Books: The Heart Of The Hills
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John Fox, Jr. >> The Heart Of The Hills
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"Who's that ole feller?" he blurted.
The lad looked shocked, for he could not know that Jason meant not
a particle of disrespect.
"That 'ole feller,'" he mimicked indignantly and with scathing
sarcasm, "is the president of this university"; and he hurried on
while Jason miserably shrivelled closer to the steps. After that
he spoke to nobody, and nobody spoke to him, and he lifted his
eyes only to the gateway through which he longed for John Burnham
to come. But the smile of the old president haunted him. There sat
a man on heights no more to be scaled by him than heaven, and yet
that puzzling smile for the blissful ignorance, in the young, of
how gladly the old would give up their crowns in exchange for the
swift young feet on the threshold--no wonder the boy could not
understand. Through that gate dashed presently a pair of proud,
high-headed black horses--"star-gazers," as the Kentuckians call
them--with a rhythmic beat of high-lifted feet, and the boy's eyes
narrowed as the carriage behind them swept by him, for in it were
Colonel Pendleton and Gray, with eager face and flashing eyes.
There was a welcoming shout when Gray leaped out, and a crowd of
students rushed toward him and surrounded him. One of them took
off his hat, lifted both hands above his head, and then they all
barked out a series of barbaric yells with a long shout of Gray's
full name at the end, while the Blue-grass lad stood among them,
flushed and embarrassed but not at all displeased. Again Jason's
brow knitted with wonder, for he could not know what a young god
in that sternly democratic college Gray Pendleton, aristocrat
though he was, had made himself, and he shrank deeper still into
his loneliness and turned wistful eyes again to the gate. Somebody
had halted in front of him, and he looked up to see the same lad
of whom he had just asked a question.
"And that YOUNG feller," said the boy in the same mimicking tone,
"is another president--of the sophomore class and the captain of
the football team."
Lightning-like and belligerent, Jason sprang to his feet. "Air you
pokin' fun at ME?" he asked thickly and clenching his fists.
Genuinely amazed, the other lad stared at him a moment, smiled,
and held out his hand.
"I reckon I was, but you're all right. Shake!"
And within Jason, won by the frank eyes and winning smile, the
tumult died quickly, and he shook--gravely.
"My name's Burns--Jack Burns."
"Mine's Hawn--Jason Hawn."
The other turned away with a wave of his hand.
"See you again."
"Shore," said Jason, and then his breast heaved and his heart
seemed to stop quite still. Another pair of proud horses shot
between the stone pillars, and in the carriage behind them was
Marjorie. The boy dropped to his seat, dropped his chin in both
hands as though to keep his face hidden, but as the sound of her
coming loudened he simply could not help lifting his head. Erect,
happy, smiling, the girl was looking straight past him, and he
felt like one of the yellow grains of dust about her horses' feet.
And then within him a high, shrill little yell rose above the
laughter and vocal hum going on around him--there was John Burnham
coming up the walk, the school-master, John Burnham--and Jason
sprang to meet him. Immediately Burnham's searching eyes fell upon
him, and he stopped--smiling, measuring, surprised. Could this
keen-faced, keen-eyed, sinewy, tall lad be the faithful little
chap who had trudged sturdily at his heels so many days in the
mountains?
"Well, well, well," he said; "why, I wouldn't have known you. You
got here in time, didn't you?"
"I have been waitin' fer you," said Jason. "Miss Hilda told me to
come straight to you."
"That's right--how is she?"
"She ain't well--she works too hard."
The school-master shook his head with grave concern.
"I know. You've been lucky, Jason. She is the best woman on
earth."
"I'd lay right down here an' die fer her right now," said the lad
soberly. So would John Burnham, and he loved the lad for saying
that.
"She said you was the best man on earth--but I knowed that," the
lad went on simply; "an' she told me to tell you to make me keep
out o' fights and study hard and behave."
"All right, Jason," said Burnham with a smile. "Have you
matriculated yet?"
Jason was not to be caught napping. His eyes gave out the quick
light of humor, but his face was serious.
"I been so busy waitin' fer you that I reckon I must 'a' forgot
that."
The school-master laughed.
"Come along."
Through the thick crowd that gave way respectfully to the new
professor, Jason followed across the road to the building
opposite, and up the steps into a room where he told his name and
his age, and the name of his father and mother, and pulled from
his pooket a little roll of dirty bills. There was a fee of five
dollars for "janitor"; Jason did not know what a janitor was, but
John Burnham nodded when he looked up inquiringly and Jason asked
no question. There was another fee for "breakage," and that was
all, but the latter item was too much for Jason.
"S'pose I don't break nothin'," he asked shrewdly, "do I git that
back?"
Then registrar and professor laughed.
"You get it back."
Down they went again.
"That's a mighty big word fer such little doin's," the boy said
soberly, and the school-master smiled.
"You'll find just that all through college now, Jason, but don't
wait to find out what the big word means."
"I won't," said Jason, "next time."
Many eyes now looked on the lad curiously when he followed John
Burnham back through the crowd to the steps, where the new
professor paused.
"I passed Mavis on the road. I wonder if she has come."
"I don't know," said Jason, and a curious something in his tone
made John Burnham look at him quickly--but he said nothing.
"Oh well," he said presently, "she knows what to do."
A few minutes later the two were alone in the new professor's
recitation-room.
"Have you seen Marjorie and Gray?"
The lad hesitated.
"I seed--I saw 'em when they come in."
"Gray finishes my course this year. He's going to be a civil
engineer."
"So'm I," said Jason; and the quick shortness of his tone again
made John Burnham look keenly at him.
"You know a good deal about geology already--are you going to take
my course too?"
"I want to know just what to do with that land o' mine. I ain't
forgot what you told me--to go away and git an education--and when
I come back what that land 'ud be worth."
"Yes, but--"
The lad's face had paled and his mouth had set.
"I'm goin' to git it back."
Behind them the door had opened, and Gray's spirited, smiling face
was thrust in.
"Good morning, professor," he cried, and then, seeing Jason, he
came swiftly in with his hand outstretched.
"Why, how are you, Jason? Mavis told me yesterday you were here.
I've been looking for you. Glad to see you."
Watching both, John Burnham saw the look of surprise in Gray's
face when the mountain boy's whole frame stiffened into the
rigidity of steel, saw the haughty uplifting of the Blue-grass
boy's chin, as he wheeled to go, and like Gray, he, too, thought
Jason had never forgotten the old feud between them. For a moment
he was tempted to caution Jason about the folly of it all, but as
suddenly he changed his mind. Outside a bugle blew.
"Go on down, Jason," he said instead, "and follow the crowd--
that's chapel--prayer-meeting," he explained.
At the foot of the stairs the boy mingled with the youthful stream
pouring through the wide doors of the chapel hall. He turned to
the left and was met by the smiling eyes of his new acquaintance,
Burns, who waved him good-humoredly away:
"This is the sophomore corner--I reckon you belong in there."
And toward the centre Jason went among the green, the countrified,
the uneasy, and the unkempt. The other half of the hall was banked
with the faces of young girls--fresh as flowers--and everywhere
were youth and eagerness, eagerness and youth. The members of the
faculty were climbing the steps to a platform and ranging
themselves about the old gentleman with the crutches. John Burnham
entered, and the vault above rocked with the same barbaric yells
that Jason had heard given Gray Pendleton, for Burnham had been a
mighty foot-ball player in his college days. The old president
rose, and the tumult sank to reverential silence while a silver
tongue sent its beautiful diction on high in a prayer for the
bodies, the minds, and the souls of the whole buoyant throng in
the race for which they were about to be let loose. And that was
just what the tense uplifted faces suggested to John Burnham--he
felt in them the spirit of the thoroughbred at the post, the young
hound straining at the leash, the falcon unhooded for flight,
when, at the president's nod, he rose to his feet to speak to the
host the welcome of the faculty within these college walls and the
welcome of the Blue-grass to the strangers from the confines of
the State--particularly to those who had journeyed from their
mountain homes. "These young people from the hills," he said, "for
their own encouragement and for all patience in their own
struggle, must always remember, and the young men and women of the
Blue-grass, for tolerance and a better understanding, must never
forget, in what darkness and for how long their sturdy kinspeople
had lived, how they were just wakening from a sleep into which,
not of their own fault, they had lapsed but little after the
Revolution; how eagerly they had strained their eyes for the first
glimmer from the outside world that had come to them, and how
earnestly now they were fighting toward the light. So isolated, so
primitive were they only a short while ago that neighbor would go
to neighbor asking 'Lend us fire,' and now they were but asking of
the outer world, 'Lend us fire.' And he hoped that the young men
and women from those dark fastnesses who had come there to light
their torches would keep them burning, and take them back home
still sacredly aflame, so that in the hills the old question with
its new meaning could never again be asked in vain."
Jason's eyes had never wavered from the speaker's face, nor had
Gray's, but, while John Burnham purposely avoided the eyes of
both, he noted here and there the sudden squaring of shoulders,
and the face of a mountain boy or girl lift quickly and with open-
mouthed interest remain fixed; and far back he saw Mavis, wide-
eyed and deep in some new-born dream, and he thought he saw
Marjorie turn at the end to look at the mountain girl as though to
smile understanding and sympathy. A mental tumult still held Jason
when the crowd about him rose to go, and he kept his seat. John
Burnham had been talking about Mavis and him, and maybe about
Marjorie and Gray, and he had a vague desire to see the school-
master again. Moreover, a doubt, at once welcome and disturbing to
him, had coursed through his brain. If secret meetings in lanes
and by-ways were going on between Mavis and Gray, Gray would
hardly have been so frank in saying he had seen Mavis the previous
afternoon for Gray must know that Jason knew there had been no
meeting at Steve Hawn's house. Perhaps Gray had overtaken her in
the lane quite by accident, and the boy was bothered and felt
rather foolish and ashamed when, seeing John Burnham still busy on
the platform, he rose to leave.
On the steps more confusion awaited him. A group of girls was
standing to one side of them, and he turned hurriedly the other
way. Light footsteps followed him, and a voice called:
"Oh, Jason!"
His blood rushed, and he turned dizzily, for he knew it was
Marjorie. In her frank eyes was a merry smile instead of the tear
that had fixed them in his memory, but the clasp of her hand was
the same.
"Why, I didn't know you yesterday--did I? No wonder. Why, I
wouldn't have known you now if I hadn't been looking for you.
Mavis told me you'd come. Dear me, what a BIG man you are.
Professor Burnham told me all about you, and I've been so proud.
Why, I came near writing to you several times. I'm expecting you
to lead your class here, and"--she took in with frank admiration
his height and the breadth of his shoulders--"Gray will want you,
maybe, for the foot-ball team."
The crowds of girls near by were boring him into the very ground
with their eyes. His feet and his hands had grown to enormous
proportions and seemed suddenly to belong to somebody else. He
felt like an ant in a grain-hopper, or as though he were deep
under water in a long dive and must in a moment actually gasp for
breath. And, remembering St. Hilda, he did manage to get his hat
off, but he was speechless. Marjorie paused, the smile did not
leave her eyes, but it turned serious, and she lowered her voice a
little.
"Did you keep your promise, Jason?"
Then the boy found himself, and as he had said before, that winter
dusk, he said now soberly:
"I give you my hand."
And, as before, taking him literally, Marjorie again stretched out
her hand.
"I'm so glad."
Once more the bugle sent its mellow summons through the air.
"And you are coming to our house some Saturday night to go coon-
hunting--good-by."
Jason turned weakly away, and all the rest of the day he felt
dazed. He did not want to see Mavis or Gray or Marjorie again, or
even John Burnham. So he started back home afoot, and all the way
he kept to the fields through fear that some one of them might
overtake him on the road, for he wanted to be alone. And those
fields looked more friendly now than they had looked at dawn, and
his heart grew lighter with every step. Now and then a rabbit
leaped from the grass before him, or a squirrel whisked up the
rattling bark of a hickory-tree. A sparrow trilled from the
swaying top of a purple ironwood, and from grass, and fence-rail,
and awing, meadow larks were fluting everywhere, but the song of
no wood-thrush reached his waiting ear. Over and over again his
brain reviewed every incident of the day, only to end each time
with Marjorie's voice, her smile with its new quality of mischief,
and the touch of her hand. She had not forgotten--that was the
thrill of it all--and she had even asked if he had kept his
promise to her. And at that thought his soul darkened, for the day
would come when he must ask to be absolved of one part of that
promise, as on that day he must be up and on his dead father's
business. And he wondered what, when he told her, she would say.
It was curious, but the sense of the crime involved was naught, as
was the possible effect of it on his college career--it was only
what that girl would say. But the day might still be long off, and
he had so schooled himself to throwing aside the old deep,
sinister purpose that he threw it off now and gave himself up to
the bubbling relief that had come to him. That meeting in the lane
must have been chance, John Burnham was kind, and Marjorie had not
forgotten. He was not alone in the world, nor was he even lonely,
for everywhere that day he had found a hand stretched out to help
him.
Mavis was sitting on the porch when he walked through the gate,
and the moment she saw his face a glad light shone in her own, for
it was the old Jason coming back to her:
"Mavie," he said huskily, "I reckon I'm the biggest fool this side
o' hell, whar I reckon I ought to be."
Mavis asked no question, made no answer. She merely looked
steadily at him for a moment, and then, brushing quickly at her
eyes, she rose and turned into the house. The sun gave way to
darkness, but it kept on shining in Jason's heart, and when at
bedtime he stood again on the porch, his gratitude went up to the
very stars. He heard Mavis behind him, but he did not turn, for
all he had to say he had said, and the break in his reserve was
over.
"I'm glad you come back, Jasie," was all she said, shyly, for she
understood, and then she added the little phrase that is not often
used in the mountain world:
"Good-night."
From St. Hilda, Jason, too, had learned that phrase, and he spoke
it with a gruffness that made the girl smile:
"Good-night, Mavie."
XIX
Jason drew the top bed in a bare-walled, bare-floored room with
two other boys, as green and countrified as was he, and he took
turns with them making up those beds, carrying water for the one
tin basin, and sweeping up the floor with the broom that stood in
the corner behind it. But even then the stark simplicity of his
life was a luxury. His meals cost him three dollars a week, and
that most serious item began to worry him, but not for long.
Within two weeks he was meeting a part of that outlay by
delivering the morning daily paper of the town. This meant getting
up at half past three in the morning, after a sleep of five hours
and a half, but if this should begin to wear on him, he would
simply go earlier to bed; there was no sign of wear and tear,
however, for the boy was as tough as a bolt-proof black gum-tree
back in the hills, his capacity for work was prodigious, and the
early rising hour but lengthened the range of each day's
activities. Indeed Jason missed nothing and nothing missed him.
His novitiate passed quickly, and while his fund for "breakage"
was almost gone, he had, without knowing it, drawn no little
attention to himself. He had wandered innocently into "Heaven"--
the seniors' hall--a satanic offence for a freshman, and he had
been stretched over a chair, "strapped," and thrown out. But at
dawn next morning he was waiting at the entrance and when four
seniors appeared he tackled them all valiantly. Three held him
while the fourth went for a pair of scissors, for thus far Jason
had escaped the tonsorial betterment that had been inflicted on
most of his classmates. The boy stood still, but in a relaxed
moment of vigilance he tore loose just as the scissors appeared,
and fled for the building opposite. There he turned with his back
to the wall. "When I want my hair cut, I'll git my mammy to do it
or pay fer it myself," he said quietly, but his face was white.
When they rushed on, he thrust his hand into his shirt and pulled
it out with a mighty oath of helplessness--he had forgotten his
knife. They cut his hair, but it cost them two bloody noses and
one black eye. At the flag-rush later he did not forget. The
sophomores had enticed the freshmen into the gymnasium, stripped
them of their clothes, and carried them away, whereat the freshmen
got into the locker-rooms of the girls, and a few moments later
rushed from the gymnasium in bloomers to find the sophomores
crowded about the base of the pole, one of them with an axe in his
hand, and Jason at the top with his hand again in his shirt.
"Chop away!" he was shouting, "but I'll git SOME o' ye when this
pole comes down." Above the din rose John Burnham's voice, stern
and angry, calling Jason's name. The student with the axe had
halted at the unmistakable sincerity of the boy's threat.
"Jason," called Burnham again, for he knew what the boy meant, and
the lad tossed knife and scabbard over the heads of the crowd to
the grass, and slid down the pole. And in the fight that followed,
the mountain boy fought with a calm, half-smiling ferocity that
made the wavering freshmen instinctively surge behind him as a
leader, and the onlooking foot-ball coach quickly mark him for his
own. Even at the first foot-ball "rally," where he learned the
college yells, Jason had been singled out, for the mountaineer
measures distance by the carry of his voice and with a "whoop an'
a holler" the boy could cover a mile. Above the din, Jason's clear
cry was, so to speak, like a cracker on the whip of the cheer, and
the "yell-master," a swaying figure of frenzied enthusiasm, caught
his eye in time, nodded approvingly, and saw in him a possible
yell-leader for the freshman class. After the rally the piano was
rolled joyously to the centre of the gymnasium and a pale-faced
lad began to thump it vigorously, much to Jason's disapproval, for
he could not understand how a boy could, or would, play anything
but a banjo or a fiddle. Then, with the accompaniment of a snare-
drum, there was a merry, informal dance, at which Jason and Mavis
looked yearningly on. And, as that night long ago in the
mountains, Gray and Marjorie floated like feathers past them, and
over Gray's shoulder the girl's eyes caught Jason's fixed on her,
and Mavis's fixed on Gray; so on the next round she stopped a
moment near them.
"I'm going to teach you to dance, Jason," she said, as though she
were tossing a gauntlet to somebody, "and Gray can teach Mavis."
"Sure," laughed Gray, and off they whirled again.
The eyes of the two mountaineers met, and they might have been
back in their childhood again, standing on the sunny river-bank
and waiting for Gray and Marjorie to pass, for what their tongues
said then their eyes said now:
"I seed you a-lookin' at him."
"'Tain't so--I seed you a-lookin' at her."
And it was true now as it was then, and then as now both knew it
and both flushed. Jason turned abruptly away, for he knew more of
Mavis's secret than she of his, and it was partly for that reason
that he had not yet opened his lips to her. He had seen no
consciousness in Gray's face, he resented the fact, somehow, that
there was none, and his lulled suspicions began to stir again
within him. In Marjorie's face he had missed what Mavis had
caught, a fleeting spirit of mischief, which stung the mountain
girl with jealousy and a quick fierce desire to protect Jason,
just as Jason, with the same motive, was making up his mind again
to keep a close eye on Gray Pendleton. As for Marjorie, she, too,
knew more of Mavis's secret than Mavis knew of hers, and of the
four, indeed, she was by far the wisest. During the years that
Jason was in the hills she had read as on an open page the meaning
of the mountain girl's flush at any unexpected appearance of Gray,
the dumb adoration for him in her dark eyes, and more than once,
riding in the woods, she had come upon Mavis, seated at the foot
of an oak, screened by a clump of elder-bushes and patiently
waiting, as Marjorie knew, to watch Gray gallop by. She even knew
how unconsciously Gray had been drawn by all this toward Mavis,
but she had not bothered her head to think how much he was drawn
until just before the opening of the college year, for, from the
other side of the hill, she, too, had witnessed the meeting in the
lane that Jason had seen, and had wondered about it just as much,
though she, too, had kept still. That the two boys knew so little,
that the two girls knew so much, and that each girl resented the
other's interest in her own cousin, was merely a distinction of
sex, as was the fact that matters would have to be made very clear
before Jason or Gray could see and understand. And for them
matters were to become clearer, at least--very soon.
XX
Already the coach had asked Jason to try foot-ball, but the boy
had kept away from the field, for the truth was that he had but
one suit of clothes and he couldn't afford to have them soiled and
torn. Gray suspected this, and told the coach, who explained to
Jason that practice clothes would be furnished him, but still the
boy did not come until one day when, out of curiosity, he wandered
over to the field to see what the game was like. Soon his eyes
brightened, his lips parted, and his face grew tense as the
players swayed, clenched struggling, fell in a heap, and leaped to
their feet again. And everywhere he saw Gray's yellow head darting
among them like a sun-ball, and he began to wonder, if he could
not outrun and outwrestle his old enemy. He began to fidget in his
seat and presently he could stand it no longer, and he ran out
into the field and touched the coach on the shoulder.
"Can I git them clothes now?"
The coach looked at his excited face, nodded with a smile, and
pointed to the gymnasium, and Jason was off in a run.
The matter was settled in the thrill and struggle of that one
practice game, and right away Jason showed extraordinary aptitude,
for he was quick, fleet, and strong, and the generalship and
tactics of the game fascinated him from the start. And when he
discovered that the training-table meant a savings-bank for him,
he counted his money, gave up the morning papers without
hesitation or doubt, and started in for the team. Thus he and Gray
were brought violently together on the field, for within two weeks
Jason was on the second team, but the chasm between them did not
close. Gray treated the mountain boy with a sort of curt courtesy,
and while Jason tackled him, fell upon him with a savage thrill,
and sometimes wanted to keep on tightening his wiry arms and
throttling him, the mountain boy could discover no personal
feeling whatever against him in return, and he was mystified. With
the ingrained suspicion of the mountaineer toward an enemy, he
supposed Gray had some cunning purpose. As captain, Gray had been
bound, Jason knew, to put him on the second team, but as day after
day went by and the magic word that he longed for went unsaid, the
boy began to believe that the sinister purpose of Gray's
concealment was, without evident prejudice, to keep him off the
college team. The ball was about to be snapped back on Gray's
side, and Gray had given him one careless, indifferent glance over
the bent backs of the guards, when Jason came to this conclusion,
and his heart began to pound with rage. There was the shock of
bodies, the ball disappeared from his sight, he saw Gray's yellow
head dart three times, each time a different way, and then it
flashed down the side line with a clear field for the goal. With a
bound Jason was after him, and he knew that even if Gray had
wings, he would catch him. With a flying leap he hurled himself on
the speeding figure, in front of him, he heard Gray's breath go
out in a quick gasp under the fierce lock of his arms, and, as
they crashed to the ground, Jason for one savage moment wanted to
use his teeth on the back of the sunburnt neck under him, but he
sprang to his feet, fists clenched and ready for the fight. With
another gasp Gray, too, sprang lightly up.
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