I
Several customers were gathered in Mark Wyndham’s store at the cross-roads. They were rough farmers, wearing jean clothing, slouch hats, and coarse, dusty brogans.
A stranger, a man of quite a different type, came in and sat down near the side door. At first the crowd gazed at him curiously, but after a while he seemed to pass out of their minds. When he had waited on all his customers, Mark approached the stranger.
“By hookey!” he exclaimed, pausing in astonishment, and then extending his hand, “as the Lord is my Maker, it’s Luke King! Who’d ever expect to see you turn up?”
“Yes; Luke King it will have to be, since you, like all the rest, won’t call me by my right name.”
Mark laughed apologetically. “Oh, I forgot you never could bear to be called by yore step-daddy’s name; but you wuz raised up with the King layout, an’ Laramore is not a easy word to handle. Well, I reckon you are follerin’ what you started—writin’ books?”
“Yes.”
“I ‘lowed you’d stick to it. I never seed a feller study harder an’ want to do a thing as bad.”
Lucian Laramore smiled. “Did any one here ever find out that I had adopted that profession?”
“Not a soul, Luke. I never let on to anybody that I knowed it, an’ the folks round heer don’t read much. They mought ‘a’ suspected some ‘n’ ef Luke King had been signed to yore books and stories, but nobody ever called you by yore right name. What on earth ever made you come home?”
“It was my mother that brought me here, Mark—not the others,” said Laramore. “If a man is a man, no sort of fame or prosperity can make him forget his mother. I planned to come back several times, but something always prevented it. However, when you wrote me that the last time you saw her she was not looking well, I decided to come at once.”
Mark was critically surveying his old friend from head to foot while he was speaking. Laramore smiled, and added, “You are wondering why I am so plainly dressed, Mark; you needn’t deny it.”
Mark flushed when he replied: “Well, I did ’low you fellers ’ud put on more style ’n we-uns down here.”
“It’s an old suit I have worn out hunting in Canada. I put it on because I intended to do a good deal of walking; and then, to tell the truth, I thought it would look better for me to go back very simply dressed.”
“That’s a fact, now I think of it; well, I wish you luck over thar. Goin’ ter foot it over?”
“Yes; it is only three miles, and I have plenty of time.”
But the walk was longer than Laramore thought it would be, and he was hot, damp with perspiration, and covered with dust when he reached the four-roomed cabin among the stunted pines and wild cedars.
Old Sam King sat out in front of the door. He wore no shoes nor coat, and his hickory shirt and jean trousers had been patched many times. His hair was long, sun-burned, and tangled, and the corrugated skin of his cheek and neck was covered with straggling hairs.
As the stranger came in view from behind the pine-pole pig-pen, the old man uttered a grunt of surprise that brought to the door two young women in homespun dresses, and a tall, lank young man in his shirt-sleeves.
“I suppose you don’t remember me,” said Laramore, and he put his satchel on a wash-bench by a tub and a piggin of lye soap.
“Well, I reckon nobody in this shack is gwine to ’spute with you,” rumbled the old man, as with his chin in his hand, he lazily looked at the face before him.
“I might not have known you either if I had not been told that you lived here. I am the fellow you used to call Luke King.”
“By Jacks!” After that ejaculation the old man and the others stared speechlessly.
“Yes, that’s who I am,” continued Laramore. “How do you do, Jake?” (to the lank young man in the door). “We might as well shake hands. You girls have grown into women since I left. I’ve stayed away a long time, and been nearly all over the world, but I’ve always wanted to get back. Where is mother?”
Neither of the girls could summon up the courage to answer, and they seemed under stress of great embarrassment.
“She is porely,” said the old man, inhospitably keeping his seat. “She’s had a hurtin’ in ’er side from usin’ that thar battlin’-stick too much on dirty clothes, an’ her cold has settled on ’er chest. Mary, go tell yore maw Luke’s got back. Huh, we all ‘lowed you wuz dead ‘cept her. She al’ays contended you wuz alive som ‘ers. How’s times been a-servin’ uv you?”
“Pretty well.” Laramore put his satchel on the ground and sat down wearily on the bench by the tub.
“Things is awful slow heer. Whar have you been hangin’ out?”
“Nowhere in particular—that is, I have lived in a good many places.”
“Huh! ’bout as I expected; an’ I reckon you hain’t got nothin’ at all ter show fer it ‘cept what you’ve got on yore back.”
“That’s about all.”
“What you been a-follerin’?”
Laramore colored sensitively.
“Writing for papers and magazines.”
“I ‘lowed you mought go at some ‘n’ o’ that sort; you used to try mighty hard to write a good hand; you never would work. Married?”
“No.”
“Hain’t able to support a woman I reckon. Well, you showed a great lot of good sense thar; a feller can sorter manage to shift fer hisse’f ef he hain’t hampered by a pack o’ children an’ er sick woman.”
At that juncture Mary returned. She flushed as she caught Laramore’s expectant glance. She spoke to her father.
“Maw said tell ’im ter come in thar.” Laramore went into the front room and turned into a small apartment adjoining. It was windowless and dark, the only light filtering through the front room. On a low, narrow bed beneath a ladder leading to a trap-door above, lay a woman.
“Here I am, Luke,” she cried out, excitedly. “Don’t stumble over that pan o’ water! I’ve been taking a mustard footbath to try an’ git my blood warm. La, me! How you did take me by surprise! I’ve prayed for little else in many er yeer, an’ I was jest about ter give it up.”
His foot touched a three-legged stool, and he drew it to the head of her bed and sat down. He took one of her hard, thin hands and bent over her. Should he kiss her? She had not taught him to do so when he was a child, and he had never kissed her in his life, but he had seen the world and grown wiser. He turned her face toward him and pressed his lips to hers. She was much surprised, and drew herself from him and wiped her mouth with a corner of the sheet, but he knew she was pleased.
“Why, Luke, what on earth do you mean? Have you gone plumb crazy?” she said, quickly.
“I wanted to kiss you, that’s all,” he said, awkwardly. They were both silent for a moment, then she spoke, tremblingly: “You al’ays was womanish an’ tender-like; it don’t do a body any harm; none o’ the rest ain’t that way. But, my stars! I cayn’t tell a bit how you look in this pitch dark. Mary! oh, Mary!”
Laramore released his mother’s hand, and sat up erect as the girl came to the door.
“What you want, maw?”
“I cayn’t see my hand’fore me; I wish you’d fetch a light heer. You ‘ll find a piece o’ candle in the clock; I hid it there to keep Jake from usin’ it in his lantern.”
The girl lit the bit of tallow-dip, and fastened it in the neck of a bottle. She brought it in, stood it on a box filled with cotton-seed and ears of corn, and shambled out. Laramore’s heart sank as he looked around him. The room was nothing but a lean-to shed walled with upright slabs and floored with puncheons. The bedstead was a crude wooden frame supported by perpendicular saplings fastened to floor and rafters. The cracks in the wall were filled with mud, rags, and newspapers. Bunches of dried herbs hung above his head, and piles of old clothing and agricultural implements lay about indiscriminately. Disturbed by the light, a hen flew from her nest behind a dismantled loom, and with a loud cackling went out at the door.
The old woman gazed at him eagerly. “You hain’t altered so overly much,” she observed, “‘cept yore skin looks mighty white, and yore hands feel soft.”
Then she lowered her voice into a whisper, and glanced furtively toward the door. “You favor yore father—I don’t mean Sam, but Mr. Laramore. Yore as like as two peas. He helt his head that away, an’ had yore way o’ bein’ gentle with womenfolks. You’ve got his high temper, too. La, me! that last night you was at home, an’ Sam cussed you, an’ kicked yore books into the fire, I didn’t sleep a wink. I thought you’d gone off to borrow a gun. It was almost a relief to know you’d left, kase I seed you an’ Sam couldn’t git along. Yore father was a different sort of a man, Luke; he loved books an’ study, like you. He had good blood in ‘im; his father was a teacher an’ a circuit-rider. I don’t know why I married Sam, ’less it was ’kase I was young an’ helpless, an’ you was a baby.”
There was a low whimper in her voice, and the lines about her mouth tightened. Lara-more’s breast heaved, and he suddenly put out his hand and began to stroke her thin, gray hair. A strange, restful feeling stole over him. The spell was on her, too; she closed her eyes, and a blissful smile lighted her wan face. Then her lips began to quiver, and she turned her face from him.
“I’m er simpleton,” she sobbed, “but I cayn’t he’p it. Nobody hain’t petted me nur tuk on over me a bit sence yore paw died. I never treated you right, nuther, Luke; I ort never to ‘a’ let Sam run over you like he did.”
“Never mind that,” Laramore replied, tenderly; “but you must not lie here in this dingy hole; you need medicine and good food.”
“I’m gwine ter git up,” she answered. “I’m not sick; I jest laid down ter rest. I must git the house straight. Mary and Jane hain’t no hands at housework ‘thout I stand over ‘em, and Jake an’ his paw is continually a-fussin’. I feel stronger already; ef you ’ll go in t’other room I ‘ll rise. They ’ll never fix you nothin’ ter eat, nur nowhar to sleep. I reckon you ’ll have to lie with Jake, like you useter, tel I can fix better. Things is in a awful mess sence I got porely.”
He went into the front room. The old man had brought his satchel in. He had opened it in a chair, and was coolly examining the contents in the firelight. Jake and the two girls stood looking on. Laramore stared at the old man, but the latter did not seem at all abashed. Finally he closed the satchel and put it on the floor.
In a few minutes Mrs. King came in. She blew out the candle, and as she crossed to the mantelpiece she carefully extinguished the smoking wick. The change in her was more noticeable to her son than it had been a few minutes before. She looked very frail and white in her faded black cotton gown. Her shoes were worn and her bare feet showed through the holes.
“Mary,” she asked, “have you put on the supper?”
“Yes’m; but it hain’t tuk up yit.” The girl went into the next room, which was used for kitchen and dining-room in one, and her mother followed her. In a few minutes the old woman came to the door.
“Walk out, all of you,” she said, wearily. “Luke, you ’ll have to put up with what is set before you; hog-meat is mighty sca’ce this yeer. Just at fattenin’ time our hogs tuk the cholera an’ six was found dead in one day. Meat is fetchin’ fifteen cents a pound in town.”