The Mountain Girl

  CHAPTER XIV

  IN WHICH DAVID VISITS THE BISHOP, AND FRALE SEES HIS ENEMY

  The bishop was seated in a deep canvas chair on his wide veranda,looking out over his garden toward a distant line of blue hills. Hislittle wife sat close to his side on a low rocker, very busy with themaking of buttonholes in a small girl's frock of white dimity and lace.Betty Towers loved lace and pretty things.

  The small girl was playing about the garden paths with her puppy andchattering with Frale in her high, happy, childish voice, while he bentweeding among the beds of okra and egg-plant. His face wore a more thanusually discontented look, even when answering the child with teasingbanter. Now and then he lifted his eyes from his work and watchedfurtively the movements of David Thryng, who was pacing restlessly upand down the long veranda in earnest conversation with the bishop andhis wife.

  The two in the garden could not understand what was being said at thehouse, but each party could hear the voices of the other, and by callingout a little could easily converse across the dividing hedge and theintervening space.

  "Talk about the influence of the beautiful in nature upon the humansoul,--it is all very pretty, but I believe the soul must be more orless enlightened to feel it. I've learned a few things among your peopleup there in the mountains. Strange beings they are."

  "It only goes to show that heredity alone won't do everything," said thebishop, placing the tips of his fingers together and frowningmeditatively.

  "Heredity? It means a lot to us over there in England."

  "Yes, yes. But your old families need a little new blood in them now andthen, even if they have to come over here for it."

  "For that and--your money--yes." Thryng laughed. "But these mountainpeople of yours, who are they anyway?"

  "Most of them are of as pure a strain of British as any in the world--asany you will find at home. They have their heredity--and only that--fromall your classes over there, but it is from those of a hundred or moreyears ago. They are the unmixed descendants of those you sent over herefor gain, drove over by tyranny, or exported for crime."

  "How unmixed in your most horribly mixed and mongrel population?"

  "Circumstances and environment have kept them to the pure stock, andneglect has left them untrammelled by civilization and unaided byeducation. Time and generations of ignorance have deteriorated them, andnature alone--as you were but now admitting--has hardly served to arrestthe process by the survival of the fittest."

  "Nature--yes--how do you account for it? I have been in the grandest,most wonderful places, I venture to say, that are to be found on earth,and among all the glory that nature can throw around a man, he is still,if left to himself, more bestial than the beasts. He destroys anddefaces and defiles nature; he kills--for the mere sake of killing--morethan he needs; he enslaves himself to his appetites and passions,follows them wildly, yields to them recklessly; and destroys himself andall the beauty around him that he can reach, wantonly. Why, BishopTowers, sometimes I've gone out and looked up at the stars above me andwondered which was real, they and the marvellous beauty all around me,or the three hundred reeking humanity sleeping in the camp beneath them.Sometimes it seemed as if only hell were real, and the camp was a bit ofit let loose to mock at heaven."

  "We mustn't forget that what is transitory is not a part of God'seternity of spirit and truth."

  "Oh, yes, yes! But we do forget. And some transitory things are mightyhard to endure, especially if they must endure for a lifetime."

  David was thinking of Cassandra and what in all probability would be herdoom. He had not mentioned her name, but he had come down with theintention of learning all he could about her, and if possible to whomshe was "promised." He feared it might be the low-browed, handsome youthbending over the garden beds beyond the hedge, and his heart rebelledand cried out fiercely within him, "What a waste, what a waste!"

  Betty Towers, intent on her sewing, felt the thrill that intensifiedDavid's tone, and she, too, thought of Cassandra. She dropped her workin her lap and looked earnestly in her husband's face.

  "James, I feel just as Doctor Thryng does--when I think of some things.When I see a tragedy coming to a human soul, I feel that a lifetime oftransitory things like that is hard to endure. Fancy, James! Think ofCassandra. You know her, Doctor Thryng, of course. They live just belowyour place. She is the Widow Farwell's daughter, but her name isMerlin."

  David arrested his impatient stride and, drawing a chair near her,dropped into it. "What about her?" he said. "What is the tragedy?"

  "I think, Betty, the hills must keep their own secrets," said thebishop.

  His little wife compressed her lips, glanced over the hedge at the youngman who happened at the moment to have straightened from his bentposition among the plants and was gazing at their guest, then resumedher sewing.

  "Is it something I must not be told?" asked David, quietly. "But I mayhave my suspicions. Naturally we can't help that."

  "I think it is better to know the truth. I don't like suspicions. Theyare sure to lead to harm. James, let me put it to the doctor as I seeit, and see what he thinks of it."

  "As you please, dear."

  "It's like this. Have you seen anything of that girl or observed hermuch?"

  "I certainly have."

  "Then, of course, you can see that she is one of the best of themountain people, can't you? Well! She has promised to marry--promised tomarry--think of it! one of the wildest, most reckless of those mountainboys, one that she knows very well has been in illicit distilling. Heis a lawbreaker in that way; and, more than that, he drinks, and in adrunken row he shot dead his friend."

  "Ah!" David rose, turned away, and again paced the piazza. Then hereturned to his seat. "I see. The young man I tried to help off when Ifirst arrived."

  "Yes. There he is."

  "I see. Handsome type."

  "He's down here now, keeping quiet. How long it will last, no one knows.Justice is lax in the mountains. His father shot three or four menbefore he died himself of a gunshot wound which he received whileresisting the officers of the law. If there's a man left in the familyto follow this thing up, Frale will be hunted down and arrested or shot;otherwise, when things have cooled off a little up there, he will goback and open up the old business, and the tragedy will be repeated.James, you know how often after the best you could do and all theirpromises, they go back to it?"

  "I admit it's always a question. They don't seem to be content in thelow country. I think it is often a sort of natural gravitation back tothe mountains where they were born and bred, more than it is depravity."

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

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

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

  "But why should she think she ought? Had she given her--promise--" Davidsaw her as she appeared to him when she had said that word to him on themountain, and it silenced him, but only for a moment. He would learn allhe could of her motives now. He must--he would know. "I mean before hedid this, before she went away to study--had she made him sucha--promise?"

  "No. You tell him about it, James. You have seen her and talked withher. They were quarrelling about her, as I understand, and she thinksbecause she was the cause of the deed she must help him makeretribution. Isn't that it, James? She knows perfectly well what itmeans for her, for she has had her aspirations. I can see it all. Fralesays he was not drunk nor his friend either. He says the other manclaimed--but I won't go into that--only Cassandra promised him beforeGod, he says, that if he would repent, she would marry him. And when shewas here she used to talk about the way those women live. How her ownmother has worked and aged! Why, she is not yet sixty. You have seen howthey live in their wretched little cabins, Doctor; that's what Fralewould doom her to. He never in life will understand her. He'll grow oldlike his father,--a passionate, ignorant,
untamed animal, and worse, forhe would be drunken as well. He's been drunk twice since he came downhere. James, you know they think it's perfectly right to get drunkSaturday afternoon."

  "Yes, it seems a terrible waste; but if she has children, she will beable to do more for them than her mother has done for her, and they willhave her inheritance; so her life can't be wholly wasted, even if she isnot 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 angrytears. "I only wish you were a woman. Slowly improve the race by bearingchildren--giving them her inheritance! How would she bear them? Yearafter year--ill fed, half clothed, slaving to raise enough to hold theirsouls in their bodies, bringing them into the world for a brute whoknows only enough to make corn whiskey--to sell it--and drink it--andreproduce 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 adifferent 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, andgoes on living with him there on the home place, and he does the best hecan--even. Don't you see that her nature is fine and--and sodifferent--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 backand be like his father before him, and then what?"

  "Well, their lives and destinies are not in our hands; we can onlywatch 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. Wemust make her see that unless he keeps his promise to her, she must givehim up."

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

  "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 stoppedif--"

  "If it ought to be, it will be. What do you think she said to me aboutit when I went to reason with her? 'If Christ can forgive and stand suchas 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 alittle, he added, "But still we must not forget that he, too, is a humansoul and has a value as great as hers."

  "According to your viewpoint, but not to mine--not to mine. If a man isenslaved to his own appetites, he has no right to enslave another tothem."

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

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

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

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

  "It wouldn't be so bad often, if it weren't that when a family is inserious trouble or has a case needing quiet and care, the sympathies ofall 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 nextday--would you believe it?--I found his sister and her 'old man' andtheir three youngsters, his old mother and a brother and a widowedsister, all camped down on them, all in one room. The sister sat by thefire nursing her three-months-old baby, his mother was smoking at herside, and the sick man's six little children and their three cousinswere raising Ned, in and out, with three or four hounds. Not one of thevisitors was helping, or, as they say up there, 'doing a lick,' but thewife was cooking for the whole raft when her husband needed all hercare. 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. Theyhave adopted me, so to speak, and are so naive and kind, and havetrusted 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 thedoctor. She even preferred his companionship to that of her puppy. Sheclung to his hand as he walked away, pulling and swinging upon his armto coax him back. He took her in his arms and carried her out upon thewalk, the small dog barking and snapping at his heels, as Davidthreatened to bear his tyrannical young mistress away to the station.

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

  He brought her back and placed her on the broad, flat top of the highgate-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 abouthis neck.

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

  "Come and lift me down," she wailed. But he knew well she could scrambledown by herself when she chose, and walked on. She continued to callafter him; then, spying Frale in the wood yard, she imperativelysummoned 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 bothwere children. In the slender shadow of a juniper tree that stood like asentinel in the corner of the wood yard they sat, where a high boardfence separated them from the back street.

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

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

  The joy of life had gone out for him. He thought continually ofCassandra and desired her; and his soul wearied for her, until he wastempted to go back to the mountains at all risks, merely for a sight ofher. Painfully he had tried to learn to write, working at the copiesBetty Towers had set for him,--and certainly she had done all herconscientious heart prompted to interest him and keep him away from thevillage loungers. He had even progressed far enough to send two horriblyspelled missives to Cassandra, feeling great pride in them. And now hehad begun to weary of learning. To be able to write those badly scrawlednotes was in his eyes surely enough to distinguish him from hiscompanions at home; of what use was more?

  "What's that you are tossing up in the air? Let me see it," demanded thechild, as Frale tossed and caught again a small, bright object. He kepton tossing it and catching it away from the two little hand
s stretchedout 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'ssomethin' '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 andheld it between his eye and the sun. "Is that the way you see the 'charmto hit'? Let me try."

  But he slipped it in his pocket, first placing it in a small bag whichhe drew up tightly with a string. "Hit hain't nothing you kin see. Hit'sonly 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 thatway--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'scharmed 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 killanybody, 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 shedand began packing it away. Dorothy sat still on the log, her elbows onher knees, her chin in her hands, meditating. A tall man slouched by andpeered over the high board fence at her. His eyes roved all about theplace eagerly, keen and black. His matted hair hung long beneath hissoft felt hat. The child looked up at him with fearless, questioningglance, then trotted in to her friend.

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

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

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

  As the man disappeared down the straggling village street, Frale droppeddown on the wheelbarrow and buried his haggard face in his hands. A longtime he sat thus, until the dinner-hour was past, and black Carrie hadto send Dorothy to call him. Then he rose, but in the place of the whiteand haunted look was one of stubborn recklessness. He strolled to thehouse with the nonchalant air of one who fears no foes, but ratherglories in meeting them, and sat himself down at his place by thekitchen table, where he bantered and badgered Carrie, who waited on himreluctantly, with contemptuous tosses of her woolly head. From the dayof his first appearance there had been war between them, and now Fraleknew that if the stranger asked her, she would gladly and slyly informagainst 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 bulletthrough the thin covering, then replaced it, and, drawing forth anotherbag, began counting his money over and over. There it was, all he hadsaved, five dollars in bills, and a few quarters and dimes.

  He did not like to leave the shelter of the shed, and his eyes showedonly the narrow glint of blue as, with half-closed lids, he still peeredout and watched the street where his enemy had disappeared. Suddenly herose and climbed with swift, catlike movements up the ladder stairsbehind him, which led to his sleeping loft. There he rapidly donned hisbest suit of dyed homespun, tied his few remaining articles of clothingin a large red kerchief, and before a bit of mirror arranged his tie andhair to look as like as possible to the village youth of Farington. Thedistinguishing silken lock that would fall over his brow had grownagain, since he had shorn it away in Doctor Thryng's cabin. Now hethrust it well up under his soft felt hat, and, taking his bundle,descended. Again his eyes searched up and down the street and all aboutthe house and yard before he ventured out in the daylight.

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

  "Frale, Frale. I stole these, I did, for you. I told Carrie I wanted twofor 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'tSunday, Frale. Is they going to be a circus, Frale, is they?" She pouredforth 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 tosee the el'phant."

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

  "What's the matter, Frale? Don't you like your fried cakes? Then whydon't you eat them? What you wrapping them up for? You ought to saythank 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 buriedhis face in her gingham apron.

  "I had a little sister oncet, only she's growed up now, an' she hain'tmy little sister any more." He kissed her brown cheek tenderly, even asDavid had done, and set her gently down on her two stubby feet. "You runin an' tell yer maw thank you, fer me, will ye? Mind, now. Listen at mewhilst I tell you what to tell yer paw an' maw fer me. Say, 'Frale seena 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, "maybe hit be a sort of a circus. Kin ye remember what I tol' you to tellyer 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 gitshet of him.'"

  "Frale seen a houn' dog on--on a--a cent, an'--an'--an' he's gone hometo--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 youforgit 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 thepretty ball, Frale?"

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

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

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

  The man Frale had seen was the older brother of his friend FerdinandTeasley, and well Frale knew that he was camped with his ox team down bythe spring, where it had been his habit to wait for the cover ofdarkness, when he could steal forth and leave his jugs where the moneymight be found for them, placed on some rock or stump or fallen trunkhalf concealed by laurel shrubs. How often had the products of Frale'sstill been conveyed down the mountain by that same ox team, in that sameunwieldy vehicle!

  Giles Teasley's cabin and patch of soil, planted always to corn, was along
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 justaroused himself to the fact that his brother's murderer was still aliveand the deed unavenged; and Frale knew he had come now, not to disposeof the whiskey, since the still had been destroyed, but to find hisbrother's slayer and accord him the justice of the hills.

  To the mountain people the processes of the law seemed vague anduncertain. They preferred their own methods. A well-loaded gun, a sureaim, and a few months of hiding among relatives and friends until thevigilance of the emissaries of the law had subsided was the rule withthem. 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 venturedfrom his mountain home for a day at the settlements below; while amonghis 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 stationlike any village youth, buy his ticket, and take the train for Carew'sCrossing, and from there make his way to his haunt while yet GilesTeasley was taking his first sleep.

  He reasoned, and rightly, that his enemy would linger about several dayssearching for him, and never dream of his having made his escape bymeans of the train. Since the first scurry of search was over, it was nolonger the officers of the law Frale feared, but this same lank,ill-favored mountaineer, who was now warming his coffee and eating hisraw salt pork and corn-bread by the stream, while his drooling cattlestood near, sleepily chewing their cuds.