A Maid of the Kentucky Hills

by Edwin Carlile Litsey

Hast ever sat up o' night with the Devil, my brothers? It comes to me that every one who lives, or has lived must have had this experience. 'Tis a blood chilling one, forsooth; at least when resistance is offered. Only when daylight stole ghost-wise through the still aisles of the immemorial wood did mine Enemy depart, and I got to my feet, trembling as one risen from a bed of grievous sickness, groped my way within, and fell with a groan across my cot.

Throughout that day I slept, and arose in the late afternoon feeling refreshed. My trouble was mental, and this long rest for my brain was most beneficial. I put as firm a check upon my thoughts as I could bring to bear, and methodically set about preparing my supper. Looking back as I write to-night, I know that my movements were erratic and strained. I built my fire in the kitchen stove calmly, but soon thereafter memory made a breach in the flimsy wall of reserve which I had upreared, and havoc began afresh. I burned my food. I broke two dishes. I blistered my fingers on the hot oven. Then I ate voraciously, almost viciously, and leaving the things unwashed, tore out to the companionship of my vast host of faithful trees. Read? I could no more have held my eyes to printed lines that night than I could measure the sun's diameter. The Book says there is a time for everything. This week has been my time to visit the nether world, while yet alive; to become almost insane, while retaining a degree of sense. It may be I shall omit this chapter entire when the end of my story is reached. I am writing it to-night, because in doing so I open a safety valve. I have been fearfully surcharged with the intensest sort of feelings, and I find that it gives me some relief to pour them out upon the pages of my journal. When I grow again to be the reasoning man I was last Sunday—if I ever do—I shall read these lines again. If they seem perfervid, unnatural, overdrawn, I shall wipe them out, in deference to the gentle critic who never saw a red-haired Dryad, and consequently cannot have the least understanding of what I have been driving at in this night's record. I know I have already penned thoughts and emotions which will cause the phlegmatic cynic to damn my story as unreal and banal. In like manner I know there are others—scarcely will they be found in the critic class, I fear—whose hearts will warm to me in kindest sympathy. These, mayhap, will be those of like excessive temperaments, who have looked on Beauty to their cost. Yea, like Priam, and Menelaus, and that old war-dog, Ulysses himself, and the hosts of others whose eyes beheld the ruinous loveliness of Argive Helen. On her pylon tower she sang, and men died, demented and hopeless, struggling for a single smile! Why were all famous beauties in history and mythology red-haired? Who can answer? From echoless time it seems to have stood as a type of perfection. I know what it has meant to me—dear Christ!—since that spring day when I saw it intertwined with dogwood blossoms. To-night—I am writing in desperation, that I may perchance get some sleep when I have worn myself out at the table by which I sit—I say to-night that I would rather live here on Baldy's lap forever with Celeste for my wife; here, in the Lodge, alone with her, than to be the consort of the mightiest queen of earth!

I rushed out to the sheltering arms of my faithful trees, and stood among them. I had nothing on my head. The moon was larger, and in its light I seemed in some enchanted place. Then the craze to move—to walk, drove me down to the ravine. Unthinkingly I turned toward the Dryad's Glade. After a while I halted, overcome all at once by the supernatural radiance which permeated every cranny of that spreading wilderness. Just where I stood the trees were not so dense. Twenty and thirty feet apart some of them grew, and though many lateral branches thrust far out to intermingle, the myriad moon rays found numerous paths and peepholes to the earth below. It also chanced that I had stopped in a spot where the spiring trunks rose naked of boughs to a considerable height. This peculiarity was a great aid to the diffusion of the blue-white, misty atmosphere which was all about me. I seemed to stand in a ghost land; everything was shadowy; even the rough boles appeared tenuous, ready to dissolve and disappear at a breath of wind. But there was no wind. I stared all about me, marveling at this common mystery of moonshine which was yet so unfathomable; feeling it sink into my soul in peace giving waves, comforting my tired breast. So I folded my arms and leaned against a near-by oak, determining to stay just there. It was the first moment of waking calm I had known since—How blissful it was! How peaceful! How past all poor words of mine to describe! Picture primeval creation. No hewn-down trees, no unsightly stumps, no chips from the relentless ax. Merely a mighty forest which had been such always. Solitude, silence. An all-enveloping, blue-white night, and one lone man striving for ease of mind and soul in the midst of these eternal realities. How good it was to feel my tight breast loosen; to feel that awful clamp dropping away from my temples, where it had been pressing and fretting me almost to madness. I breathed deep of that clear, sweet air; huge, delightful respirations which made me feel light-headed. And even as a smile of appreciation crept to my lips, and my eyes half closed under the weird spell of the place, I knew that I was not alone. Down a winding vista, far off, something was moving. The distance was too great and the light too poor for me to tell what it was. A gray shape was disturbing the nebulous perspective; a shape which at moments almost assumed proportions, to become at once as something almost of the imagination. I did not change my attitude, for as yet only a mild curiosity was present. It might be anything from a stray cow to a moonshiner on his way to work. Be it what it might, I hoped it would not disturb me, but wend its way. It was coming toward me; I could not doubt it directly. It would pass me at a right angle, perhaps thirty feet off. I did not care to be seen if it was human; I was in no mood to sacrifice a portion of this wonder-night to rustic inanities. I slipped quietly around into the shadow of my oak. There came a sound, like a silvery laugh wedded to a harsh cackle, and this was followed by the swift patter of running feet, tapping in a muffled tread the moss- and leaf-strewn ground. I thrust out my head to see what these strange sounds meant. God above! The Dryad and the Satyr, hand in hand, dashed by my hiding-place like a hurricane. She was next to me. What she wore I cannot say. It was something all white, girded at the waist with a vine, for I saw leaves and tendrils hanging from it. She had shaken her hair down. The Satyr was without his hat, and his ragged coat streamed out as he tore along. I glimpsed his face, and it reflected honest merriment only. Just opposite me they laughed again, without apparent reason, as children do in a frolic, and how incongruous it sounded; Celeste's musical bell tones, and Jeff Angel's cracked and jarring voice. So, hand in hand, in perfect understanding and good-fellowship, these two Children of Nature romped through the moonlit lanes of their beloved woods, happy in their very wildness and unrestraint.

Before I could recover from my profound astonishment they had disappeared down a misty aisle hung with trembling, diaphanous, luminous shadows; had merged with the pearl-gray gloom of the middle distance, and a wild, eerie strain of something which might well have been borrowed from a barbaric chant drifted back to my stunned sensibilities. I caught the notes only, but they drove through to my brain like fire-barbed arrows, and stung it into action. She had passed almost within reach of my arm! She! The one because of whom this awful abyss had opened up for me. She had passed, and I had stood like a dolt and let her go! "Lessie! Lessie!" I sprang forward, goaded by love and despair, and ran after them with all the swiftness I could command. "Dryad! Dryad!" I called, at the top of my voice, but no answer came. I stopped, and with hand against a tree held my breath to listen. Not a sound but my own blood hammering in my ears. Then as a full realization came to me of the opportunity which had been offered, and which I had stupidly missed, a feeling of mad recklessness seized me, and I bounded forward again, blindly, knowing only that somewhere ahead of me was Celeste. Once I saw something white, and rushed toward it with outheld arms and a strangled cry of gladness. It was a portion of a projecting earth-bank, covered with a growth bearing tiny white blossoms. The moon struck it full, and had worked the cruel deception. I fell upon the pure little flowers and tore them savagely; flung them down and ground my feet upon them, then took up my search once more. Rage filled my breast. Rage at myself, at Fate, at Granny, at Beryl Drane, and this animal emotion must have blinded my eyes, for in my headlong, methodless pursuit I at length ran full force into a huge beech, and dropped senseless at its feet.

I don't think it could have been long before I roused, for there was no lessening of the brilliant light, such as happens when the moon declines. It was well for me that I was unconscious but a short time, I suspect, for as my eyes came open I at once became aware of another pair above me. A pair which seemed made of sulphur, marked with alternate red and green rings, glowing wickedly. Then I made out the contour of a dim body perhaps three feet in length stretched upon a low limb just over me. It was a gigantic wild-cat, and he was stalking me. I doubt not he would have dropped within another five minutes, for even as I watched, his back began to arch and the claws of his hind feet to rustle along the bark. With that suggestive motion his head also drooped below the limb, and it came to me he was gauging the distance for his spring. I was no hunter, but 'Crombie was, and from him I had learned that wild-cats will not attack a man unless driven by hunger, or brought to bay in a corner. So I sat up incontinently; threw out my arms and shouted. With the agility of his tribe he turned promptly, and another second was scuttling up the tree.

I found I had a painful welt across the top of my forehead, but no other injury was apparent. My heart turned sick as recollection came back on swallow wings. There was nothing left but to go home. I had myself to thank for my predicament. But where was home? Whither my flight had led me I possessed no idea. I had tried to follow the elusive wake of two night-roamers, and they had proven will-o'-the-wisps. Why had not the Dryad stopped at my call? I wondered, as I moved doggedly away from the spot. Surely she had heard. Surely she knew who it was, for no one else called her by that name. Could it be that Granny had perverted her mind? Or was it that she did not care? That I was only an incident, and had been cast from her life as quickly and suddenly as I had entered it? I would not believe this; I could not believe it. The blow which I had so recently sustained wrought a radical change in my mental condition, and while my breast still burned with implacable resentment toward the nameless something which had caused me to miss catching Celeste, I found that my thoughts were freer, and comparatively lucid. I could not believe that she had thrust me below her life's horizon, and gone singing through the woods as though nothing had happened. The idea was monstrous, appalling, revolting. It was wholly unacceptable. That my two visits to her home bore no fruit I laid at Granny's door. The old beldam had managed it in some way. Had kept the girl hidden, and had prevented anyone within the house from answering my summons. Why had the Dryad burst out weeping and run indoors when Granny thought she had convicted me of duplicity, and ordered me from the place? Ah! my soul! there was comfort in that! Celeste did not cry from fright; she was used to Granny's tantrums. She cried because for the moment she saw things in the same light and from the same angle as that old termagant—may her bones lie unburied! She did care for me—she did care for me—she DID care for me, and I knew it. I could not solve her frolicking in the forest with her half crazy cousin. I could not unriddle her laughing and singing. Such things do not go with a heavy heart in the world I know, but it may be she sought relief in following her beloved habit of running, untamed and free, wherever her hoyden steps led her. I will see her yet, and I will find out. I will make her see the truth, and outwit that old she-devil who has cast me into torment with her meddling.

Moonset found me laboring up the road to the Lodge. I had stumbled upon my hill. Sleep came at once, and how doubly sweet was that deep, soundless, shoreless sea when I slipped out upon it in my Barque o' Dreams!

Next day was Wednesday. All the bulldog in my nature unleashed—and a major part of my nature is represented by the hybrid breed of bulldog and mule—I went to Lizard Point, with the determination to have speech with some one before I came away. I was no schoolboy, or callow youth, to be trifled with in this manner. I had certain rights as a gentleman, and these rights I intended to demand. But alas for human hopes—and determinations! I could not demand aught of an empty porch, or a closed and locked door, or blind-drawn, nailed down windows. I suppose they were nailed down, for my peculiar nature caused me to try and raise two of them, when repeated calls and much banging on the door did not bring any results. The sashes did not even tremble under my hands. I saw a broken rail lying near one corner of the house. I looked at it, and at the blank window. That would get me in, or get somebody out. Either would serve. I was so wrought up that I actually started toward that piece of wood before I realized what I intended doing. It would be house-breaking; malicious destruction of property—both of which were jail offenses. I must forego the execution of this project, much as it appealed to me at the moment. Nothing would suit Granny better. She would have the law on me in a trice, and be rid of me for good and all.

I went home.

It is not my purpose to recount in detail my wanderings the remainder of this week. Some of it would prove a repetition, and other of it uninteresting. If my sojourn in the Inferno was not as gruesome as the hero's of Ithaca, nor filled with majestic horrors like the immortal Dante's, yet it was undeniably true. One night I climbed the peak thrice between nightfall and daydawn. The last ascent found me so exhausted that I lay prone upon the table-like top, and watched the miraculous mystery of morning. It was the first time I had ever seen it from a great height, and the impression cannot be put into words. I am tempted to try—oh! the untold glory of the magical metamorphosis!—but no, I will withstand the inclination. The result would be akin to that a three-year-old child would obtain if given the necessary pigments and told to paint a sunset. There are times when even fools will not rush in; this is one of them.