Books: The Heart Of The Hills
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John Fox, Jr. >> The Heart Of The Hills
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"Maybe your mother won't like it," he said gravely. "I'm a jail-
bird."
"Don't, Jason," she said, shocked by his frankness; "you couldn't
help that. I want you to come."
Jason was reddening with embarrassment now, but he had to get out
what had been so long on his mind.
"I'm comin' once anyhow. I know what she did for me and I'm comin'
to thank her for doin' it."
Marjorie was surprised and again she smiled.
"Well, she won't like that, Jason," she said, and the boy, not
misunderstanding, smiled too.
"I'm comin'."
Marjorie turned her horse.
"I hope I'll be at home."
Her mood had turned to coquetry again. Jason had meant to tell her
that he knew she herself had been behind her mother's kindness
toward him, but a sudden delicacy forbade, and to her change of
mood he answered:
"You will be--when I come."
This was a new deftness for Jason, and a little flush of pleasure
came to the girl's cheeks and a little seriousness to her eyes.
"Well, you ARE mighty nice, Jason--good-by."
"Good-by," said the boy soberly.
At her own gate the girl turned to look back, but Jason was
striding across the fields. She turned again on the slope of the
hill but Jason was still striding on. She watched him until he had
disappeared, but he did not turn to look and her heart felt a
little hurt. She was very quiet that night, so quiet that she
caught a concerned look in her mother's eyes, and when she had
gone to her room her mother came in and found her in a stream of
moonlight at her window. And when Mrs. Pendleton silently kissed
her, she broke into tears.
"I'm lonely, mother," she sobbed; "I'm so lonely."
A week later Jason sat on the porch one night after supper and his
mother came to the doorway.
"I forgot to tell ye, Jason, that Marjorie Pendleton rid over here
the day you got here an' axed if you'd come home."
"I saw her down the pike that day," said Jason, not showing the
surprise he felt. Steve Hawn, coming around the corner of the
house, heard them both and on his face was a malicious grin.
"Down the pike," he repeated. "I seed ye both a-talkin', up thar
at the edge of the woods. She looked back at ye twice, but you
wouldn't take no notice. Now that Gray ain't hyeh I reckon you
mought--"
The boy's protest, hoarse and inarticulate, stopped Steve, who
dropped his bantering tone and turned serious.
"Now looky here, Jason, yo' uncle Arch has tol' me about Gray and
Mavis already up that in the mountains, an' I see what's comin'
down here fer you. You an' Gray ought to have more sense--gittin'
into such trouble--"
"Trouble!" cried the boy.
"Yes, I know," Steve answered. "Hit is funny fer me to be talkin'
about trouble. I was born to it, as the circuit rider says, as the
sparks fly upward. That ain't no hope fer me, but you--"
The boy rose impatiently but curiously shaken by such words and so
strange a tone from his step-father. He was still shaken when he
climbed to Mavis's room and was looking out of her window, and
that turned his thoughts to her and to Gray in the hills. What was
the trouble that Steve had already heard about Mavis and Gray, and
what the trouble at which Steve had hinted--for him? Once before
Steve had dropped a bit of news, also gathered from Arch Hawn,
that during the truce in the mountains little Aaron Honeycutt had
developed a wild passion for Mavis, but at that absurdity Jason
had only laughed. Still the customs of the Blue-grass and the
hills were widely divergent, and if Gray, only out of loneliness,
were much with Mavis, only one interpretation was possible to the
Hawns and Honeycutts, just as only one interpretation had been
possible for Steve with reference to Marjorie and himself, and
Steve's interpretation he contemptuously dismissed. His
grandfather might make trouble for Gray, or Gray and little Aaron
might clash. He would like to warn Gray, and yet even with that
wish in his mind a little flame of jealousy was already licking at
his heart, though already that heart was thumping at the bid of
Marjorie. Impatiently he began to wonder at the perverse
waywardness of his own soul, and without undressing he sat at the
window--restless, sleepless, and helpless against his warring
self--sat until the shadows of the night began to sweep after the
light of the sinking moon. When he rose finally, he thought he saw
a dim figure moving around the corner of the barn. He rubbed his
eyes to make sure, and then picking up his pistol he slipped down
the stairs and out the side door, taking care not to awaken his
mother and Steve. When he peered forth from the corner of the
house, Steve's chestnut gelding was outside the barn and somebody
was saddling him. Some negro doubtless was stealing him out for a
ride, as was not unusual in that land, and that negro Jason meant
to scare half to death. Noiselessly the boy reached the hen-house,
and when he peered around that he saw to his bewilderment that the
thief was Steve. Once more Steve went into the barn, and this time
when he come out he began to fumble about his forehead with both
hands, and a moment later Jason saw him move toward the gate,
masked and armed. A long shrill whistle came from the turnpike and
he heard Steve start into a gallop down the lane.
XXXVI
It was three days before Steve Hawn returned, ill-humored,
reddened by drink, and worn. As ever, Martha Hawn asked no
questions and Jason betrayed no curiosity, no suspicion, though he
was not surprised to learn that in a neighboring county the night
riders had been at their lawless work, and he had no doubt that
Steve was among them. Jason would be able to help but little that
autumn in the tobacco field, for it was his last year in college
and he meant to work hard at his books, but he knew that the
dispute between his step-father and Colonel Pendleton was still
unsettled--that Steve was bitter and had a secret relentless
purpose to get even. He did not dare give Colonel Pendleton a
warning, for it was difficult, and he knew the fiery old gentleman
would receive such an intervention with a gracious smile and
dismiss it with haughty contempt; so Jason decided merely to keep
a close watch on Steve.
On the opening day of college, as on the opening day three years
before, Jason walked through the fields to town, but he did not
start at dawn. The dew-born mists were gone and the land lay, with
no mystery to the eye or the mind, under a brilliant sun-the
fields of stately corn, the yellow tents of wheat gone from the
golden stretches of stubble, and green trees rising from the dull
golden sheen of the stripped blue-grass pastures. The cut,
upturned tobacco no longer looked like hunchbacked witches on
broom-sticks and ready for flight, for the leaves, waxen, oily,
inert, hung limp and listless from the sticks that pointed like
needles to the north to keep the stalks inclined as much as
possible from the sun. Even they had taken on the Midas touch of
gold, for all green and gold that world of blue-grass was--all
green and gold, except for the shaggy unkempt fields where the
king of weeds had tented the year before and turned them over to
his camp followers--ragweed, dockweed, white-top, and cockle-burr.
But the resentment against such an agricultural outrage that the
boy had caught from John Burnham was no longer so deep, for that
tobacco had kept his mother and himself alive and the father of
his best friend must look to it now to save himself from
destruction. All the way Jason, walking leisurely, confidently,
proudly, and with the fires of his ambition no less keen, thought
of the green mountain boy who had torn across those fields at
sunrise, that when "school took up" he might not be late--thought
of him with much humor and with no little sympathy. When he saw
the smoke cloud over the town he took to the white turnpike and
quickened his pace. Again the campus of the rival old Transylvania
was dotted with students moving to and fro. Again the same
policeman stood on the same corner, but now he shook hands with
Jason and called him by name. When he passed between the two gray
stone pillars with pyramidal tops and swung along the driveway
between the maple-trees and chattering sparrows, there were the
same boys with caps pushed back and trousers turned up, the same
girls with hair up and hair down, but what a difference now for
him! Even while he looked around there was a shout from a crowd
around John Burnham's doorway; several darted from that crowd
toward him and the crowd followed. A dozen of them were trying to
catch his hand at once, and the welcome he had seen Gray Pendleton
once get he got now for himself, for again a pair of hands went
high, a series of barbaric yells were barked out, and the air was
rent with the name of Jason Hawn. Among them Jason stood flushed,
shy, grateful. A moment later he saw John Burnham in the doorway--
looking no less pleased and waiting for him. Even the old
president paused on his crutches for a handshake and a word of
welcome. The boy found himself wishing that Marjorie--and Mavis--
were there, and, as he walked up the steps, from out behind John
Burnham Marjorie stepped--proud for him and radiant.
And so, through that autumn, the rectangular, diametric little
comedy went on between Marjorie and Jason in the Blue-grass and
between Gray and Mavis in the hills. No Saturday passed that Jason
did not spend at his mother's home or with John Burnham, and to
the mother and Steve and to Burnham his motive was plain--for most
of the boy's time was spent with Marjorie Pendleton. Somehow
Marjorie seemed always driving to town or coming home when Jason
was on his way home or going to town, and somehow he was always
afoot and Marjorie was always giving him a kindly lift one or the
other way. Moreover, horses were plentiful as barn-yard fowls on
Morton Sanders' farm, and the manager, John Burnham's brother, who
had taken a great fancy to Jason, gave him a mount whenever the
boy pleased. And so John Burnham saw the pair galloping the
turnpikes or through the fields, or at dusk going slowly toward
Marjorie's home. Besides, Marjorie organized many hunting parties
that autumn, and the moon and the stars looking down saw the two
never apart for long. About the intimacy Mrs. Pendleton and the
colonel thought little. Colonel Pendleton liked the boy, Mrs.
Pendleton wanted Marjorie at home, and she was glad for her to
have companionship. Moreover, to both, Marjorie was still a child,
anything serious would be absurd, and anyway Marjorie was meant
for Gray.
In the mountains Gray's interest in his life was growing every
day. He liked to watch things planned and grow into execution. His
day began with the screech of a whistle at midnight. Every morning
he saw the sun rise and the mists unroll and the drenched flanks
of the mountains glisten and drip under the sunlight. During the
afternoon he woke up in time to stroll down the creek, meet Mavis
after school and walk back to the circuit rider's house with her.
After supper every night he would go down the spur and sit under
the honeysuckles with her on the porch. The third time he came the
old man and woman quietly withdrew and were seen no more, and this
happened thereafter all the time. Meanwhile in the Blue-grass and
the hills the forked tongues of gossip began to play, reaching
last, as usual, those who were most concerned, but, as usual,
reaching them, too, in time. In the Blue-grass it was criticism of
Colonel and Mrs. Pendleton, their indifference, carelessness,
blindness, a gaping question of their sanity at the risk of even a
suspicion that such a mating might be possible--the proud daughter
of a proud family with a nobody from the hills, unknown except
that he belonged to a fierce family whose history could be written
in human blood; who himself had been in jail on the charge of
murder; whose mother could not write her own name; whose step-
father was a common tobacco tenant no less illiterate, and with a
brain that was a hotbed of lawless mischief, and who held the life
of a man as cheap as the life of a steer fattening for the
butcher's knife. But in all the gossip there was no sinister
suggestion or even thought save in the primitive inference of this
same Steve Hawn.
In the mountains, too, the gossip was for a while innocent. To the
simple democratic mountain way of thinking, there was nothing
strange in the intimacy of Mavis and Gray. There Gray was no
better than any mountain boy. He was in love with Mavis, he was
courting her, and if he won her he would marry her, and that
simply was all--particularly in the mind of old grandfather Hawn.
Likewise, too, was there for a while nothing sinister in the talk,
for at first Mavis held to the mountain custom, and would not walk
in the woods with Gray unless one of the school-children was
along--nothing sinister except to little Aaron Honeycutt, whose
code had been a little poisoned by his two years' stay outside the
hills.
Once more about each pair the elements of social tragedy began to
concentrate, intensify, and become active. The new development in
the hills made business competition keen between Shade Hawn and
Hiram Honeycutt, who each ran a hotel and store in the county-
seat. As old Jason Hawn and old Aaron Honeycutt had retired from
the leadership, and little Jason and little Aaron had been out of
the hills, leadership naturally was assumed by these two business
rivals, who revived the old hostility between the factions, but
gave vent to it in a secret, underhanded way that disgusted not
only old Jason but even old Aaron as well. For now and then a
hired Hawn would drop a Honeycutt from the bushes and a hired
Honeycutt would drop a Hawn. There was, said old Jason with an
oath of contempt, no manhood left in the feud. No principal went
gunning for a principal--no hired assassin for another of his
kind.
"Nobody ain't shootin' the RIGHT feller," said the old man. "Looks
like hit's a question of which hired feller gits fust the man who
hired the other feller."
And when this observation reached old Aaron he agreed heartily.
"Fer once in his life," he said, "old Jason Hawn kind o' by
accident is a-hittin' the truth." And each old man bet in his
secret heart, if little Aaron and little Jason were only at home
together, things would go on in quite a different way.
In the lowlands the tobacco pool had been formed and, when
persuasion and argument failed, was starting violent measures to
force into the pool raisers who would not go in willingly. In the
western and southern parts of the State the night riders had been
more than ever active. Tobacco beds had been destroyed, barns had
been burned, and men had been threatened, whipped, and shot.
Colonel Pendleton found himself gradually getting estranged from
some of his best friends. He quarrelled with old Morton Sanders,
and in time he retired to his farm, as though it were the pole of
the earth. His land was his own to do with as he pleased. No man,
no power but the Almighty and the law, could tell him what he MUST
do. The tobacco pool was using the very methods of the trust it
was seeking to destroy. Under those circumstances he considered
his duty to himself paramount to his duty to his neighbor, and his
duty to himself he would do; and so the old gentleman lived
proudly in his loneliness and refused to know fear, though the
night riders were getting busy now in the counties adjacent to the
Blue-grass, and were threatening raids into the colonel's own
county--the proudest in the State. Other "independents" hardly
less lonely, hardly less hated, had electrified their barbed-wire
fences, and had hired guards--fighting men from the mountains--to
watch their barns and houses, but such an example the colonel
would not follow, though John Burnham pleaded with him, and even
Jason dared at last to give him a covert warning, with no hint,
however, that the warning was against his own step-father Steve.
It was the duty of the law to protect him, the colonel further
argued; the county judge had sworn that the law would do its best;
and only when the law could not protect him would the colonel
protect himself.
And so the winter months passed until one morning a wood-thrush
hidden in green depths sent up a song of spring to Gray's ears in
the hills, and in the Blue-grass a meadow-lark wheeling in the
sun-light showered down the same song upon the heart of Jason
Hawn.
Almost every Saturday Mavis would go down to stay till Monday with
her grandfather Hawn. Gray would drift down there to see her--and
always, while Mavis was helping her grandmother in the kitchen,
Gray and old Jason would sit together on the porch. Gray never
tired of the old man's shrewd humor, quaint philosophy, his
hunting tales and stories of the feud, and old Jason liked Gray
and trusted him more the more he saw of him. And Gray was a little
startled when it soon became evident that the old man took it for
granted that in his intimacy with Mavis was one meaning and only
one.
"I al'ays thought Mavis would marry Jason," he said one night,
"but, Lordy Mighty, I'm nigh on to eighty an' I don't know no more
about gals than when I was eighteen. A feller stands more chance
with some of 'em stayin' away, an' agin if he stays away from some
of 'em he don't stand no chance at all. An' agin I rickollect that
if I hadn't 'a' got mad an' left grandma in thar jist at one time
an' hadn't 'a' come back jist at the right time another time, I'd
'a' lost her--shore. Looks like you're cuttin' Jason out mighty
fast now--but which kind of a gal Mavis in thar is, I don't know
no more'n if I'd never seed her."
Gray flushed and said nothing, and a little later the old man went
frankly on:
"I'm gittin' purty old now an' I hain't goin' to last much longer,
I reckon. An' I want you to know if you an' Mavis hitch up fer a
life-trot tergether I aim to divide this farm betwixt her an'
Jason, an' you an' Mavis can have the half up thar closest to the
mines, so you can be close to yo' work."
The boy was saved any answer, for the old man expected and waited
for none, so simple was the whole matter to him, but Gray, winding
up the creek homeward in the moonlight that night, did some pretty
serious thinking. No such interpretation could have been put on
the intimacy between him and Mavis at home, for there
companionship, coquetry, sentiment, devotion even, were possible
without serious parental concern. Young people in the Blue-grass
handled their own heart affairs, and so they did for that matter
in the hills, but Gray could not realize that primitive conditions
forbade attention without intention: for life was simple, mating
was early because life was so simple, and Nature's way with
humanity was as with her creatures of the fields and air except
for the eye of God and the hand of the law. A license, a few words
from the circuit rider, a cleared hill-side, a one-room log cabin,
a side of bacon, and a bag of meal--and, from old Jason's point of
view, Gray and Mavis could enter the happy portals, create life
for others, and go on hand in hand to the grave. So that where
complexity would block Jason in the Blue-grass, simplicity would
halt Gray in the hills. To be sure, the strangeness, the wildness,
the activity of the life had fascinated Gray. He loved to ride the
mountains and trails--even to slosh along the river road with the
rain beating on him, dry and warm under a poncho. Often he would
be caught out in the hills and have to stay all night in a cabin;
and thus he learned the way of life away from the mines and the
river bottoms. So far that poor life had only been pathetic and
picturesque, but now when he thought of it as a part of his own
life, of the people becoming through Mavis his people, he
shuddered and stopped in the moonlit road-aghast. Still, the code
of his father was his, all women were sacred, and with all there
would be but one duty for him, if circumstances, as they bade fair
to now, made that one duty plain. And if his father should go
under, if Morton Sanders took over his home and the boy must make
his own way and live his life where he was--why not? Gray sat in
the porch of the house on the spur, long asking himself that
question. He was asking it when he finally went to bed, and he
went with it, unanswered, to sleep.
XXXVII
The news reached Colonel Pendleton late one afternoon while he was
sitting on his porch--pipe in mouth and with a forbidden mint
julep within easy reach. He had felt the reticence of Gray's
letters, he knew that the boy was keeping back some important
secret from him as long as he could, and now, in answer to his own
kind, frank letter Gray had, without excuse or apology, told the
truth, and what he had not told the colonel fathomed with ease. He
had hardly made up his mind to go at once to Gray, or send for
him, when a negro boy galloped up to the stile and brought him a
note from Marjorie's mother to come to her at once--and the
colonel scented further trouble in the air.
There had been a turmoil that afternoon at Mrs. Pendleton's.
Marjorie had come home a little while before with Jason Hawn and,
sitting in the hallway, Mrs. Pendleton had seen Jason on the
stile, with his hat in one hand and his bridle reins in the other,
and Marjorie halting suddenly on her way to the house and wheeling
impetuously back toward him. To the mother's amazement and dismay
she saw that they were quarrelling--quarrelling as only lovers
can. The girl's face was flushed with anger, and her red lips were
winging out low, swift, bitter words. The boy stood straight,
white, courteous, and unanswering. He lifted his chin a little
when she finished, and unanswering turned to his horse and rode
away. The mother saw her daughter's face pale quickly. She saw
tears as Marjorie came up the walk, and when she rose in alarm and
stood waiting in the doorway, the girl fled past her and rushed
weeping upstairs.
Mrs. Pendleton was waiting in the porch when the colonel rode to
the stile, and the distress in her face was so plain even that far
away, that the colonel hurried up the walk, and there was no
greeting between the two:
"It's Marjorie, Robert," she said simply, and the old gentleman,
who had seen Jason come out of the yard gate and gallop toward
John Burnham's, guessed what the matter was, and he took the slim
white hands that were clenched together and patted them gently:
"There--there! Don't worry, don't worry!"
He led her into the house, and at the top of the steps stood
Marjorie in white, her hair down and tears streaming down her
face:
"Come here, Marjorie," called Colonel Pendleton, and she obeyed
like a child, talking wildly as she came:
"I know what you're going to say, Uncle Bob--I know it all. I'm
tired of all this talk about family, Uncle Bob, I'm tired of it."
She had stopped a few steps above, clinging with one trembling
hand to the balcony, as though to have her say quite out before
she went helplessly into the arms that were stretched out toward
her:
"Dead people are dead, Uncle Bob, and only live people really
count. People have to be alive to help you and make you happy. I
want to be happy, Uncle Bob--I want to be happy. I know all about
the Pendletons, Uncle Bob. They were Cavaliers--I know all that--
and they used to ride about sticking lances into peasants who
couldn't afford a suit of armor, but they can't do anything for me
now, and they mustn't interfere with me now. Anyhow, the Sudduths
were plain people and I'm not a bit ashamed of it, mother. Great-
grandfather Hiram lived in a log cabin. Grandfather Hiram ate with
his knife. I've SEEN him do it, and he kept on doing it when he
knew better just out of habit or stubbornness, but Jason's people
ate with their knives because they didn't HAVE anything but TWO-
pronged forks--I heard John Burnham say that. And Jason's family
is as good as the Sudduths, and maybe as the Pendletons, and he
wouldn't know it because his grandfathers were out of the world
and were too busy, fighting Indians and killing bears and things
for food. They didn't have TIME to keep their family trees
trimmed, and they didn't CARE anything about the old trees anyhow,
and I don't either. John Burnham has told me--"
"Marjorie!" said the colonel gently, for she was getting
hysterical. He held out his arms to her, and with another burst of
weeping she went into them.
Half an hour later, when she was calm, the colonel got her to ride
over home with him, and what she had not told her mother Marjorie
on the way told him--in a halting voice and with her face turned
aside.
"There's something funny and deep about him, Uncle Bob, and I
never could reach it. It piqued me and made me angry. I knew he
cared for me, but I could never make him tell it."
The colonel was shaking his old head wisely and comprehendingly.
"I don't know why, but I flew into a rage with him this afternoon
about nothing, and he never answered me a word, but stood there
listening--why, Uncle Bob, he stood there like--like a--a
gentleman--till I got through, and then he turned away--he never
did say anything, and I was so sorry and ashamed that I nearly
died. I don't know what to do now--and he won't come back, Uncle
Bob--I know he won't."
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