VI.
If it had been within the power of the worshipful Quarterly County Court to issue a mandamus to compel fair weather on that notable Tuesday when the jury of view were to set forth, the god of day could scarcely have obeyed with more alacrity that peremptory writ once poetically ranked as "one of the flowers of the crown." The burnished yellow sunshine had a suggestion of joyous exuberance in its wide suffusions. Even the recurrent fluctuations of shadow but gave its pervasive sheen the effect of motion and added embellishment. The wind, hilarious, loud, piping gayly a tuneful stave, shepherded the clouds in the fair fields of the high sky, driving the flocculent white masses here and there as listed a changing will. The trees were red and yellow, the leaves firm, full-fleshed, as if the ebbing sap of summer still ran high in every fibre; their tint seemed no hectic dying taint, but some inherent chromatic richness. Fine avenues the eye might open amongst the rough brown boles that stood in dense ranks, preternaturally dark and distinct, washed by the recent rains, and thrown into prominence by the masses of yellow and red leaves carpeting the ground, and the red and yellow boughs hanging low above. They dispensed to the light, clarified air an aromatic richness that the lungs rejoiced to breathe, and all their flare of color might have seemed adequate illumination of their demesne without serving writs of mandamus on the sun; and indeed, the Quarterly County Court was fain to concern itself with far lesser matters, and wield slighter weapons. The jury of view, in a close squad, ambling along at an easy gait, mounted on nags as diverse in appearance, age, and manner as the riders, sufficiently expressed its authority and their own diligence in its behests, and their spirits had risen to the propitious aspect of the weather and the occasion. Their advent into this secluded region of the district—for to secure a strict impartiality they were not of the immediate neighborhood, and had no interest which could be affected by their report—was not hailed with universal satisfaction.
"Jes' look at 'em, now," said old man Binney, as he stood in his door, leaning on his stick, to watch them pass,—"a jury o' view. An' who ever viewed a jury a-horseback afore? An' thar ain't but seben on 'em!"—laboriously counting, "five, six, seben. Thar's twelve men on a sure enough jury! I counted the panel ez hung Ezekiel Tilbuts fur a-murderin' of his wife. I war thar in town whenst they fetched in thar verdic'. I dunno what the kentry be a-comin' ter! Shucks! I ain't a-goin' ter abide by the say-so o' no sech skimpy jury ez this hyar. I'll go ter town an' see old Lawyer Gryce 'bout it, fust."
And with this extremest threat of vengeance he brought his stick down on the floor with so vigorous a thump that it had a certain profane effect; then having from under his bushy gray eyebrows gazed at the diminishing group till it was but a dim speck in the distance, he went in muttering, banging the door as if to shut out and reject the sight. His objection might have been intensified had he known that the days were at hand when legislative wisdom would still further reduce this engine of the law, making it consist of one road commissioner and two freeholders, the trio still pridefully denominated a "jury of view."
Others, however, favoring the enterprise, cheerfully fell into the line of march; and as the way lengthened the cavalcade grew, mustering recruits as it went.
Disputatious voices suddenly sounded loud on the clear air in front of them, mingled with the thud of horses' hoofs, the jingle of spurs, and now and again the whinny of a colt; and at the intersection of the trail with a narrow winding path there rode into view old "Persimmon" Sneed,—as he was sometimes disrespectfully nicknamed, owing to a juvenile and voracious fondness for the most toothsome delicacy of autumn woods,—arguing loudly, and with a lordly intolerance of contradiction, with two men who accompanied him, while his sleek claybank mare also argued loudly with her colt. She had much ado to pace soberly forward, even under the coercion of whip and spur, while her madcap scion galloped wildly ahead or lagged far in the rear, and made now and then excursions into the woods, out of sight, to gratify some adolescent curiosity, or perhaps, after the fashion of other and human adolescents, to relish the spectacle of the maternal anxiety. Ever and anon the sound of the mare's troubled call rang on the air. Then the colt would come with a burst of speed, a turbulent rush, out of the underbrush, and, with its keen head-tones of a whinny, all funnily treble and out of tune, dash on in advance. The rider of this preoccupied steed was a grizzled, lank, thin-visaged mountaineer, with a tuft of beard on his chin, but a shaven jowl, where, however, the black-and-gray stubble of several days' avoidance of the razor put forth unabashed. He shook his finger impressively at the jury of view as he approached them.
"Ef ye put this hyar road through my land," he said solemnly, "I'll be teetotally ruinationed. The cattle-thievin' that'll go on, with the woods so open an' the road so convenient, an' yit no travel sca'cely, will be a scandal ter the jay-bird. I won't hev so much lef' ez the horn of a muley cow!"
And with this extreme statement he whirled his horse and rode on at the head of the cavalcade in dignified silence. He was not a dweller in the immediate vicinity, but hailed from the Cove,—a man of substance and a large cattle-owner, pasturing his herds, duly branded, on a tract of unfenced wilderness, his mountain lands, where they roamed in the safe solitudes of those deep seclusions during the summer, and were rounded up, well fattened, and driven home at the approach of winter. He was the typical man of convictions, one who entertains a serious belief that he possesses a governing conscience instead of an abiding delight in his own way. He had a keen eye, with an upward glance from under the brim of his big wool hat, and he looked alert to descry any encroachment on his vested rights to prescribe opinion. The jury of view were destined to find it a doubtful boon that the road law interposed no insurmountable obstacle to prevent their hearing thus informally the views of those interested.
Persimmon Sneed's deep feeling on the subject had been evinced by his dispensing with the customary salutations, and one of the jury of view, with a mollifying intention, observed that they would use their best judgment to promote the interests of all parties.
"Ai-yi!" said Persimmon Sneed, ruefully shaking his head. "But s'pose ye hev got mighty pore jedgmint? Ye'll be like mos' folks I know, ef ye hev. I'd ruther use my own best jedgmint, a sight."
At which another of the jury suavely remarked that they would seek to be impartial.
"That's jes' what I kem along fur," exclaimed Persimmon Sneed triumphantly,—"ter show ye edzac'ly whar the bull's eye be. Thar ain't no use fur this road, an' ye air bound ter see it ef ye ain't nowise one-sided and partial."
The jury relapsed into silence and rode steadily on.
The true raw material of contradiction lay in three younger men among the spectators, contumacious, vehement, and, albeit opposed to the road, much inclined to spoke the wheel of old Persimmon Sneed, however that wheel might revolve.
"I got caught on a jury in a criminal case with him wunst," Silas Boyd, a heavy, thick-set, tall young fellow with a belligerent eye and a portentously square jaw, said sotto voce to his next comrade. "I hev sarved on a jury with him,—locked up fur a week 'thout no verdic'. He ain't got no respec' fur no other man's say-so. An' he talks 'bout his oath ez ef he war the only man in Tennessee ez ever war swore on the 'Holy Evangelists o' Almighty Gawd' in the court-house. He fairly stamped on my feelin's, in that Jenkins case, ter make me agree with him; but I couldn't agree, an' it hung the jury, ez they say. I wisht they hed hung the foreman! By Hokey, I despise a hard-headed, 'pinionated man."
"Look at his back," rejoined Jeremiah Sayres, a man of theory, who had a light undecided tint of hair and beard and scraggy mustache, and a blond complexion burned a permanent solid red by the summer sun. "I'd know his dispositions by his back." He waved his hand at the brown jeans coat that draped a spare and angular but singularly erect back, which scarcely seemed to move in response to the motions of the mare pacing briskly along. "What sorter back is that fur a man risin' fifty year old?—straight ez a ramrod, an' ez stiff. But, Silas, ef ever ye git the better o' him, ye hev got ter break it."
"I hearn his third wife married him ter git rid o' him," put in Peter Sims, given to gossip. "She 'lowed he warn't nigh so tarrifyin' 'roun' his own house, a-feedin' the peegs, an' ploughin' an' cuttin' wood, an' sech, occupied somehows, ez he war a-settin' up in his Sunday best at her house, with nuthin' ter do, allowin' she hed ter marry him, whether or not, 'kase he wouldn't hev 'No' fur a answer."
"An' look at it now!" exclaimed Silas Boyd, unexpectedly reinforced by the matrimonial phase of the question. "That thar man hev bodaciously argued an' contradicted two wimmin out'n this vale o' tears. An' everybody knows it takes a power o' contradiction to out-do a woman. He oughter be indicted for cold-blooded murder! That's what!" He nodded vindictively at the straight jeans-clad back in advance of him.
Over and again the party called a halt, to push about in search of a practicable seven-foot passage amongst crags and chasms, and to contend with the various insistence touching devious ways preferred by the honorary attendants, who often seemed to forget that they themselves were not in the exercise of a delegated jury duty. Tangles impeded, doubts beset them, although the axe by which the desired route had been blazed out aforetime by the petitioners had been zealous and active; but the part of a pioneer in a primeval wilderness is indeed the threading of a clueless labyrinth, and both sun and compass were consulted often before the continued direction of the road could be determined and located.
In such cases, to the lovers of the consistent in character, the respective traits of old Persimmon Sneed and Silas Boyd were displayed in all their pristine value; for although their interests were identical, both being opposed to the opening of the road, the dictatorial arrogations of the elder man and the pugnacious persistence of the younger served to antagonize them on many a minor point in question, subsidiary to the main issue, as definitely as if they were each arrayed against the other, instead of both being in arms under the "No Road" banner.
"Mighty nigh ez interestin' ez a dog-fight," said Jeremiah Sayres in an aside to one of the jury.
Midday found them considerably advanced on their way, but brought to a halt by an insistence on the part of Silas Boyd that the road should be diverted from a certain depression showing marshy tendencies to a rugged slope where the footing was dry but difficult.
"That's under water more 'n haffen the winter, I'll take my everlastin' oath. Ef the road runs thar, that piece will take enough mendin' in a season ter keep up ten mile o' dry road," he argued vehemently.
"Water ain't dangersome, nowise," retorted the elderly Persimmon, with a snarling smile. "Healthier 'n whiskey, my frien',—heap healthier 'n whiskey."
Boyd's serious countenance colored darkly red with wrath. Among the aggressive virtues of old Persimmon Sneed were certain whiskey-proof temperance principles, the recollection of which was peculiarly irritating to Silas Boyd, known to be more than ordinarily susceptible to proof whiskey.
"I be a perfessin' Baptis', Mr. Sneed," he retorted quickly. "I got no objection ter water, 'ceptin' fur the onregenerate an' spurners o' salvation."
Now Persimmon Sneed had argued the plan of atonement on every possible basis known to his extremely limited polemical outlook, and could agree with none. If any sect of eclectics had been within his reach, he would most joyfully have cast his spiritual fortunes with them, for he felt himself better than very many conspicuous Christians; and as he would have joyed in a pose of sanctity, the reproach of being a member of no church touched him deeply.
"I ain't no ransomed saint, I know," he vociferated,—"I ain't no ransomed saint! But ef the truth war known, ye ain't got no religion nuther! That leetle duckin' ez ye call 'immersion' jes' diluted the 'riginal sin in ye mighty leetle. Ye air a toler'ble strong toddy o' iniquity yit. That thar water tempered the whiskey ye drink mighty leetle,—mighty leetle!"
The Christian grace of Silas Boyd was put to a stronger test than it might have been deemed capable of sustaining. But Sneed was a far older man, and as nothing short of breaking his stiff neck might suffice to tame him, Silas Boyd summoned his self-control, and held his tingling hands, and gave himself only to retort.
"I wouldn't take that off'n ye, Mr. Sneed, 'ceptin' I be a perfessin' member, an' pity them ez is still in the wiles an' delusions o' Satan."
What might have ensued in the nature of counterthrust, as Persimmon Sneed heard himself called by inference an object of pity, the subsidiary group were spared from learning, for at that moment the sound of steps heralded an approach, and Ben Hanway came into the circle, and sought to claim the attention of the party, inviting them to dine and pass the nooning hour at his house. His countenance was adjusted to the smile of hospitality, but it wore the expression like a mask, and he seemed ill at ease. He had been contending all the morning with Narcissa's freakishness, which he thought intensified by the presence of the valley man, who was returning the civility of that ill-omened visit, and who, by reason of the abnormal excitements of the day, had been received with scant formality, and was already upon the footing of a familiar friend. Selwyn stood smilingly in the way hard by, speaking to those of the men as they passed who gave his presence the meed of a start and a stare of blank surprise, or a curt nod. Narcissa lingered in the background, beneath a great oak; her chin was a little lifted with a touch of displeasure; the eyelids drooped over her brown eyes; her hands, with her wonted careless gesture and with a certain mechanical effort to dispel embarrassment, were raised to the curtain of her white sunbonnet, and spread its folds wingwise behind her auburn hair. Sundry acquaintances among the honorary attendants paused to greet her pleasantly as they passed, but old Sneed's disapprobation of a woman's appearance on so public an occasion was plainly expressed on his features. For all the Turks are not in Turkey. She followed with frowning, disaffected eyes the procession of men and horses and dogs and colts wending up to the invisible house hidden amongst the full-leaved autumn woods.
"Well, that's the jury of view; and what do you think of them?" asked
Selwyn, watching too, but smilingly, the cavalcade.
"Some similar ter the cor'ner's jury. But they hed suthin' ter look tormented an' tribulated 'bout," said the girl, evidently disappointed to find the jury of view not more cheerful of aspect. "But mebbe conversin' a passel by the way with old Persimmon Sneed is powerful depressin' ter the sperits."
Selwyn's face grew grave at the mention of the coroner's jury.
"I'm afraid that poor fellow missed something good," he said.
Still holding out her sunbonnet in wide distention, she slowly set forth along the path, not even turning back, for sheer perversity, as she saw Ben look anxiously over his shoulder to descry if she followed in the distance.
"Thar ain't much good in life nohow. Things seem set contrariwise." Then, after a moment, and turning her eyes upon him, for she had an almost personal interest in the man whose tragic fate she had first of all discovered, "What sorter good thing did he miss?" she asked, as she settled her sunbonnet soberly on her head.
"Well"—Selwyn began; then he hesitated. He had spoken rather than thought, for he thought little, and he was not used to keeping secrets. Moreover, despite his courageous disbelief in his coming fate, he must have had some yearnings for sympathy; the iron of his exile surely entered his soul at times. The girl, so delicately framed, so flower-like of face, seemed alien to her rude surroundings and the burly, heavy, matter-of-fact folk about her. Her spirituelle presence did away in a measure with the realization of her limitations, her ignorance, and the uncouth surroundings. Even her dress seemed to him hardly amiss, for there then reigned a fleeting metropolitan fashion of straight full flowing skirts and short waists and closely fitting sleeves,—a straining after picture-like effects which Narcissa's attire accomplished without conscious effort, the costume of the mountain women for a hundred years or more. The sunbonnet itself was but the defensive appurtenance of many a Southern city girl, when a-summering in the country, who esteems herself the possessor of a remarkably beautiful complexion, and heroically proposes to conserve it. Unlike the men, Narcissa's personality did not suggest the distance between them in sophistication, in culture, in refinement, in the small matters of external polish. She seemed not so far from his world, and it was long since he had walked fraternally by the side of some fair girl, and talked freely of himself, his views, his plans, his vagaries, as men, when very young, are wont to do, and as they rarely talk to one another. He had so sedulously sought to content himself with the conditions of his closing existence that the process of reconciling the habit of better things was lost in simple acceptance. He was still young, and the sun shone, and the air was clear and pure and soft, and he walked by the side of a girl, fair and good and not altogether unwise, and he was happy in the blessings vouchsafed.
After a moment he replied: "Well, I thought he might have made a lot of money. I thought I might go partners with him. I had written to him."
Her face did not change; it was still grave and solicitous within the white frame of her sunbonnet, but its expression did not deepen. She did not pity the dead man because he died without the money he had had a chance to make. She evidently had not even scant knowledge of that most absorbing passion, the love of gain, and she did not value money.
"Somehow whenst folks dies by accident, it 'pears ter me a mistake—somehows—ez ef they war choused out'n time what war laid off fur them an' their'n by right." Evidently she did not lack sensibility.
"Yes," he rejoined, "and you know money makes a lot of difference in people's lives there in the valley towns. Lord knows, 't would in mine."
He swung his riding-whip dejectedly to and fro in his hand as he spoke, and she pushed back her sunbonnet to look seriously at him. He was a miracle of elegance in her estimation, but the fawn-colored suit which he wore owed its nattiness rather to his own symmetry than the cut or the cloth, and he had worn it a year ago. His immaculate linen, somewhat flabby,—for the mountain laundress is averse to starch,—had been delicately trimmed by a deft pair of scissors around the raveling edges of the cuffs and collar, and showed rather what it had been than what it was. His straw hat was pushed a trifle back from his face, in which the sunburn and the inward fire competed to lay on the tints. She did not see how nor what he lacked. Still, if he wanted it, she pitied him that he did not have it.
"Waal, can't you-uns make it, the same way?"
She asked this sympathetically. She was beginning to experience a certain self-reproach in regard to him, and it gave her unwonted gentleness. She felt that she had been too quick to suspect. Since Ben's report of the reconnoitring interview on which she had sent him in Con Hite's interest, she had dismissed the idea that Selwyn was in aught concerned with the traveler's sudden and violent death; and she did not incline easily to the substituted suspicion that the dead man was a "revenuer," and that Selwyn had written to him to recommend the investigation of Con Hite, whose implication in moonshining he had some cause to divine.
Narcissa had marked with displeasure Ben's surly manner to the valley man, connecting it with these considerations, and never dreaming that it was her acquaintance which her brother grudged the stranger.
"I ought never ter hev set Ben after him," she thought ruefully. "He'll hang on ter him like a bulldog." But aloud she only said, "You kin make the money all the same."
"Oh, I'll try, like a little man!" he exclaimed, rousing himself to renewed hope. "I have written to another scientific fellow, and he has promised to come and investigate. I hope to Heaven he won't break his neck, too."
She also marked the word "investigate," which had so smitten Ben's attention, and marveled what matter it might be in the mountains worth investigating, and promissory of gain, if not the still-hunt, as it were, of the wily moonshiners. But yet her faith in Selwyn's motives and good will, so suddenly adopted, held fast.
"Con Hite mus' l'arn ter look out fur hisse'f," she thought fretfully, for she could not discern into what disastrous swirl she might be guiding events as she took the helm. "He's big enough, the Lord knows."
The little log cabin on the slope of the ascent had come into sight. They had followed but slowly; the horses were already tethered to the rails of the fence, and the jury of view and its escort had disappeared within. A very spirited fracas was in progress between the visiting dogs and the inhospitable home canines, and once Ben appeared in the passageway and hoarsely called his hounds off.
"I ain't a-goin' ter hurry," Narcissa remarked cavalierly. "Let
Ben an' aunt Minervy dish up an' wait on 'em. They won't miss me.
Thar's nuthin' in this worl' a gormandizin' man kin miss at
meal-times,—'ceptin' teeth."
Selwyn made no comment on this touch of reprisal in Narcissa's manner. If old Persimmon Sneed had deemed her coming forth to meet them superfluous, she in her own good judgment could deem her presence at table an empty show.
"I ain't a-goin' in," she continued. "Ye kin go," she added, with a hasty afterthought. "Thar's a cheer sot ter the table fur you-uns. I'm goin' ter bide hyar. They 'll git done arter a while."
She sat languidly down on a step of a stile that went over the fence at a considerable distance from the house, and Selwyn, protesting that he wanted no dinner, established himself on the protruding roots of a great beech-tree that, like gigantic, knuckled, gnarled fingers, visibly took a great grasp of the earth before sinking their tips far out of sight beneath. The shade was dense; the sound of water trickling into the rude horse-trough on the opposite side of the path that was to be a road was delicious in its cool suggestion, for the landscape, far, far to see, blazed as with the refulgence of a summer sun. The odor of the apple orchard, heavily fruited, was mellow on the air, and the red-freighted boughs of an old winesap bent above the girl's head as she sat with her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand. She gazed dreamily away at those vividly blue ranges, whither one might fancy summer had fled, so little affinity had their aspect with the network of intermediate brown valleys, and nearer garnet slopes, and the red and yellow oak boughs close at hand, hanging above the precipice and limiting the outlook.
"Yes," he said, after a moment's cogitation, while he absently turned a cluster of beech-nuts in his hands, "I'll try it, for keeps, you may bet,—if you were a betting character. There's lots of good things going in these mountains; that is, if a fellow had the money to get 'em out."
He looked up a trifle drearily from under the brim of his straw hat at the smiling summertide of those blue mountains yonder. Oh, fair and feigning prospect, what wide and alluring perspectives! He drew a long sigh. Is it better to know so surely that winter is a-coming?
"An' the sense, too," remarked Narcissa, her eyes still dreamily dwelling on the distance.
He roused himself. The unconsciously flattering inference was too slight not to be lawfully appropriated.
"Yes, the sense and the enterprise. Now, these mountaineers,"—he spoke as if she had no part among them, forgetting it, indeed, for the moment,—"they let marble and silver and iron, and gold too, all sorts of natural wealth, millions and millions of the finest hard-wood timber, lie here undeveloped, without making the least effort to realize on it, without lifting a finger. They have got no enterprise in the world, and they are the most dilatory, slowest gang I ever ran across in my life."
A dimple deepened in the soft fairness of her cheek under the white sunbonnet.
"They got enterprise enough ter want a road," she drawled, fixing her eyes upon him for a moment, then reverting to her former outlook.
He was a trifle embarrassed, and lost his balance.
"Oh, I'll want a road, too, after a while," he returned. "All in good time." He laughed as if to himself, a touch of mystery in his tone, and he took off his hat and jauntily fanned himself.
"Sorter dil'tory yerse'f now; 'pears ter be a ketchin' complaint, like the measles."
Perhaps she secretly resented the reflection on the mountaineers, for there was a certain bellicose intention in her eye, a disposition to push him to his last defenses.
"No; but a body would think a fellow might get enough intelligent coöperation in any promising matter from right around here without corresponding all over the country. And the mountaineers don't know anything, and they don't want to learn anything. Now," convincingly, "what would any of those fellows in there say if I should tell them that I could take a match "—he pulled a handful of lucifers from, his pocket—"and set a spring afire?"
She gazed at him in dumb surprise.
"They'd say I was lying, I reckon," he hazarded. With an ebullition of laughter, he hastily scrambled to his feet and unhitched his horse; then, as he put his foot in the stirrup, he paused and added, "Or else, 'Better leave it be, sonny,'" with the effrontery of mimicry. "'Mought set the mounting afire.'"
He forthwith swung himself into the saddle, and, with a jaunty wave of the hand in adieu, fared forth homeward, leaving her staring after him in wide-eyed amazement.