But to the girl, her bright head bent over the pages, the burning words she read to him became the law and the gospel. The lonesomeness of a snubbed childhood and a proudly detached girlhood fed by these doctrines, grew into a curious creed which was one part Effie Darrow’s blighted dreams and two parts Glenwood Darrow’s determined scorn for things unattainable.
To the neighbors and the townspeople she was an accustomed sight—the doctor’s daughter, that red-headed Darrow girl who carried a chip on her shoulder and flocked alone, but strangers always stared at her as they had done since her babyhood.
At fourteen she was a startling figure, tall, thin with a healthy and proper young thinness, square-chinned, steady-eyed. Her skin was remarkable. It had set out to be the delicate, very thin sort which goes, ordinarily, with red hair—the blue-whiteness of thriftily skimmed milk, prone to burn and peel and freckle unpleasantly, but her early removal to the warmer climate had darkened and thickened it. It was now a sort of golden olive which deeped at certain times and in certain lights to a positive amber. There was no further color in her cheeks and her mouth was red, straight, and unsmiling, but it was her hair which caught and held the eye.
Once, on a Saturday, she drove her father higher into the hills than they had ever gone before to see a very old woman who had sent for him. She was a witch-like crone, clay colored, shriveled and twisted, and her hot little eyes burned still with a horde of mountain loves and hates.
“Hit’s not that I were ailing,” she explained to the doctor. “I’m right peart, and aiming to live two, three year yet, but I have kindly heard of you from all my tribe and kinnery, and I was wishful to name hit to you consarning my boy Luke.”
Darrow sat down beside her, companionably. “Well, what about your son?”
“Hit’s not my son,” she cackled mirthfully, “nor neither yet, my son’s son! Hit’s my son’s son’s son! His maw died a-borning him, and I have kindly raised him up myself. But now hit purely stands to reason I must leave him, hit’s ontelling when, and I do shorely hone to have him fotched on, for he is one young-un with a headpiece!”
Good roads and schooling would come too late for Ailsa Manders, but she had glimpsed the vision for lack of which her people were perishing. The doctor knew the Manders; a hard and reckless lot; killers. The old woman had the look of a ruthless tribal priestess. She caught sight of Glen and beckoned to her to come nearer.
“Howdy, Sis? Red h’ar is my delight!” She ran her gnarled fingers through it, making little mouthing sounds of pleasure. “Hit purely warms a bordy! Air you wedded yet?”
“Lord, no,” the doctor exploded. “She’s a youngster in school—will be, for years!”