Books: The Heart Of The Hills
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John Fox, Jr. >> The Heart Of The Hills
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"Good!" he said heartily.
No mortal fist could have laid Jason quite so low as that one
word. The coach's whistle blew and Gray added carelessly: "Come
around, Hawn, to the training-table to-night."
No mortal command could have filled him with so much shame, and
Jason stood stock-still and speechless. Then, fumbling for an
instant at his shirt collar as though he were choking, he walked
swiftly away. As he passed the benches he saw Mavis and Marjorie,
who had been watching the practice. Apparently Mavis had started
out into the field, and Marjorie, bewildered by her indignant
outcry, had risen to follow her; and Jason, when he met the
accusing fire of his cousin's eyes, knew that she alone, on the
field, had understood it all, that she had started with the
impulse of protecting Gray, and his shame went deeper still. He
did not go to the training-table that night, and the moonlight
found him under the old willows wondering and brooding, as he had
been--long and hard. Gray was too much for him, and the mountain
boy had not been able to solve the mystery of the Blue-grass boy's
power over his fellows, for the social complexity of things had
unravelled very slowly for Jason. He saw that each county had
brought its local patriotism to college and had its county club.
There were too few students from the hills and a sectional club
was forming, "The Mountain Club," into which Jason naturally had
gone; but broadly the students were divided into "frat" men and
"non-frat" men, chiefly along social lines, and there were
literary clubs of which the watchword was merit and nothing else.
In all these sectional cliques from the Purchase, Pennyroyal, and
Peavine, as the western border of the State, the southern border,
and the eastern border of hills were called; indeed, in all the
sections except the Bear-grass, where was the largest town and
where the greatest wealth of the State was concentrated, he found
a widespread, subconscious, home-nursed resentment brought to that
college against the lordly Blue-grass. In the social life of the
college he found that resentment rarely if ever voiced, but always
tirelessly at work. He was not surprised then to discover that in
the history of the college, Gray Pendleton was the first
plainsman, the first aristocrat, who had ever been captain of the
team and the president of his class. He began to understand now,
for he could feel the tendrils of the boy's magnetic personality
enclosing even him, and by and by he could stand it no longer, and
he went to Gray.
"I wanted to kill you that day."
Gray smiled.
"I knew it," he said quietly.
"Then why--"
"We were playing foot-ball. Almost anybody can lose his head
ENTIRELY--but YOU didn't. That's why I didn't say anything to you
afterward. That's why you'll be captain of the team after I'm
gone."
Again Jason choked, and again he turned speechless away, and then
and there was born within him an idolatry for Gray that was
carefully locked in his own breast, for your mountaineer openly
worships, and then but shyly, the Almighty alone. Jason no longer
wondered about the attitude of faculty and students of both sexes
toward Gray, no longer at Mavis, but at Marjorie he kept on
wondering mightily, for she alone seemed the one exception to the
general rule. Like everybody else, Jason knew the parental purpose
where those two were concerned, and he began to laugh at the
daring presumptions of his own past dreams and to worship now only
from afar. But he could not know the effect of that parental
purpose on that wilful, high-strung young person, the pique that
Gray's frank interest in Mavis brought to life within her, and he
was not yet far enough along in the classics to suspect that
Marjorie might weary of hearing Aristides called the Just. Nor
could he know the spirit of coquetry that lurked deep behind her
serious eyes, and was for that reason the more dangerously
effective.
He only began to notice one morning, after the foot-ball incident,
that Marjorie was beginning to notice him; that, worshipped now
only on the horizon, his star seemed to be drawing a little
nearer. A passing lecturer had told Jason much of himself and his
people that morning. The mountain people, said the speaker, still
lived like the pioneer forefathers of the rest of the State.
Indeed they were "our contemporary ancestors"; so that,
sociologically speaking, Jason, young as he was, was the ancestor
of all around him. The thought made him grin and, looking up, he
caught the mischievous eyes of Marjorie, who later seemed to be
waiting for him on the steps:
"Good-morning, grandfather," she said demurely, and went rapidly
on her way.
XXI
Meanwhile that political storm was raging and Jason got at the
heart of it through his morning paper and John Burnham. He knew
that at home Republicans ran against Republicans for all offices,
and now he learned that his own mountains were the Gibraltar of
that party, and that the line of its fortifications ran from the
Big Sandy, three hundred miles by public roads, to the line of
Tennessee. When free silver had shattered the Democratic ranks
three years before, the mountaineers had leaped forth and unfurled
the Republican flag over the State for the first time since the
Civil War. Ballots were falsified--that was the Democratic cry,
and that was the Democratic excuse for that election law which had
been forced through the Senate, whipped through the lower house
with the party lash, and passed over the veto of the Republican
governor by the new Democratic leader--the bold, cool, crafty,
silent autocrat. From bombastic orators Jason learned that a fair
ballot was the bulwark of freedom, that some God-given bill of
rights had been smashed, and the very altar of liberty desecrated.
And when John Burnham explained how the autocrat's triumvirate
could at will appoint and remove officers of election, canvass
returns, and certify and determine results, he could understand
how the "atrocious measure," as the great editor of the State
called it, "was a ready chariot to the governor's chair." And in
the summer convention the spirit behind the measure had started
for that goal in just that way, like a scythe-bearing chariot of
ancient days, but cutting down friend as well as foe. Straightway,
Democrats long in line for honors, and gray in the councils of the
party, bolted; the rural press bolted; and Jason heard one bolter
thus cry his fealty and his faithlessness: "As charged, I do stand
ready to vote for a yellow dog, if he be the regular nominee, but
lower than that you shall not drag me."
The autocrat's retort was courteous.
"You have a brother in the penitentiary."
"No," was the answer, "but your brothers have a brother who ought
to be."
The pulpit thundered. Half a million Kentuckians, "professing
Christians and temperance advocates," repudiated the autocrat's
claim to support. A new convention was the cry, and the wheel-
horse of the party, an ex-Confederate, ex-governor, and
aristocrat, answered that cry. The leadership of the Democratic
bolters he took as a "sacred duty"--took it with the gentle
statement that the man who tampers with the rights of the humblest
citizen is worse than the assassin, and should be streaked with a
felon's stripes, and suffered to speak only through barred doors.
From the same tongue, Jason heard with puckered brow that the
honored and honest yeomanry of the commonwealth, through coalition
by judge and politician, would be hoodwinked by the leger-demain
of ballot-juggling magicians; but he did understand when he heard
this yeomanry called brave, adventurous self-gods of creation,
slow to anger and patient with wrongs, but when once stirred, let
the man who had done the wrong--beware! Long ago Jason had heard
the Republican chieftain who was to be pitted against such a foe
characterized as "a plain, unknown man, a hill-billy from the
Pennyroyal, and the nominee because there was no opposition and no
hope." But hope was running high now, and now with the aristocrat,
the autocrat, and the plebeian from the Pennyroyal--whose slogan
was the repeal of the autocrat's election law--the tricornered
fight was on.
On a hot day in the star county of the star district, the
autocrat, like Caesar, had a fainting fit and left the Democrats,
explaining for the rest of the campaign that Republican eyes had
seen a big dirk under his coat; and Jason never rested until with
his own eyes he had seen the man who had begun to possess his
brain like an evil dream. And he did see him and heard him defend
his law as better than the old one, and declare that never again
could the Democrats steal the State with mountain votes--heard him
confidently leave to the common people to decide whether
imperialism should replace democracy, trusts destroy the business
of man with man, and whether the big railroad of the State was the
servant or the master of the people. He heard a senator from the
national capital, whose fortunes were linked with the autocrat's,
declare that leader as the most maligned figure in American
politics, and that he was without a blemish or vice on his private
or public life, but, unlike Pontius Pilate, Jason never thought to
ask himself what was truth, for, in spite of the mountaineer's
Blue-grass allies, the lad had come to believe that there was a
State conspiracy to rob his own people of their rights. This
autocrat was the head and front of that conspiracy; while he spoke
the boy's hatred grew with every word, and turned personal, so
that at the close of the speech he moved near the man with a
fierce desire to fly at his throat then and there. The boy even
caught one sweeping look--cool, fearless, insolent, scorning--the
look the man had for his enemies--and he was left with swimming
head and trembling knees. Then the great Nebraskan came, and Jason
heard him tell the people to vote against him for President if
they pleased--but to stand by Democracy; and in his paper next
morning Jason saw a cartoon of the autocrat driving the great
editor and the Nebraskan on a race-track, hitched together, but
pulling like oxen apart. And through the whole campaign he heard
the one Republican cry ringing like a bell through the State:
"Elect the ticket by a majority that CAN'T be counted out."
Thus the storm went on, the Republicans crying for a free ballot
and a fair count, flaunting on a banner the picture of a man
stuffing a ballot-box and two men with shot-guns playfully
interrupting the performance, and hammering into the head of the
State that no man could be trusted with unlimited power over the
suffrage of a free people. Any ex-Confederate who was for the
autocrat, any repentant bolter that swung away from the
aristocrat, any negro that was against the man from the
Pennyroyal, was lifted by the beneficiary to be looked on by the
public eye. The autocrat would cut down a Republican majority by
contesting votes and throw the matter into the hands of the
legislature--that was the Republican prophecy and the Republican
fear. Manufacturers, merchants, and ministers pleaded for a fair
election. An anti-autocratic grip became prevalent in the hills.
The Hawns and Honeycutts sent word that they had buried the feud
for a while and would fight like brothers for their rights, and
from more than one mountain county came the homely threat that if
those rights were denied, there would somewhere be "a mighty
shovellin' of dirt." And so to the last minute the fight went on.
The boy's head buzzed and ached with the multifarious interests
that filled it, but for all that the autumn was all gold for him
and with both hands he gathered it in. Sometimes he would go home
with Gray for Sunday. With Colonel Pendleton for master, he was
initiated into exercises with dirk and fencing-foil, for not yet
was the boxing-glove considered meet, by that still old-fashioned
courtier, for the hand of a gentleman. Sometimes he would spend
Sunday with John Burnham, and wander with him through the wonders
of Morton Sanders' great farm, and he listened to Burnham and the
colonel talk politics and tobacco, and the old days, and the
destructive changes that were subtly undermining the glories of
those old days. In the tri-cornered foot-ball fight for the State
championship, he had played one game with Central University and
one with old Transylvania, and he had learned the joy of victory
in one and in the other the heart-sickening depression of defeat.
One never-to-be-forgotten night he had gone coon-hunting with
Mavis and Marjorie and Gray--riding slowly through shadowy woods,
or recklessly galloping over the blue-grass fields, and again, as
many times before, he felt his heart pounding with emotions that
seemed almost to make it burst.
For Marjorie, child of sunlight, and Mavis, child of shadows,
riding bareheaded together under the brilliant moon, were the twin
spirits of the night, and that moon dimmed the eyes of both only
as she dimmed the stars. He saw Mavis swerving at every stop and
every gallop to Gray's side, and always he found Marjorie
somewhere near him. And only John Burnham understood it all, and
he wondered and smiled, and with the smile wondered again.
There had been no time for dancing lessons, but the little comedy
of sentiment went on just the same. In neither Mavis nor Jason was
there the slightest consciousness of any chasm between them and
Marjorie and Gray, though at times both felt in the latter pair a
vague atmosphere that neither would for a long time be able to
define as patronage, and so when Jason received an invitation to
the first dance given in the hotel ballroom in town, he went
straight to Marjorie and solemnly asked "the pleasure of her
company" that night.
For a moment Marjorie was speechless.
"Why, Jason," she gasped, "I--I--you're a freshman, and anyhow--"
For the first time the boy gained an inkling of that chasm, and
his eyes turned so fiercely sombre and suspicious that she added
in a hurry:
"It's a joke, Jason--that invitation. No freshman can go to one of
those dances."
Jason looked perplexed now, and still a little suspicious.
"Who'll keep me from goin'?" he asked quietly,
"The sophomores. They sent you that invitation to get you into
trouble. They'll tear your clothes off."
As was the habit of his grandfather Hawn, Jason's tongue went
reflectively to the hollow of one cheek, and his eyes dropped to
the yellow leaves about their feet, and Marjorie waited with a
tingling thrill that some vague thing of importance was going to
happen. Jason's face was very calm when he looked up at last, and
he held out the card of invitation.
"Will that git--get me in, when I a-get to the door?"
"Of course, but--"
"Then I'll be th-there," said Jason, and he turned away.
Now Marjorie knew that Gray expected to take her to that dance,
but he had not yet even mentioned it. Jason had come to her swift
and straight; the thrill still tingled within her, and before she
knew it she had cried impulsively:
"Jason, if you get to that dance, I'll--I'll dance every square
dance with you."
Jason nodded simply and turned away.
The mischief-makers soon learned the boy's purpose, and there was
great joy among them, and when Gray finally asked Marjorie to go
with him, she demurely told him she was going with Jason. Gray was
amazed and indignant, and he pleaded with her not to do anything
so foolish.
"Why, it's outrageous. It will be the talk of the town. Your
mother won't like it. Maybe they won't do anything to him because
you are along, but they might, and think of you being mixed up in
such a mess. Anyhow I tell you--you CAN'T do it."
Marjorie paled and Gray got a look from her that he had never had
before.
"Did I hear you say 'CAN'T'?" she asked coldly. "Well, I'm not
going with him--he won't let me. He's going alone. I'll meet him
there."
Gray made a helpless gesture.
"Well, I'll try to get the fellows to let him alone--on your
account."
"Don't bother--he can take care of himself."
"Why, Marjorie!"
The girl's coldness was turning to fire.
"Why don't you take Mavis?"
Gray started an impatient refusal, and stopped--Mavis was passing
in the grass on the other side of the road, and her face was
flaming violently.
"She heard you," said Gray in a low voice.
The heel of one of Marjorie's little boots came sharply down on
the gravelled road.
"Yes, and I hope she heard YOU--and don't you ever--ever--ever say
CAN'T to me again." And she flashed away.
The news went rapidly through the college and, as Gray predicted,
became the talk of the young people of the town, Marjorie's mother
did object violently, but Marjorie remained firm--what harm was
there in dancing with Jason Hawn, even if he was a poor
mountaineer and a freshman? She was not a snob, even if Gray was.
Jason himself was quiet, non-communicative, dignified. He refused
to discuss the matter with anybody, ignored comment and curiosity,
and his very silence sent a wave of uneasiness through some of the
sophomores and puzzled them all. Even John Burnham, who had
severely reprimanded and shamed Jason for the flag incident,
gravely advised the boy not to go, but even to him Jason was
respectfully non-committal, for this was a matter that, as the boy
saw it, involved his RIGHTS, and the excitement grew quite
feverish when one bit of news leaked out. At the beginning of the
session the old president, perhaps in view of the political
turmoil imminent, had made a request that one would hardly hear in
the chapel of any other hall of learning in the broad United
States.
"If any student had brought with him to college any weapon or
fire-arm, he would please deliver it to the commandant, who would
return it to him at the end of the session, or whenever he should
leave college."
Now Jason had deliberated deeply on that request; on the point of
personal privilege involved he differed with the president, and a
few days before the dance one of his room-mates found not only a
knife, but a huge pistol--relics of Jason's feudal days--
protruding from the top bed. This was the bit of news that leaked,
and Marjorie paled when she heard it, but her word was given, and
she would keep it. There was no sneaking on Jason's part that
night, and when a crowd of sophomores gathered at the entrance of
his dormitory they found a night-hawk that Jason had hired,
waiting at the door, and patiently they waited for Jason.
Down at the hotel ballroom Gray and Marjorie waited, Gray anxious,
worried, and angry, and Marjorie with shining eyes and a pale but
determined face. And she shot a triumphant glance toward Gray when
she saw the figure of the young mountaineer framed at last in the
doorway of the ballroom. There Jason stood a moment, uncouth and
stock-still. His eyes moved only until he caught sight of
Marjorie, and then, with them fixed steadily on her, he solemnly
walked through the sudden silence that swiftly spread through the
room straight for her. He stood cool, calm, and with a curious
dignity before her, and the only sign of his emotion was in a
reckless lapse into his mountain speech.
"I've come to tell ye I can't dance with ye. Nobody can keep me
from goin' whar I've got a right to go, but I won't stay nowhar
I'm not wanted."
And, without waiting for her answer, he turned and stalked
solemnly out again.
XXII
The miracle had happened, and just how nobody could ever say. The
boy had appeared in the door-way and had paused there full in the
light. No revolver was visible--it could hardly have been
concealed in the much-too-small clothes that he wore--and his eyes
flashed no challenge. But he stood there an instant, with face set
and stern, and then he walked slowly to the old rattletrap
vehicle, and, unchallenged, drove away, as, unchallenged, he
walked quietly back to his room again. That defiance alone would
have marked him with no little dignity. It gave John Burnham a
great deal of carefully concealed joy, it dumfounded Gray, and,
while Mavis took it as a matter of course, it thrilled Marjorie,
saddened her, and made her a little ashamed. Nor did it end there.
Some change was quickly apparent to Jason in Mavis. She turned
brooding and sullen, and one day when she and Jason met Gray in
the college yard, she averted her eyes when the latter lifted his
cap, and pretended not to see him. Jason saw an uneasy look in
Gray's eyes, and when he turned questioningly to Mavis, her face
was pale with anger. That night he went home with her to see his
mother, and when the two sat on the porch in the dim starlight
after supper, he bluntly asked her what the matter was, and
bluntly she told him. Only once before had he ever spoken of Gray
to Mavis, and that was about the meeting in the lane, and then she
scorned to tell him whether or not the meeting was accidental, and
Jason knew thereby that it was. Unfortunately he had not stopped
there.
"I saw him try to kiss ye," he said indignantly.
"Have you never tried to kiss a girl?" Mavis had asked quietly,
and Jason reddened.
"Yes," he admitted reluctantly.
"And did she always let ye?"
"Well, no--not--"
"Very well, then," Mavis snapped, and she flaunted away.
It was different now, the matter was more serious, and now they
were cousins and Hawns. Blood spoke to blood and answered to
blood, and when at the end Mavis broke into a fit of shame and
tears, a burst of light opened in Jason's brain and his heart
raged not only for Mavis, but for himself. Gray had been ashamed
to go to that dance with Mavis, and Marjorie had been ashamed to
go with him--there was a chasm, and with every word that Mavis
spoke the wider that chasm yawned.
"Oh, I know it," she sobbed. "I couldn't believe it at first, but
I know it now"--she began to drop back into her old speech--"they
come down in the mountains, and grandpap was nice to 'em, and when
we come up here they was nice to us. But down thar and up here we
was just queer and funny to 'em--an' we're that way yit. They're
good-hearted an' they'd do anything in the world fer us, but we
ain't their kind an' they ain't ourn. They knowed it and we
didn't--but I know it now."
So that was the reason Marjorie had hesitated when Jason asked her
to go to the dance with him.
"Then why did she go?" he burst out. He had mentioned no name
even, but Mavis had been following his thoughts.
"Any gal 'ud do that fer fun," she answered, "an' to git even with
Gray."
"Why do you reckon--"
"That don't make no difference--she wants to git even with me,
too."
Jason wheeled sharply, but before his lips could open Mavis had
sprung to her feet.
"No, I hain't!" she cried hotly, and rushed into the house.
Jason sat on under the stars, brooding. There was no need for
another word between them. Alike they saw the incident and what it
meant; they felt alike, and alike both would act. A few minutes
later his mother came out on the porch.
"Whut's the matter with Mavis?"
"You'll have to ask her, mammy."
With a keen look at the boy, Martha Hawn went back into the house,
and Jason heard Steve's heavy tread behind him.
"I know whut the matter is," he drawled. "Thar hain't nothin' the
matter 'ceptin' that Mavis ain't the only fool in this hyeh
fambly."
Jason was furiously silent, and Steve walked chuckling to the
railing of the porch and spat over it through his teeth and
fingers. Then he looked up at the stars and yawned, and with his
mouth still open, went casually on:
"I seed Arch Hawn in town this mornin'. He says folks is a-hand-
grippin' down thar in the mountains right an' left. Thar's a truce
on betwixt the Hawns an' Honeycutts an' they're gittin' ready fer
the election together."
The lad did not turn his head nor did his lips open.
"These fellers up here tried to bust our county up into little
pieces once--an' do you know why? Bekase we was so LAWLESS." Steve
laughed sayagely. "They're gittin' wuss'n we air. They say we
stole the State fer that bag o' wind, Bryan, when we'd been votin'
the same way fer forty years. Now they're goin' to gag us an' tie
us up like a yearlin' calf. But folks in the mountains ain't a-
goin' to do much bawlin'--they're gittin' ready."
Still Jason refused to answer, but Steve saw that the lad's hands
and mouth were clenched.
"They're gittin' READY," he repeated, "an' I'll be thar."
XXIII
But the sun of election day went down and a breath of relief
passed like a south wind over the land. Perhaps it was the
universal recognition of the universal danger that prevented an
outbreak, but the morning after found both parties charging fraud,
claiming victory, and deadlocked like two savage armies in the
crisis of actual battle. For a fortnight each went on claiming the
victory. In one mountain county the autocrat's local triumvirate
was surrounded by five hundred men, while it was making its count;
in another there were three thousand determined onlookers; and
still another mountain triumvirate was visited by nearly all the
male inhabitants of the county who rode in on horseback and waited
silently and threateningly in the court-house square.
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