Knowles.

“I be powerful troubled myself,” returned the level-headed Sims weakly. “I oughtn’t ter hev tuk him in,--him a stranger, though”--he remembered the hospitable text in time for a flimsy self-justification. “But ’twar a-stormin’ powerful, and he ’peared plumb beat out. I ’lowed that night he war goin’ inter some sort’n fever or dee-lerium. I put him inter the roof-room, an’ he went ter bed ez soon ez he could git thar. But the nex’ day he war ez fraish an’ gay ez a jaybird.”

“What’s he talk ’bout whenst sleepin’?” asked Peter Knowles, his covert glance once more reverting to the refuse of quicklime at his feet.

“Suthin’ he never lays his tongue ter whenst wakin’, I’ll be bound,” replied Tubal Sims precipitately. Then he hesitated. This disclosure was, he felt, a flagrant breach of hospitality. What right had he to listen to the disjointed exclamations of his guest in his helplessness as he slept, place his own interpretation upon them, and retail them to others for their still more inimical speculation? Jane Ann Sims,--how he would have respected her judgment had she been a man!--he was sure, would not have given the words a second thought. But then her habit of mind was incredulous. Parson Greenought often told her that he feared her faith was not sufficient to take her to heaven. “I be dependin’ on suthin’ better’n that, pa’son,” she would smilingly rejoin. “I ain’t lookin’ ter my own pore mind an’ my own wicked heart fur holp. An’ ye mark my words, I’ll be the fust nangel ye shake han’s with when ye git inside the golden door.” And the parson, impaled on his own weapons, could only suggest that they should sing a hymn together, which they did,--Jane Ann Sims much the louder of the two.

Admirable woman! she had but a single weakness, and this Tubal Cain Sims was aware that he shared. With the returning thought of their household idol, Euphemia, every consideration imposing reticence vanished.

“Last night,” he began suddenly, “I war so conflusticated with the goin’s-on ez I couldn’t sleep fur a while. An’ ez I sot downsteers afore the fire, I could but take notice o’ how oneasy this man ’peared in his sleep up in the roof-room. He sighed an’ groaned like suthin’ in agony. An’ then he says, so painful, ‘But the one who lives--oh, what can I do--the one who lives! fur his life!--his life!--his life!’” He paused abruptly to mark the petrified astonishment on the group of faces growing white in the closing dusk.

An owl began to hoot in the bosky recesses far up the slope. At the sound, carrying far in the twilight stillness, a hound bayed from the door of the little cabin in the Cove, by the river. A light, stellular in the gloom that hung about the lower levels, suddenly sprung up in the window. A tremulous elongated reflection shimmered in the shallows close under the bank where the juggler had been lying. Was he there yet? Sims wondered, quivering with the excitement of the moment.

His anxiety was not quelled, but a great relief came upon him when Peter Knowles echoed his own thought, which seemed thus the natural sequence of the event, and not some far-fetched fantasy.

“That thar man hev killed somebody, ez sure ez ye live!” exclaimed Peter Knowles. “‘But the one who lives!’ An’ who is the one who died?”

“Jes’ so, jes’ so,” interpolated Sims, reassured to see his own mental process so definitely duplicated in the thoughts of a man held to be of experienced and just judgment, and much regarded in the community.

“He be a-runnin’ from jestice,” resumed Knowles. “He ain’t no juggler, ez he calls hisself.”

There was a general protest.

“Shucks, Pete, ye oughter seen him swaller a bay’net.”

“An’ Mis’ Sims tole him she’d resk her shears on it, she jes’ felt so reckless an’ plumb kerried away. An’ he swallered them, too, an’ then tuk ’em out’n his throat, sharp ez ever.”

“An’ he swallered a paper o’ needles an’ a spool o’ thread, an’ brung ’em out’n his mouth all threaded.”

There was a delighted laugh rippling round the circle.

“Look-a-hyar, my frien’s,” remonstrated Peter Knowles in a solemn, sepulchral voice, “I never viewed none o’ these doin’s, but ye air all ’bleeged ter know ez they air on-possible, the devices o’ the devil. An’ hyar ye be, perfessin’ Christians, a-laffin’ at them wiles ez air laid ter delude the onwary.”

There was a general effort to recover a sobriety of demeanor, and one of the men then observed gravely that on the occasion when these wonders were exhibited Parson Benias Greenought taxed the performer with this supposition.

“Waal,” remarked Ormsby, “ye air ’bleeged ter hev tuk notice, ef ye war thar las’ night, ez old Benias never moved toe or toe-nail till arter all the jinks war most over. He seen nigh all thar war ter see ’fore he ’lowed how the sinners war enj’yin’ tharse’fs, an’ called up the devil ter len’ a han’.”

“What the man say?” demanded Peter Knowles.

“He ’peared cornsider’ble set back a-fust, an’ then he tried ter laff it off,” replied Gideon Beck. “He ’lowed he could l’arn sech things ter folks ez he had l’arnt ’em, too.”

“Now tell me one thing,” argued Peter Knowles; “how’s a man goin’ ter l’arn a pusson ter put a persimmon seed in a pail o’ yearth, an’ lay a cloth over it, an’ sing some foolishness, an’ take off’n the cloth, an’ thar’s a persimmon shoot with a root ez long ez my han’ a-growin’ in that yearth?”

There were sundry gravely shaken heads.

“Mis’ Jernigan jes’ went plumb inter the high-strikes, she got so skeered, an’ they hed ter take her home in the wagon,” said Beck.

“Old man Jernigan hed none; the las’ time I viewed him he war a-tryin’ ter swaller old Mis’ Jernigan’s big shears hisse’f,” retorted Ormbsy.

“Mis’ Jernigan ain’t never got the rights o’ herself yit, an’ her cow hev done gone dry, too,” observed Beck.

“Tell me, my brethren, what’s them words mean,--‘the one who lives’?” insisted Peter Knowles significantly. “Sure’s ye air born, thar’s another verse an’ chapter ter that sayin’. Who war the one who died?”

Once more awe settled down upon the little group. The wind had sprung up. Now and again pennons of flame flaunted out from the great heap of logs and stones, and threw livid bars of light athwart the landscape, which pulsated visibly as the blaze rose and fell,--now seeming strangely distinct and near at hand, now receding into the darkness and distance. Mystery affiliated with the time and place, and there was scant responsiveness to Ormsby’s protest as he once more sought to befriend the absent juggler.

“I can’t git my cornsent ter b’lieve ez thar be enny dead one. I reckon the feller war talkin’ ’bout his kemin’ powerful nigh dyin’ hisself. He ’lowed ter me ez he hed a mighty great shock jes’ afore he kem hyar,--what made him so diff’ent a-fust.”

“Shocked by lightning?” demanded Peter Knowles dubiously.

“I reckon so; never hearn on no other kind.”

“Waal, now,” said Tubal Sims, who had sought during this discussion to urge his views on the coterie, “I ’low that the Cove ought not ter take up with sech jubious doin’s ez these.”

“Lawsy massy!” exclaimed Beck, with the uplifted eyebrows of derision, “las’ night you-uns an’ Mis’ Sims too ’peared plumb kerried away, jes’ bodaciously dee-lighted, with the juggler an’ all his pay-formances!”

There is naught in all our moral economy which can suffer a change without discredit and disparagement, barring what is known as a change of heart. It is a clumsy and awkward mental evolution at best, as the turncoat in politics, the apologist for discarded friendships, the fickle-minded in religious doctrines, know to their cost. The process of veering is attended invariably with a poignant mortification, as if one had warranted one’s opinions infallible, and to endure till time shall be no more. Tubal Cain Sims experienced all the ignominious sensations known as “eatin’ crow,” as he sought to qualify his satisfaction of the previous evening, and reconcile it to his complete change of sentiment now, without giving his true reason. It would involve scant courtesy to the absent Euphemia to intimate his fears lest she admire too much the juggler, and it might excite ridicule to suggest his certainty that the juggler would admire her far too much. Sometimes, indeed, he doubted if other people--that is, above the age of twenty-five--entertained the rapturous estimate of Euphemia, which was a subject on which he and Jane Ann Sims never differed.

“I did,--I did,” he sputtered. “Me an’ Jane Ann nare one never seen no harm in the pay-formance. An’ Jane Ann don’t know nuthin’ contrarious yit, kase I ain’t tole her,--she bein’ a ’oman, an’ liable ter talk free an’ let her tongue git a-goin’; she dunno whar ter stop. A man oughtn’t ter tell his wife sech ez he aims ter go no furder,” he added discursively.

“’Thout he wants all the Cove ter be a-gabblin’ over it nex’ day,” assented a husband of three experiments. “I know wimmin. Lawsy massy! I know ’em now.” He shook his head lugubriously, as if his education in feminine quirks and wiles had gone hard with him, and he could willingly have dispensed with a surplusage of learning.

“But arter I hearn them strange words,” resumed Tubal Cain Sims,--“them strange words, so painful an’ pitiful-spoken,--I drawed the same idee ez Peter Knowles thar. I ’lowed the juggler war some sort’n evil-doer agin the law,--though he didn’t look like it ter me.”

“He did ter me; he featured it from the fust,” Knowles protested, with a stern drawing down of his forbidding face.

There was a momentary pause while they all seemed to meditate on the evidence afforded by the personal appearance of the juggler.

“I be afeard,” continued Sims, glancing at Knowles, “like Pete say, he hev c’mmitted murder an’ be fleein’ from the law. An’ I be a law-abidin’ citizen--an’--an’--he can’t stay at my house.”

There was silence. No one was interested in the impeccability of Tubal Cain Sims’s house. It was his castle. He was free to say who should come and who should go. His own responsibility was its guarantee.

It is a pathetic circumstance in human affairs that the fact of how little one’s personal difficulties and anxieties and turmoils of mind count to one’s friends can only be definitely ascertained by the experiment made in the thick of these troubles.

With a sudden return of his wonted perspicacity, Sims said, “That thar man oughter be gin notice ter leave. I call on ye all--ye all live round ’bout the Cove--ter git him out’n it.”

There was a half-articulate grumble of protest and surprise.

“It’s yer business ter make him go, ef yer don’t want him in yer house,” said Peter Knowles, looking loweringly at Sims.

“I ain’t got nuthin’ agin him,” declared Sims excitedly, holding both empty palms upward. “I can’t say, ‘Git out; ye talk in yer sleep, an’ ye don’t talk ter suit me!’ _But_,” fixing the logic upon them with weighty emphasis and a significant pause, “you-uns all b’lieve ez he air in league with Satan, an’ his jinks air deviltries an’ sech. An’ so be, ye _ought_ ter make him take hisself an’ his conjurin’s off from hyar ’fore he witches the craps, or spirits away the lime, or tricks the mill, or--He ought ter be gin hours ter cl’ar out.”

Peter Knowles roused himself to argument. He had developed a vivid curiosity concerning the juggler. The suggestion of the devil’s agency was a far cry to his fears,--be it remembered he had not seen the bayonet swallowed!--and he had phenomenal talents for contrariety, and graced the opposition with great persistence and powers of contradiction.

“Bein’ ez ye hev reason ter suspect that man o’ murder or sech, we-uns ain’t got the _right_ ter give him hours ter leave. Ye ain’t got the _right_ ter turn him out’n yer house ter escape from the off’cers o’ the law.”

The crowd, always on the alert for a sensation, pricked up their willing ears. “Naw, ye ain’t,” more than one asseverated.

“’Twould jes’ be holpin’ him on his run from jestice,” declared Beck. “Further he gits, further the sher’ff’ll hev ter foller, an’ mo’ chance o’ losin’ him.”

“They be on his track now, I reckon,” said old Josiah Cobbs dolorously.

“It’s the jewty o’ we-uns in the Cove,” resumed Peter Knowles, “ter keep a stric’ watch on him an’ see ter it he don’t git away ’fore the sher’ff tracks him hyar.”

Tubal Sims’s blood ran cold. A man sitting daily at his table under the espionage of all the Cove as a murderer! A man sleeping in his best feather-bed--and the way he floundered in its unaccustomed depths nothing but a porpoise could emulate--till the sheriff of the county should come to hale him out to the ignominious quarters of the common jail! Jane Ann Sims--how his heart sank as he thought that had he first taken counsel of her he would not now be in a position to receive his orders from Peter Knowles!--to be in daily friendly association with this strange guest, to be sitting at home now calmly stitching cuffs for a man who might be wearing handcuffs before daylight! Euphemia--when he thought of Euphemia he rose precipitately from the rock on which he was seated. In twenty-four hours Euphemia should be in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where his sister lived. The juggler should never see her; for who knew what lengths Jane Ann Sims’s vicarious love of admiration would carry her? If the man were but on his knees, what cared she what the Cove thought of him? And Euphemia should never see the juggler! Tubal Sims hurried down the darkening way, hearing without heeding the voices of his late comrades, all dispersing homeward by devious paths,--now loud in the still twilight, now veiled and indistinct in the distance. The chirring of the myriad nocturnal insects was rising from every bush, louder, more confident, refreshed by the recent rain, and the frogs chanted by the riverside.

He had reached the lower levels at last. He glanced up and saw the first timid palpitant star spring forth with a glitter into the midst of the neutral-tinted ether, and then, as if affrighted at the vast voids of the untenanted skies, disappear so elusively that the eye might not mark the spot where that white crystalline flake had trembled. It was early yet. He strode up to his own house, whence the yellow light glowed from the window. He stopped suddenly, his heart sinking like lead. There on the step of the passage sat Euphemia, her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand, her eyes pensively fixed on the uncertain kindling of that pioneer star once more blazing out the road in the evening sky.

III.

Euphemia could hardly have said what it was that had brought her home,--some vague yet potent impulse, some occult, unimagined power of divination, some subjection to her mother’s will constraining her, or simply the intuition that there was some opportunity for mischief unimproved. Tubal Cain Sims shook his head dubiously as he canvassed each theory. He ventured to ask the views of Mrs. Sims, after he had partaken of the supper set aside for him--for the meal was concluded before his return--and had lighted his pipe.

“What brung her home? Them stout leetle brogans,--that’s what,” said Mrs. Sims, chuckling between the whiffs of her own pipe.

“Course I know the chile walked. I reckon she’ll hev stone-bruises a plenty arter this,--full twelve mile. But what put it inter her head ter kem? She ’lowed ter me she ain’t dreamed o’ nuthin’, ’ceptin’ Spot hed a new calf, which she ain’t got. Reckon ’twar a leadin’ or a warnin’ or”--

“I reckon ’twar homesickness. Young gals always pine fur home, special ef thar ain’t nuthin’ spry goin’ on in a new place.” And once more Jane Ann Sims, in the plenitude of her triumph, chuckled.

It chanced, that afternoon, that when the red sunset was aflare over the bronze-green slopes that encircled the Cove, and the great pine near at hand began to sway and to sing and to cast forth the rich benison of its aroma to the fresh rain-swept air, the juggler roused himself, pushed back his hat from his eyes, and gazed with listless melancholy about him. Somehow the sweet peace of the secluded place appealed to his world-weary senses. The sounds,--the distant, mellow lowing of the kine, homeward wending; the tinkle of a sheep-bell; the rhythmic dash of the river; the ecstatic cadenzas of a mocking-bird, so intricate, delivered with such dashing _élan_, so marvelously clear and sweet and high as to give an effect as of glitter,--all were so harmoniously bucolic. He was soothed in a measure, or dulled, as he drew a long sigh of relief and surcease of pain, and began to experience that facile renewal of interest common to youth with all its recuperative faculties. It fights a valiant fight with sorrow or trouble, and only the years conquer it at last. For the first time he noted among the budding willows far down the stream a roof all aslant, which he divined at once was the mill. He rose to his feet with a quickening curiosity. As he released the futile fishing-rod and wound up the line he remarked the unbaited hook. His face changed abruptly with the thought of his absorption and trouble. He pitied himself.

The road down which he took his way described many a curve seeking to obviate the precipitousness of the descent. The rocks rose high on either side for a time, and when the scene beyond broke upon him in its entirety it was as if a curtain were suddenly lifted. How shadowy, how fragrant the budding woods above the calm and lustrous water! The mill, its walls canted askew, dark and soaked with the rain, and its mossy roof awry, was sombre and silent. Over the dam the water fell in an unbroken crystal sheet so smooth and languorous that it seemed motionless, as if under a spell. Ferns were thick on a marshy slope opposite, where scattered boulders lay, and one quivering blossomy bough of a dogwood-tree leaned over its white reflection in the water, fairer than itself, like some fond memory embellishing the thing it images.

With that sudden sense of companionship in loneliness by which a presence is felt before it is perceived, he turned sharply back as he was about to move away, and glanced again toward the mill. A young girl was standing in the doorway in an attitude of arrested poise, as if in surprise.