He attempted to reassure himself. He tried to argue that it was only his consciousness surcharged with its weighty secret which made him flinch when any questioning eye was turned upon him. What could this mountaineer, ignorant and inexperienced as the rest, divine or suspect,—how could he dream of the truth?
And yet, so much was at stake: his liberty, his name, his honor,—nay, the sheerest commercial honesty. And so far all had gone well! He clung now to his fictitious death as if the prospect of this existence in the Cove had not well-nigh made it real, so had his heart sunk within him at the thought of the future. He said to himself sharply that he would not be brought to bay by this clumsy schemer. Surely he could meet craft with craft. The old habit of transacting business had no doubt sufficed to keep his countenance impassive, and he would set himself to add to the little they knew circumstances of which they did not dream, well calculated to baffle preconceived theories.
“No, I’m not a mourner,” he replied to Beck’s sanctimonious gaze,—“not much! The kind of sinner I am goes to meeting to see the girls.”
A momentary silence ensued. Not that this pernicious motive for seeking the house of worship was unheard of in Etowah Cove. There as elsewhere it was a very usual symptom of original sin. Few saints, however indurated by holiness against such perversion of the obvious uses of the sanctuary, but could remember certain soft and callow days when the theme of salvation held forth no greater reward than the occupancy of crowded back benches and the unrestricted gaze of round young eyes. It was, nevertheless, a motive so contrary to the suspicion which Knowles and Sims himself had entertained of the juggler’s sojourn here and had grafted on the credulity of their cronies,—a lightsome motive, so incompatible with the grisly suggestions of murder, and flight from justice, and the expectation of capture and condign punishment,—that it could not be at first assimilated with his supposed identity as a fugitive and criminal. His sudden unaccounted-for presence here, the unexplained prolonged stay, the report of the silent preoccupied hours which he spent on the ledges over the river, fishing with an unbaited hook, the troubled silence, the answers at haphazard, the pallid languid apparition after sleepless nights, and, more than all, the agonized cries from out the feigned miseries of dreams, all tallied fairly and justified the theory built upon them. But this new element interjected so abruptly had a disintegrating subversive effect.
“Waal, ain’t all the gals in the kentry mighty nigh down yander at the meetin’ now?” demanded Beck.
He spoke mechanically, for he had lost sight of his effort to induce the juggler to attend upon the means of grace, if ever he had seriously entertained it, and he would not, on sober reflection, have offered this frivolous inducement as a loadstone to draw the reluctant heavenward,—let perdition seize him first!
“Plenty there, no doubt,” said the juggler uncommunicatively, as if having taken counsel within himself.
Old Josiah Cobbs chuckled knowingly, as he sat on the stump of the tree which he most affected and nursed his knee. “The right one ain’t thar,—that’s the hitch! All the gals but one, an’ that one wuth all the rest, hey?” He chuckled once more, thinking he was peculiarly keen-witted to spy out the secret of the juggler’s indifference to prayer and praise. He perceived naught of the subtler significance of the disclosure, and easily quitting the subject he turned his head as if to listen.
The sound of the hymning rose suddenly on the breeze. From far away it was, if one must mete out the distance by the windings of the red clay road and the miles of fragrant springtide woods that intervened. But the music came straight through the air like the winged thing it is. And now it soared in solemn jubilance, and now it sank with soft fluctuations, and presently he recognized the tune and fell to humming it in unison with that far-away worship and with that air of soft pleasure in the religious cadences which one may often see in the aged, and which suggests the idea that in growing old hymns become as folk-song on the lips of the returning exile, and in every inflection is the rapture of going home.
The others neither heard nor heeded. They reminded Lucien Royce, as they were grouped around him,—some standing, some sitting or reclining on the mossy rocks in the flickering shade, but every eye fixed speculatively on him,—of that fable in many tongues wherein the beasts of the field find a sleeping man and hold a congress to determine the genus of the animal, his capacities and utilities. He looked as inadvertent as he could, and but for the jeopardy of all he held dear he might have discovered in the situation food for mirth.