The Mountain Girl

"I know, James, but that excuse won't help Cassandra."

"Why did she do it?" asked David. "She must have known to what such a marriage would bring her."

"Do it? That is the sort of girl she is. If she thought she ought, she would leap over that fall there."

"But why should she think she ought? Had she given her – promise – " David saw her as she appeared to him when she had said that word to him on the mountain, and it silenced him, but only for a moment. He would learn all he could of her motives now. He must – he would know. "I mean before he did this, before she went away to study – had she made him such a – promise?"

"No. You tell him about it, James. You have seen her and talked with her. They were quarrelling about her, as I understand, and she thinks because she was the cause of the deed she must help him make retribution. Isn't that it, James? She knows perfectly well what it means for her, for she has had her aspirations. I can see it all. Frale says he was not drunk nor his friend either. He says the other man claimed – but I won't go into that – only Cassandra promised him before God, he says, that if he would repent, she would marry him. And when she was here she used to talk about the way those women live. How her own mother has worked and aged! Why, she is not yet sixty. You have seen how they live in their wretched little cabins, Doctor; that's what Frale would doom her to. He never in life will understand her. He'll grow old like his father, – a passionate, ignorant, untamed animal, and worse, for he would be drunken as well. He's been drunk twice since he came down here. James, you know they think it's perfectly right to get drunk Saturday afternoon."

"Yes, it seems a terrible waste; but if she has children, she will be able to do more for them than her mother has done for her, and they will have her inheritance; so her life can't be wholly wasted, even if she is not able to live up to her aspirations."

"James Towers! I – that – it's because you are a man that you can talk so! I'm ashamed, and you a bishop! I wish – " Betty's eyes were full of angry tears. "I only wish you were a woman. Slowly improve the race by bearing children – giving them her inheritance! How would she bear them? Year after year – ill fed, half clothed, slaving to raise enough to hold their souls in their bodies, bringing them into the world for a brute who knows only enough to make corn whiskey – to sell it – and drink it – and reproduce his kind – when – when she knows all the time what ought to be! Oh, James, James, think of it!"

"My dear, my dear, you forget, he has promised to repent and live a different life. If he does, things will be better than we now see them. If he does not change, then we may interfere – perhaps."

"I know, James. But – but – suppose he repents and she becomes his wife, and puts aside all her natural tastes, and the studies she loves, and goes on living with him there on the home place, and he does the best he can – even. Don't you see that her nature is fine and – and so different – even at the best, James, for her it will be death in life. And then there is the terrible chance, after all, that he might go back and be like his father before him, and then what?"

"Well, their lives and destinies are not in our hands; we can only watch out for them and help them."

"James, he has been drunk twice!"

"Yes, yes, Betty, my little tempest, and if he gets drunk twice more, and twice more, she will still forgive him until seventy times seven. We must make her see that unless he keeps his promise to her, she must give him up."

"Of course. I suppose that's all we can do. I – don't know what you'll think of me, Doctor Thryng; I'm a dreadful scold. If James were not an angel – "

"It's perfectly delicious. I would rather hear you scold than – "

"Than hear James preach," laughed the bishop. "I agree with you."

"I agree with her," said David, emphatically. "It ought to be stopped if – "

"If it ought to be, it will be. What do you think she said to me about it when I went to reason with her? 'If Christ can forgive and stand such as he, I can. It is laid on my soul to do this.' I had no more to say."

"That is one point of view, but we mustn't lose sight of the practical, either. To be his wife and bear his children – I call it a waste, a – "

"Yes, yes. So it is." And what more could the bishop say? After a little, he added, "But still we must not forget that he, too, is a human soul and has a value as great as hers."

"According to your viewpoint, but not to mine – not to mine. If a man is enslaved to his own appetites, he has no right to enslave another to them."

The following day David took himself back to his hermitage, setting aside all persuasions to remain.

"Don't make a recluse of yourself," begged the bishop's wife. "The amenities of life can't always be dispensed with, and we need you, James and I, you and your music."

David laughed. "I'm too fatally human to become a recluse, and as for the amenities, they are not all of one order, you know. I find plenty of scope for exercising them on others, and I often submit to having them exercised on me, – after their own ideas." He laughed again. "I wish you could look into my larder. You'd find me provided with all the hills afford. They have loaded me with gifts."

"No wonder! I know what your life up there means to them, taking care of their mothers and babies, and sitting up with them nights, going to them when they are in trouble, rain or shine, and visiting them in their bare, wretched, crowded homes."

"It wouldn't be so bad often, if it weren't that when a family is in serious trouble or has a case needing quiet and care, the sympathies of all their relatives are roused, and they come crowding in. In one case, the father was ill with pneumonia. I did all I could for him, and next day – would you believe it? – I found his sister and her 'old man' and their three youngsters, his old mother and a brother and a widowed sister, all camped down on them, all in one room. The sister sat by the fire nursing her three-months-old baby, his mother was smoking at her side, and the sick man's six little children and their three cousins were raising Ned, in and out, with three or four hounds. Not one of the visitors was helping, or, as they say up there, 'doing a lick,' but the wife was cooking for the whole raft when her husband needed all her care. Marvellous ideas they have, some of them."

"You ought to write out some of your experiences."

"Oh, I can't. It would seem like a sort of betrayal of friendship. They have adopted me, so to speak, and are so naïve and kind, and have trusted me – I think they are my friends. I may be very odd – you know."

"I know how you feel," said Betty.

The bishop's little daughter had assumed the proprietorship of the doctor. She even preferred his companionship to that of her puppy. She clung to his hand as he walked away, pulling and swinging upon his arm to coax him back. He took her in his arms and carried her out upon the walk, the small dog barking and snapping at his heels, as David threatened to bear his tyrannical young mistress away to the station.

"Doggie wants you to leave me here," she cried, pounding him vigorously with her two little fists.

He brought her back and placed her on the broad, flat top of the high gate-post. "Very well, doggie may have you. I will leave you here."

"Doggie wants you to stay, too." She held him with her small arms about his neck.

"Well, doggie can't have me." He unclinched her chubby hands, crossed them in her lap, and held them fast while he kissed her tanned and rosy cheek. "Good-by, you young rogue," he said, and strode away.

"Come and lift me down," she wailed. But he knew well she could scramble down by herself when she chose, and walked on. She continued to call after him; then, spying Frale in the wood yard, she imperatively summoned him to her aid, and trotted at his side back to the woodpile, where they sat comfortably upon a log and visited together.

They were the best of friends and chattered with each other as if both were children. In the slender shadow of a juniper tree that stood like a sentinel in the corner of the wood yard they sat, where a high board fence separated them from the back street.

The bishop's place was well planted, and this corner had been the quarters of the house servants in slave times. It was one of Frale's duties to pile here, for winter use, the firewood which he cut in short lengths for the kitchen fire, and long lengths for the open fireplaces.

He hated the hampered village life, and round of small duties – the weeding in the garden, cleaning of piazzas and windows, and the sweeping of the paths. The woodcutting was not so bad, but the rest he held in contempt as women's work. He longed to throw his gun in the hollow of his arm and tramp off over his own mountains. At night he often wept, for homesickness, and wished he might spend a day tending still, or lying on a ridge watching the trail below for intruders on his privacy.

The joy of life had gone out for him. He thought continually of Cassandra and desired her; and his soul wearied for her, until he was tempted to go back to the mountains at all risks, merely for a sight of her. Painfully he had tried to learn to write, working at the copies Betty Towers had set for him, – and certainly she had done all her conscientious heart prompted to interest him and keep him away from the village loungers. He had even progressed far enough to send two horribly spelled missives to Cassandra, feeling great pride in them. And now he had begun to weary of learning. To be able to write those badly scrawled notes was in his eyes surely enough to distinguish him from his companions at home; of what use was more?

"What's that you are tossing up in the air? Let me see it," demanded the child, as Frale tossed and caught again a small, bright object. He kept on tossing it and catching it away from the two little hands stretched out to receive it. "Give it to me. Give it to me, Frale. Let me see it."

He dropped it lightly in her palm. "Don't you lose hit. That thar's somethin' 'at's got a charm to hit."

"What's a 'charm to hit'? I don't see any charm."

Then Frale laughed aloud. He took it with his thumb and forefinger and held it between his eye and the sun. "Is that the way you see the 'charm to hit'? Let me try."

But he slipped it in his pocket, first placing it in a small bag which he drew up tightly with a string. "Hit hain't nothing you kin see. Hit's only a charm 'at makes hit plumb sure to kill anybody 'at hit hits. Hit's plumb sure to hit an' plumb sure to kill, too."

"Oh, Frale! What if it had hit me when you threw it up that way – and – killed me? Then you'd be sorry, wouldn't you, Frale?"

"Hit nevah wouldn't kill a girl – a nice little girl – like you be. Hit's charmed that-a-way, 'at hit won't kill nobody what I don't want hit to."

"Then what do you keep it in your pocket for? You don't want to kill anybody, do you, Frale?"

"Naw – I reckon not; not 'thout I have to."

"But you don't have to, do you, Frale?" piped the child.

He rose, and selecting an armful of stove wood carried it into the shed and began packing it away. Dorothy sat still on the log, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, meditating. A tall man slouched by and peered over the high board fence at her. His eyes roved all about the place eagerly, keen and black. His matted hair hung long beneath his soft felt hat. The child looked up at him with fearless, questioning glance, then trotted in to her friend.

"Frale, did you see that man lookin' over the fence? You think he was lookin' for you, Frale? Come see who 'tis. P'r'aps he's a friend of yours."

"Dorothy, Dorothy," called her mother from the piazza, and the child bounded away, her puppy yelping and leaping at her side. The tall man turned at the corner and looked back at the child.

The bishop's place occupied one corner of the block, and the fence with a hedge beneath it ran the whole length of two sides. Slowly sauntering along the second side, the gaunt, hungry-eyed man continued his way, searching every part of the yard and garden, even endeavoring, with backward, furtive glances, to see into the woodhouse, where in the darkness Frale crouched, once more pallid with abject fear, peering through the crack where on its hinges the door swung half open.

As the man disappeared down the straggling village street, Frale dropped down on the wheelbarrow and buried his haggard face in his hands. A long time he sat thus, until the dinner-hour was past, and black Carrie had to send Dorothy to call him. Then he rose, but in the place of the white and haunted look was one of stubborn recklessness. He strolled to the house with the nonchalant air of one who fears no foes, but rather glories in meeting them, and sat himself down at his place by the kitchen table, where he bantered and badgered Carrie, who waited on him reluctantly, with contemptuous tosses of her woolly head. From the day of his first appearance there had been war between them, and now Frale knew that if the stranger asked her, she would gladly and slyly inform against him.

The afternoon wore on. Again Frale sat on the wheelbarrow, thinking, thinking. He took the small bag from his pocket and felt of the bullet through the thin covering, then replaced it, and, drawing forth another bag, began counting his money over and over. There it was, all he had saved, five dollars in bills, and a few quarters and dimes.

He did not like to leave the shelter of the shed, and his eyes showed only the narrow glint of blue as, with half-closed lids, he still peered out and watched the street where his enemy had disappeared. Suddenly he rose and climbed with swift, catlike movements up the ladder stairs behind him, which led to his sleeping loft. There he rapidly donned his best suit of dyed homespun, tied his few remaining articles of clothing in a large red kerchief, and before a bit of mirror arranged his tie and hair to look as like as possible to the village youth of Farington. The distinguishing silken lock that would fall over his brow had grown again, since he had shorn it away in Doctor Thryng's cabin. Now he thrust it well up under his soft felt hat, and, taking his bundle, descended. Again his eyes searched up and down the street and all about the house and yard before he ventured out in the daylight.

Dorothy and her dog came bounding down the kitchen steps. She carried two great fried cakes in her little hands, warm from the hot fat, and she laughed with glee as she danced toward him.

"Frale, Frale. I stole these, I did, for you. I told Carrie I wanted two for you, an' she said 'G'long, chile.'" She thrust them in his hands.

"What's the matter, Frale? What you all dressed up for? This isn't Sunday, Frale. Is they going to be a circus, Frale, is they?" She poured forth her questions rapidly, as she hopped from one foot to the other. "Will you take me, Frale, if it's a circus? I'll ask mamma. I want to see the el'phant."

"'Tain't no circus," he replied grimly.

"What's the matter, Frale? Don't you like your fried cakes? Then why don't you eat them? What you wrapping them up for? You ought to say thank you, when I bring you nice cakes 'at I went an' stole for you," she remonstrated severely.

His throat worked convulsively as he stood, now looking at the child, now watching the street. Suddenly he lifted her in his arms and buried his face in her gingham apron.

"I had a little sister oncet, only she's growed up now, an' she hain't my little sister any more." He kissed her brown cheek tenderly, even as David had done, and set her gently down on her two stubby feet. "You run in an' tell yer maw thank you, fer me, will ye? Mind, now. Listen at me whilst I tell you what to tell yer paw an' maw fer me. Say, 'Frale seen a houn' dog on his scent, an' he's gone home to git shet of him.'"

"Where's the 'houn' dog,' Frale?" She gazed fearfully about.

"He's gone now. He won't bite – not you, he won't."

"Oh, Frale! I wish it was a circus."

"Yas," drawled the young man, with a sullen smile curling his lips, "may be hit be a sort of a circus. Kin ye remember what I tol' you to tell yer paw?"

"You – you seen a houn' dog on – on a cent – how could he be on a cent?"

"Say, 'Frale seen a houn' dog on his scent, an' he's gone home to git shet of him.'"

"Frale seen a houn' dog on – on a – a cent, an' – an' – an' he's gone home to – to get shet of him. What's 'get shet of him,' Frale?"

"Nevah mind, honey; yer paw'll know. Run in an' tell him 'fore you forgit hit. Good-by."

She danced gayly off toward the house, but turned to call back at him, as he stood watching her. "Are you going to hit the 'houn'' dog with the pretty ball, Frale?"

"I reckon." He laughed and strode off toward the one small station in the opposite direction from the way the man had taken.

Frale knew well where he had gone. On the outskirts of the village was a small grove of sycamore and gum trees, by a little stream, where it was the custom for the mountain people to camp with their canvas-covered wagons. There they would build their fires on a charred place between stones, and heat their coffee. There they would feed their oxen or mule team, tied to the rear wheels of their wagons, with corn thrown on the ground before them. At nightfall they would crawl under the canvas cover and sleep on the corn fodder within.

Often beneath the fodder might be found a few jugs of raw corn whiskey hidden away, while the articles they had brought down for sale or barter at the village stores were placed on top in plain view. Sometimes they brought vegetables, or baskets of splints and willow withes, made by their women, or they might have a few yards of homespun towelling.

The man Frale had seen was the older brother of his friend Ferdinand Teasley, and well Frale knew that he was camped with his ox team down by the spring, where it had been his habit to wait for the cover of darkness, when he could steal forth and leave his jugs where the money might be found for them, placed on some rock or stump or fallen trunk half concealed by laurel shrubs. How often had the products of Frale's still been conveyed down the mountain by that same ox team, in that same unwieldy vehicle!

Giles Teasley's cabin and patch of soil, planted always to corn, was a long distance from his father's mill, and also from his brother's still, hence he could with the more safety dispose of their illicit drink.

In the slow but deadly sure manner of his people, he had but just aroused himself to the fact that his brother's murderer was still alive and the deed unavenged; and Frale knew he had come now, not to dispose of the whiskey, since the still had been destroyed, but to find his brother's slayer and accord him the justice of the hills.

To the mountain people the processes of the law seemed vague and uncertain. They preferred their own methods. A well-loaded gun, a sure aim, and a few months of hiding among relatives and friends until the vigilance of the emissaries of the law had subsided was the rule with them. Thus had Frale's father twice escaped either prison or the rope, and during the last four years of his life he had never once ventured from his mountain home for a day at the settlements below; while among his friends his prowess and his skill in evading pursuit were his glory.

Now it was Frale's thought to dare the worst, – to walk to the station like any village youth, buy his ticket, and take the train for Carew's Crossing, and from there make his way to his haunt while yet Giles Teasley was taking his first sleep.

He reasoned, and rightly, that his enemy would linger about several days searching for him, and never dream of his having made his escape by means of the train. Since the first scurry of search was over, it was no longer the officers of the law Frale feared, but this same lank, ill-favored mountaineer, who was now warming his coffee and eating his raw salt pork and corn-bread by the stream, while his drooling cattle stood near, sleepily chewing their cuds.

CHAPTER XV

IN WHICH JERRY CAREW GIVES DAVID HIS VIEWS ON FUTURE PUNISHMENT, AND LITTLE HOYLE PAYS HIM A VISIT AND IS MADE HAPPY

Uncle Jerry Carew had led David's horse down to the station ready saddled to meet him, according to agreement, and side by side they rode back, the old man beguiling the way with talk of mountain affairs most interesting to the young doctor, who led him on from tales of his own youthful prowess, "when catamounts and painters war nigh as frequent as woodchucks is now," until he felt he knew pretty well the history of all the mountain side.

"Yas, when I war a littlin', no highah'n my horse's knees, I kin remember thar war a gatherin' fer a catamount hunt on Reed's Hill ovah to'ds Pisgah. Catamounts war mighty pesterin' creeters them days. Ev'y man able to tote a gun war thar. Ol' man Caswell – that war Miz Merlin – she war only a mite of a baby then – her gran'paw, he war the oldest man in th' country; he went an' carried his rifle his paw fit in th' Revolution with. He fit at King's Mountain, an' all about here he fit."

"Did he fight in the Civil War, too?"

"Her gran'paw's paw? No. He war too ol' fer that, but his gran'son Caswell, he fit in hit, an' he nevah come back, neither. Ol' Miz Caswell – Cassandry Merlin's gran'maw, she lived a widow nigh on to thirty year. She an' her daughter – that's ol' Miz Farwell that is now – they lived thar an' managed the place ontwell she married Merlin."

"You knew her first husband, then?"

"Yas, know him? Ev'ybody knew Thad Merlin. He come f'om ovah Pisgah way, an' he took Marthy thar. Hit's quare how things goes. I always liked Thad Merlin. The' wa'n't no harm in him."

David saw a quaint, whimsical smile play about the old man's mouth. "He war a preacher – kind of a mixtur of a preacher an' teacher an hunter. Couldn't anybody beat him huntin' – and farmin' – well he could farm, too, – better'n most. He done well whatever he done, but he had a right quare way. He built that thar rock wall an' he 'lowed he'd have hit run plumb 'round the place.

"He war a fiddler, and he'd build awhile, and fetch his fiddle – he warn't right strong – an' then he'd set thar on the wall an' fiddle to the birds; an' the wild creeturs, they'd come an' hear to him. I seen squerrels settin' on end hearkin' to him, myself. Arter a while, folks begun to think 'at he didn't preach the right kind of religion, an' they wouldn't go to hear him no more without hit war to listen did he say anythin' they could fin' fault with. 'Pears like they got in that-a-way they didn' go fer nothin' else. Hit cl'ar plumb broke him all up. He quit preachin' an' took more to fiddlin', an' he sorter grew puny, an' one day jes' natch'ly lay down an' died, all fer nothin', 'at anybody could see."

"What was the matter with his preaching?" asked David, and again the whimsical smile played around the old man's mouth, and his thin lips twitched.

"I reckon thar wa'n't 'nuff hell 'n' damnation in hit. Our people here on the mountain, they're right kind an' soft therselves. They don't whop ther chillen, nor do nothin' much 'cept a shootin' now an' then, but that's only amongst the men. The women tends mostly to the religion, an' they likes a heap o' hell 'n' damnation. Hit sorter stirs 'em up an' gives 'em somethin' to chaw on, an' keeps 'em contented like. They has somethin' to threat'n ther men folks with an' keep ther chillen straight on, an' a place to sen' ther neighbors to when they don't suit. Yas, hit's right handy fer th' women. I reckon they couldn't git on without hit."

"Do they think they will have bodies that can be hurt by any such thing in the next world?"

"I reckon so. But preacher Merlin, he said that thar war paths o' light an' paths o' darkness, an' that eve'y man he 'bided right whar he war at when he died. Ef he hed tuk the path o' darkness, thar he war in hit; but ef he hed tuk the path o' light whar war heaven, then he war thar. An' he said the Lord nevah made no hell, hit war jes' our own selves made sech es that, an' he took an' cut that thar place cl'ar plumb out'n the Scripturs an' the worl' to come. But he sure hed a heap o larnin', only some said a sight on hit war heathen, an' that war why he lef' all the hell an' damnation outen his religion."

Thus enlightened concerning many things, both of this particular bit of mountain world, which was all the world to his companion, and of the world to come, Thryng rode on, quietly amused.