X.
Shattuck turned with an excited, flushed face and his eyes triumphant. He had no intuition of Rhodes's anxious, disconcerted frame of mind, for the candidate was seized by a sudden fear that he was to have no opportunity to confer with Felix Guthrie anent the living issues of the election. His long ride had been taken with scant result, indeed, to flatter an old woman and to loll on the grass with the acquiescent younger brother, who would not hesitate to rescind the promise of support he had made if he fancied that it fell under the disapproval of Felix. Rhodes had had no idea that the colloquy would be so soon terminated. He scrambled sheepishly to his feet as the others precipitately passed, oblivious of the two under the tree.
"Hello! Hold on!" cried Rhodes. "Where are you making off to?"
Guthrie turned an absorbed face upon him, continuing what he was saying, but including him in the invitation extended to Shattuck to come to the house for refreshment for themselves and their horses before beginning the descent of the mountain.
"We hev had dinner long ago, but I know mam kin git ye up some sorter snack ter hearten ye up, an' ye kin leastwise take a drink 'long o' Eph an' me. An' I'll loan ye a pickaxe an' a spade, an' saddle my beastis, an' holp ye go an' dig."
It seemed to Rhodes unpardonable that his friend should be so forgetful of the interests of the election, for the allusion to the pickaxe and spade, coupled with his previous knowledge of Shattuck's chief absorption, was enough to acquaint him with the nature of the business in progress. The color had diffused itself over his handsome face to the roots of his brown hair, and his eyes were surprised and perturbed as he mechanically glanced about his attire, picking here and there a clinging barley straw from his garments. He contrived, on joining the others, to walk abreast with them, and thus end the burdensome dialogue with Eph, who, in no degree offended by his defection and accustomed to slight consideration, lagged cheerfully in the rear, chewing a straw with abnormal activity of jaw, his hat pushed far back from his broad, sunburned, fleshy face, his gait shambling and awkward, as if he still were in the furrow.
Rhodes, however willingly he might have balked his friend's preference in the choice of a subject of conversation, could hardly intimate with impunity that the enlightened voter, whose suffrage he coveted, held forth upon a theme which he considered trivial and to the last degree irksome. Nevertheless, as he walked along in the glare of the sun upon the forever shoaling waves of the silver-green grain, and listened to Guthrie droning forth his slowly forming purposes concerning the arrangements for the investigation of the pygmy graves, his irritation that the primary intention of his visit should be frustrated, and the interest appertaining to his candidacy ruthlessly thrust aside, so increased that he set himself to devise an expedient whereby he might safely disparage the matter in hand, and thus reassert the significance of his presence and the propriety of his prominence as guest. He turned his head suddenly, archly lifting his eyebrows, and distending his eyes with a burlesque of amazement; then breaking into his joyous "ha! ha!" he clapped Guthrie jocosely on the shoulder.
"Lordy mercy, Fee!" he exclaimed, "you don't mean to say that Shattuck is devil-ing you about his confounded Little People! Stave him off! Gag him! Shut him up somehow. Don't listen to him, thinking he'll quit in the course of time. For he won't! I've tried him. The more inches you give him the more ells he'll take."
Mr. Rhodes had a theory that culture is synonymous with mind and essentially coexistent. That each assists the other, no one will deny; but that they are often largely independent, one of the other, is frequently demonstrated. The man of more culture than capacity is painfully familiar to us all. In the rural districts the reverse may sometimes be observed—a stalwart mental endowment, unaided by aught of alien training, seeming occasionally, in its highest development and in an uncouth subject, so incongruous as to strike one as almost inspirational.
It was none of these rare native intelligences, full-winged and of strong flight, that Felix Guthrie possessed; only a good plodding capacity, serviceable afoot, but of much sturdiness, and indeed of some slight acrobatic activity. Rhodes was more taken aback than he had thought possible when his host, bending grave, disconcerting eyes upon him, said:
"It war me a-talkin' about the Leetle People. Yer ears didn't serve ye right, fur me an' Mr. Shattuck don't talk in no ways alike. Them Leetle People 'pear ter me ez well wuth talkin' 'bout ez some folks ez be bigger in stature but small-minded. Thar air a heap o' them leetle-big men lef' yit. So plenty 'tain't wuth while ter go diggin' 'em up ez cur'osities whenst dead."
There was no direct implication which of necessity conveyed offence, but Rhodes again flushed darkly, and his expression changed with the change of color. His regret had always that most nettling quality, self-reproach. No man can repent with the fervor of him who has the candor to blame himself. After an interval of tart internal colloquy with his inner consciousness, in which he called himself a fool, with the emphatic prefix of a certain strong old adjective, unhackneyed even by constant use, and upbraided himself that he should have supposed that Guthrie, like more simple-minded, ignorant men, would adopt his plausible words instead of the facts, he recovered in some degree his normal complexion and assurance, and responded glibly:
"Mountain air is mighty good for Shattuck if it's cured him of his crazy gabble about the Leetle People. Ha! ha! ha! Hey, Shattuck? I'll send him up here every few days, Fee, when the fit begins to come on again. You can hobble him out there in the orchard to keep him from running away. Ha! ha! ha! May get his wits back on your mountain air. For I swear to you he has said hardly a sane thing to me since he first heard there was any pygmy burying-ground round hereabouts. Ha! ha! ha!"
Guthrie did not laugh, nor did Shattuck; but Ephraim, trudging in the rear, strove to be polite as best he knew how, and added a guffaw to the forced laugh of the visitor, with whom no one else would consent to be merry.
Rhodes accorded no overt attention to their silence; but his eyes, the iris of each somehow like a darkly ripe cherry in a certain red lustre, albeit merely escaping blackness, like a cherry too in its definite pronounced effect of roundness, were restless and unnoticing, and as Shattuck caught their gleam they looked angry and hot.
Shattuck was one of those people who accept the Biblical injunction touching the forgiveness of injuries, but in a purely human way. He would not revenge himself, for this was not becoming in one acquainted in some sort with Christianity, nor did it comport with the dignity of a gentleman. But he could not forget. He resented Rhodes's apparently causeless anger toward him now, and it recalled the disagreements of the morning, which still galled him. The stay that he had made here, pleasant enough he had once deemed it, grew irksome in the recollection, in the light of these new relations with his host. He was saying to himself that it was time he was off; he was tired of it all, and Rhodes was insufferable. He had no mind to bear the brunt of all the mishaps and irritation of electioneering, and this was indeed a lucky ride, since on the eve of departure it gave him the opportunity of examining the sarcophagi of the so-called pygmies at once and with the permission and aid of the man who owned the land. He had not realized how definitely he had given up this hope until the expectation was before him again in so immediate a guise. It would have been an incalculable loss to have relinquished the chance, and quitted the region no wiser than he came. His step was light, his face was sharp and eager; he looked anxiously toward the west as they neared the house, to gain some intimation through the trees how the sun fared down the great glistening concave of the western sky. The hour mattered less to him than the duration of the light.
He was hardly less impatient of interruption than Rhodes had become, and, widely at variance though the subjects were that respectively absorbed them, they both saw with unanimity of sentiment that Mrs. Guthrie, standing in the doorway, had a knitted angry brow, and a mien which betokened that they were far enough from her contemplation, and that topics of an engrossing character were in her mind and framing themselves into speech. The pervasive green tint, which seemed a trait of the very atmosphere in this dankly shady spot, rendered her white hair even whiter, her gray gown, her blue checked apron, on which she mechanically wiped her spectacles, more distinct. Her face was deeply furrowed with its frown, and there was something about her heavy jaw, her half-parted thin lips, her pertinacious eye, that gave testimony to establish the terrible stories that were told about her.
"Fee," she said, in a strained harsh voice, as soon as they were well within ear-shot, not waiting for a nearer approach, "I hev got bad news fur ye."
"I mought hev knowed it," her step-son responded, promptly. He looked at her with a reluctant face, as if by postponing to give audience to the new disaster he nullified it. He evidently held the fear of an unknown calamity as less than its realization. There was manifested none of the usual impulse to fling one's self upon the point of the sword held out. He knew too much already of that sharp edge of trouble. His many words, his dallying with the imminent discovery, bore an odd contrast to her silence, her intent ready gaze, her expectant waiting attitude. "I never knowed ye ter hev enny other sorter news. Bad news follers me. Ef I war ter go ter the eends o' the yearth—plumb ter Texas—I'd meet a man thar with, 'Fee, I hev got bad news fur ye.' Bad news begun fur me the day I war born. A body mought hev said: 'Fee, hyar ye air! I hev got bad news fur ye! Sech a life ez ye hev got ter live; sech a death ter die!' An' whenst I git ter hell, the devil will be thar with, 'Fee, I hev got bad news fur ye; sech an eternity o' mis'ry ez even you-uns, with all yer speriunce o' dolefulness, hain't bed no notion of!' An' the funny part of it," he cried, with a sudden change of tone, taking off his hat and shaking his long ringleted hair backward, "none of 'em can't tell me no news. I expect it—'tain't news! I expec' everything bad! Torment an' trouble can't be news ter Fee Guthrie!"
His step-mother made no rejoinder, although words evidently trembled upon her lips, and all the impetus of disclosure was in her eager eye; the effort by which she constrained herself to mute waiting upon his will was intimated in every line of her hard set face. There was even drawn upon it an expression of spurious sympathy, a pretence of affectionate deprecation, infinitely sycophantic and painful to see in a woman of her age and with her white hair. She was kind enough now, doubtless, to her step-son, when all her interests hung upon his clemency. The humble Ephraim was hardly able to emulate her subservience to his brother's procrastination of the evil moment, and more than once broke out with an exclamation compounded of impatience and displeasure: "Dell lawsy mercy!" "Did ennybody ever?" His face was red and eager, and in its round, expectant, pouting look it was positively of a porcine expression. Even the preoccupied and uninterested Rhodes was moved to a wish to elicit the intelligence.
"I hope it's nothing very serious, Mrs. Guthrie," he said, anticipating developments in reply.
But she still stood silent, looking intently with her bright, fierce eyes at Felix, who broke out instead:
"Oh, I'll be bound it's serious! I don't look like a feller ez hev many jokes ter fill up my days. Leastwise, they ain't jokes ter me. I reckon, though, mebbe I be a joke myself—ter the devil. I'll bet all I hev got ez he fairly holds his sides whenst laffin' at me, a-goin' on like I do a-tryin' ter repent o' my sins, while all the 'bad news,' ez mam names it, in the kentry is on the hue and cry arter me all the time. I ain't got no stiddy chance ter repent." He had reached the porch at last, and leaned against one of the vine-grown posts, his hat in his hand, his frowning brow uncovered. The others stood about in expectant attitudes, the lout Ephraim the very picture of painful, agitated suspense, his mouth open, his eyes fixed on the stern, eager face of his step-mother, his hat on the back of his head.
Felix glanced up presently, and with a changed, steady voice said, "Talk on, mam."
All her forced composure gave way suddenly. She seemed metamorphosed into a fury in the very instant. "Felix, Felix," she cried, between her set teeth, "yer cattle! Somebody be arter yer cattle. Peter Brydon rid by hyar jes' now, an' tole me ez one o' yer young steers war lyin' dead yander by Injun Bluffs. An' up on the mounting that fine red cow Beauty Bess air dead, too, an' half tore up." Her teeth were grinding, one jaw upon the other; there was foam upon her lips.
"Wolves!" he said, quietly, looking up at her, a certain surprise on his face. "No use takin' on 'bout that. Hev ter lose some cattle by wolves every year. I ain't so close-fisted ez ter mind losin' a few cattle wunst in a while by accident." He cast a deprecatory glance at Shattuck, the first token of self-consciousness, of anxious regard for the opinion of others, which the young townsman had ever remarked in him. He evidently was touched by a sense of shame; he could not endure to be held susceptible of distress for a small loss of worldy goods. There was a distinct intimation of reproach in his voice as he added, "Waal, mam, I never knowed you-uns ter git inter sech a takin', an' 'low it would lay me so low, jes' kase thar be a few head o' cattle los' by wolves out'n my herd."
"Wolves! wolves! wolves!" She huskily jerked out the words. "Ever hear o' wolves cuttin' a beastis's throat with a knife? Wolves! Ever hear o' wolves cuttin' out the tenderline, an' leavin' the rest o' the meat ter spile, or ter the buzzards, till they want another feed? Then they make ch'ice o' another fat brute, an' get jes' the best cuts o' meat, an' leave the rest ter waste. Wolves!—two-legged wolves! An' they ain't much afeard o' you-uns, Fee Guthrie, them wolves ain't."
She had an accurate knowledge of his springs of action. He hardly cared for the loss, but as her detail progressed, the wantonness of the waste, the possible motive of spite, called a flush into his cheek and a spark into his eye. The moment the last words passed her lips, and the fact was made patent to his mind that his name was not a terror to protect his property, his whole consciousness was resolved into fire.
He stood for one instant motionless, a terrible oath upon his lips. Then he sprang off like an unleashed hound, with her exultant laugh harshly ringing through the dusky shades behind him.
"I knowed it. Fee'll lay 'em low enough!" she cried, with the satisfaction of a Bellona, as she towered above them all, her stern, lined, dark old face so repellently triumphant that both her visitors felt a sense of recoil. "Felix will tame 'em—he'll tame them wolves. He air ekal ter it." She nodded her head, with a look promissory of horrors, and then fell to rubbing her left arm, which had been partially paralyzed of late years.
Rhodes gazed wistfully into the dense umbrageous tangle whence his host had disappeared. "Now I don't think it's sensible to send Fee off that way. He might get hurt," he said.
"He ain't one o' that kind," replied the old woman, with a fierce pride in the spirit that had tamed even hers. "The Guthries—ye hev hearn them called 'the fightin' Guthries'—air a survigrous tribe. An' my step-son Felix air knowed ter be the bravest o' all the 'fightin' Guthries.' Whenst ye see him a-crawlin' out'n the leetle eend o' the horn, ye let me know."
A quick thud of hoofs, the deep-mouthed, joyous baying of a fierce hound that galloped after the horseman, gave notice to the party, whose vision was all cut off by the heavy woods, of the departure of the master of the house. Mrs. Guthrie looked at the two visitors with a smile as she listened, then fell again to softly rubbing her arm.
Rhodes and Shattuck, although from diverse points of view, could hardly have been more disconcerted than by the turn affairs had taken. The candidate was without recourse. He had allowed the golden opportunity of electioneering with Felix to evade him while he lounged under the tree in the barley field with the unimportant younger brother. He conceived a repugnant hatred of this unconscious factor in his discomfiture as he glanced at Ephraim, who stood gazing dully and blankly in the direction whence the sound of the hoofs had come, now faint in the distance. With his elastic faculty for regret, Rhodes was upbraiding himself anew, taking account of the wasted day, the long ride, and the fact that electioneering in this quarter was estopped, since the visit could not be decorously repeated; presently he was seized by forebodings that the waste of time was not at an end, for Shattuck's project was not so easily concluded. As the candidate's attention returned to the matters more immediately in hand, he became aware that his friend was declining to take luncheon with Mrs. Guthrie, on the score that he should hardly have time to get to the foot of the mountain and accomplish before sundown an errand upon which Felix had promised to accompany him.
"Ephraim, however, will do as well," he said, genially, turning to the younger brother, who instantly signified his acquiescence, and made off with alacrity for the pickaxe and spade. "But as I'll leave you Mr. Rhodes, I am sure I shall not be missed," Shattuck saw fit to add to his own excuses.
"No," Rhodes said, somewhat curtly; "if you go, I shall go too. I don't want my visitors"—he added, recovering his smile in a meagre degree, and bending it upon Mrs. Guthrie's forbidding countenance as she looked from one to the other—"to go about the mountains breaking their necks, and then putting the blame on me for not being along to advise and point out the way."
"Jes' ez yer please," she retorted, tartly, still looking from one to the other. "We ain't never considered our Ephraim plumb smart like Felix. But I never did expec' ter hear ez he warn't even fit fur a guide-post. But jes' ez ye two gentlemen feel disposed." And she reseated herself in her chair upon the porch, and resumed her knitting.
"Oh, you stay, Rhodes," Shattuck insisted, aghast at interfering so radically with Mrs. Guthrie's lunch as to remove both guests from the feast. "You can stay."
If Rhodes had been entirely at liberty, it is doubtful whether he would have remained. There was something so menacing in the old woman's eye, so coercively albeit vaguely frightful to the imagination, that the idea of spending a few hours alone with her, to eat at her board and sit by her fireside and listen to her talk, with that thin friendly veneer scarcely concealing the harsh vindictiveness of her nature, was not to be contemplated with equanimity. Whether he would have feared poison, or the stealthy stroke of a knife, or some other manifestation of a cruel insanity, although mental aberration had never been associated with her deeds, Rhodes would hardly have ventured upon the ordeal of a solitary meal served by her. Nevertheless, he noted with a pang of anger and alarm that she did not second Shattuck's insistence, and that the invitation was no longer open to him. If she heard his adieux, somewhat constrained and uncharacteristic, if she saw his outstretched hand, she made no sign except by a short nod, which he might either interpret as response, or as merely the emphasis of concluding a long row of counted stitches upon her knitting-needles.
She laid them down presently to hearken to the faint baying of Guthrie's hound on the far slope of the mountain, the echo striking back the sound, augmented like the voice of a pack in full cry, and thus, with uplifted eyes and intent, listening attitude, she was left in the deep green shadow growing duskier.
"Now see what you've done!" cried Rhodes, angrily, and all oblivious of the presence of Ephraim, as they walked away to their horses hitched to the fence. "It does seem to me you might forbear insulting my friends."
Ephraim looked with quick anxiety from one to the other. On his ready impulse he spoke, forestalling Shattuck's reply. "Oh, ye can't holp makin' mam mad; she gits mad 'kase other folks breathe the breath o' life. The only way ter suit her is ter die, an' gin her the Great Smoky Mountings fur elbow-room. Nuthin' less."
"I had no idea that you would come too," protested Shattuck. "I thought that if one of us stayed, the courtesies would be amply observed; and so they would."
"You had no right to think," said Rhodes, putting his foot into the stirrup, his face scarlet under his dark straw hat. "You continually jeopardize my interests by taking the initiative in my affairs. We had accepted her invitation, and you had no right to withdraw, as I couldn't stay without you."
"Laws-a-massy, boys! don't git ter quar'lin'," Ephraim eagerly and familiarly adjured them, as he mounted an old sorrel mare, who was attended by a frisking long-legged colt. "Ye don't expec' mam ter vote fur ye noways ennyhow, Mr. Rhodes. It don't make no diff'unce. Me an' Fee ain't goin' ter hold no gredge agin ye; ye needn't mind."
The unvarnished promise, and the evident comprehension of his intentions and mission, however grating to Rhodes's more delicate sensibilities and pride, were nevertheless salutary. Once more the ground of offence was proved untenable, and he saw that a simulation of reconciliation was in order. Although he chafed under the continual constraints with which Shattuck had unintentionally burdened him, he felt that it was not yet time to boldly throw them off. Thus he adjusted himself anew to their weight.