Books: The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come

J >> John Fox, Jr. >> The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come

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The outside world had moved swiftly during the two years that they had been
buried in the hills as they learned at the farm-house that night. Already the
national storm was threatening, the air was electrically charged with alarms,
and already here and there the lightning had flashed. The underground railway
was busy with black freight, and John Brown, fanatic, was boldly lifting his
shaggy head. Old Brutus Dean was even publishing an abolitionist paper at
Lexington, the aristocratic heart of the State. He was making abolition
speeches throughout the Bluegrass with a dagger thrust in the table before
him--shaking his black mane and roaring defiance like a lion. The news
thrilled Chad unaccountably, as did the shadow of any danger, but it threw
the school-master into gloom. There was more. A dark little man by the name
of Douglas and a sinewy giant by the name of Lincoln were thrilling the West.
Phillips and Garrison were thundering in Massachusetts, and fiery tongues in
the South were flashing back scornful challenges and threats that would
imperil a nation. An invisible air-line shot suddenly between the North and
the South, destined to drop some day and lie a dead-line on the earth, and on
each side of it two hordes of brothers, who thought themselves two hostile
peoples, were shrinking away from each other with the half-conscious purpose
of making ready for a charge. In no other State in the Union was the
fratricidal character of the coming war to be so marked as in Kentucky, in no
other State was the national drama to be so fully played to the bitter end.

That night even, Brutus Dean was going to speak near by, and Chad and Caleb
Hazel went to hear him. The fierce abolitionist first placed a Bible before
him.

"This is for those who believe in religion," he said; then a copy of the
Constitution: "this for those who believe in the laws and in freedom of
speech. And this," he thundered, driving a dagger into the table and leaving
it to quiver there, "is for the rest!" Then he went on and no man dared to
interrupt.

And only next day came the rush of wind that heralds the storm. Just outside
of Lexington Chad and the school-master left the mare and colt at a
farm-house and with Jack went into town on foot. It was Saturday afternoon,
the town was full of people, and an excited crowd was pressing along Main
Street toward Cheapside. The man and the boy followed eagerly. Cheapside was
thronged--thickest around a frame building that bore a newspaper sign on
which was the name of Brutus Dean. A man dashed from a hardware store with an
axe, followed by several others with heavy hammers in their hands. One swing
of the axe, the door was crashed open and the crowd went in like wolves.
Shattered windows, sashes and all, flew out into the street, followed by
showers of type, chair-legs, table-tops, and then, piece by piece, the
battered cogs, wheels, and forms of a printing-press. The crowd made little
noise. In fifteen minutes the house was a shell with gaping windows,
surrounded with a pile of chaotic rubbish, and the men who had done the work
quietly disappeared. Chad looked at the school-master for the first time:
neither of them had uttered a word. The school-master's face was white with
anger, his hands were clinched, and his eyes were so fierce and burning that
the boy was frightened.

CHAPTER 15. TO COLLEGE IN THE BLUEGRASS

As the school-master had foretold, there was no room at college for Jack.
Several times Major Buford took the dog home with him, but Jack would not
stay. The next morning the dog would turn up at the door of the dormitory
where Chad and the school-master slept, and as a last resort the boy had to
send Jack home. So, one Sunday morning Chad led Jack out of the town for
several miles, and at the top of a high hill pointed toward the mountains and
sternly told him to go home. And Jack, understanding that the boy was in
earnest, trotted sadly away with a placard around his neck:

I own this dog. His name is Jack. He is on his way to Kingdom Come. Please
feed him. Uncle Joel Turner will shoot any man who steels him. CHAD.

It was no little consolation to Chad to think that the faithful sheep-dog
would in no small measure repay the Turners for all they had done for him.
But Jack was the closest link that bound him to the mountains, and dropping
out of sight behind the crest of the hill, Chad crept to the top again and
watched Jack until he trotted out of sight, and the link was broken. Then
Chad went slowly and sorrowfully back to his room.

It was the smallest room in the dormitory that the school-master had chosen
for himself and Chad, and in it were one closet, one table, one lamp, two
chairs and one bed--no more. There were two windows in the little room--one
almost swept by the branches of a locust-tree and overlooking the brown-gray
sloping campus and the roofs and church-steeples of the town--the other
opening to the east on a sweep of field and woodland over which the sun rose
with a daily message from the unseen mountains far beyond and toward which
Chad had sent Jack trotting home. It was a proud day for Chad when Caleb
Hazel took him to "matriculate"--leading him from one to another of the
professors, who awed the lad with their preternatural dignity, but it was a
sad blow when he was told that in everything but mathematics he must go to
the preparatory department until the second session of the term--the
"kitchen," as it was called by the students. He bore it bravely, though, and
the school-master took him down the shady streets to the busy thoroughfare,
where the official book-store was, and where Chad, with pure ecstasy, caught
his first new books under one arm and trudged back, bending his head now and
then to catch the delicious smell of the fresh leaves and print. It was while
he was standing with his treasures under the big elm at the turnstile,
looking across the campus at the sundown that two boys came down the gravel
path. He knew them both at once as Dan and Harry Dean. Both looked at him
curiously, as he thought, but he saw that neither knew him and no one spoke.
The sound of wheels came up the street behind him just then, and a carriage
halted at the turnstile to take them in. Turning, Chad saw a slender girl
with dark hair and eyes and heard her call brightly to the boys. He almost
caught his breath at the sound of her voice, but he kept sturdily on his way,
and the girl's laugh rang in his ears as it rang the first time he heard it,
was ringing when he reached his room, ringing when he went to bed that night,
and lay sleepless, looking through his window at the quiet stars.

For some time, indeed, no one recognized him, and Chad was glad. Once he met
Richard Hunt riding with Margaret, and the piercing dark eyes that the boy
remembered so well turned again to look at him. Chad colored and bravely met
them with his own, but there was no recognition. And he saw John
Morgan--Captain John Morgan--at the head of the "Lexington Rifles," which he
had just formed from the best blood of the town, as though in long
preparation for that coming war--saw him and Richard Hunt, as lieutenant,
drilling them in the campus, and the sight thrilled him as nothing else,
except Margaret, had ever done. Many times he met the Dean brothers on the
playground and in the streets, but there was no sign that he was known until
he was called to the blackboard one day in geometry, the only course in which
he had not been sent to the "kitchen." Then Chad saw Harry turn quickly when
the professor called his name. Confused though he was for a moment, he gave
his demonstration in his quaint speech with perfect clearness and without
interruption from the professor, who gave the boy a keen look as he said,
quietly:

"Very good, sir!" And Harry could see his fingers tracing in his class-book
the figures that meant a perfect recitation.

"How are you, Chad?" he said in the hallway afterward.

"Howdye!" said Chad, shaking the proffered hand.

"I didn't know you--you've grown so tall. Didn't you know me?"

"Yes."

"Then why didn't you speak to me?"

"'Cause you didn't know ME."

Harry laughed. "Well, that isn't fair. See you again."

"All right," said Chad.

That very afternoon Chad met Dan in a football game--an old-fashioned game,
in which there were twenty or thirty howling lads on each side and nobody
touched the ball except with his foot--met him so violently that, clasped in
each other's arms, they tumbled to the ground.

"Leggo!" said Dan.

"S'pose you leggo!" said Chad.

As Dan started after the ball he turned to look at Chad and after the game he
went up to him.

"Why, aren't you the boy who was out at Major Buford's once?"

"Yes." Dan thrust out his hand and began to laugh. So did Chad, and each knew
that the other was thinking of the tournament.

"In college?"

"Math'matics," said Chad. "I'm in the kitchen fer the rest."

"Oh!" said Dan. "Where you living?" Chad pointed to the dormitory, and again
Dan said "Oh!" in a way that made Chad flush, but added, quickly:

"You better play on our side to-morrow."

Chad looked at his clothes--foot-ball seemed pretty hard on clothes--"I don't
know," he said--"mebbe."

It was plain that neither of the boys was holding anything against Chad, but
neither had asked the mountain lad to come to see him--an omission that was
almost unforgivable according to Chad's social ethics. So Chad proudly went
into his shell again, and while the three boys met often, no intimacy
developed. Often he saw them with Margaret, on the street, in a carriage or
walking with a laughing crowd of boys and girls; on the porticos of old
houses or in the yards; and, one night, Chad saw, through the wide-open door
of a certain old house on the corner of Mill and Market Streets, a party
going on; and Margaret, all in white, dancing, and he stood in the shade of
the trees opposite with new pangs shooting through him and went back to his
room in desolate loneliness, but with a new grip on his resolution that his
own day should yet come.

Steadily the boy worked, forging his way slowly but surely toward the head of
his class in the "kitchen," and the school-master helped him unwearyingly.
And it was a great help--mental and spiritual--to be near the stern Puritan,
who loved the boy as a brother and was ever ready to guide him with counsel
and aid him with his studies. In time the Major went to the president to ask
him about Chad, and that august dignitary spoke of the lad in a way that made
the Major, on his way through the campus, swish through the grass with his
cane in great satisfaction. He always spoke of the boy now as his adopted son
and, whenever it was possible, he came in to take Chad out home to spend
Sunday with him; but, being a wise man and loving Chad's independence, he let
the boy have his own way. He had bought the filly--and would hold her, he
said, until Chad could buy her back, and he would keep the old nag as a
broodmare and would divide profits with Chad--to all of which the boy agreed.
The question of the lad's birth was ignored between them, and the Major
rarely spoke to Chad of the Deans, who were living in town during the winter,
nor questioned him about Dan or Harry or Margaret. But Chad had found out
where the little girl went to church, and every Sunday, despite Caleb Hazel's
protest, he would slip into the Episcopal church, with a queer
feeling -- little Calvinist of the hills that he was -- that it was not quite
right for him even to enter that church; and he would watch the little girl
come in with her family and, after the queer way of these "furriners," kneel
first in prayer. And there, with soul uplifted by the dim rich light and the
peal of the organ, he would sit watching her; rising when she rose, watching
the light from the windows on her shining hair and sweet-spirited face,
watching her reverent little head bend in obeisance to the name of the Master,
though he kept his own held straight, for no Popery like that was for him.
Always, however, he would slip out before the service was quite over and never
wait even to see her come out of church. He was too proud for that and,
anyhow, it made him lonely to see the people greeting one another and chatting
and going off home together when there was not a soul to speak to him. It was
just one such Sunday that they came face to face for the first time. Chad had
gone down the street after leaving the church, had changed his mind and was
going back to his room. People were pouring from the church, as he went by,
but Chad did not even look across. A clatter rose behind him and he turned to
see a horse and rockaway coming at a gallop up the street, which was narrow.
The negro driver, frightened though he was, had sense enough to pull his
running horse away from the line of vehicles in front of the church so that
the beast stumbled against the curb-stone, crashed into a tree, and dropped
struggling in the gutter below another line of vehicles waiting on the other
side of the street. Like lightning, Chad leaped and landed full length on the
horse's head and was tossed violently to and fro, but he held on until the
animal lay still.

"Unhitch the hoss," he called, sharply.

"Well, that was pretty quick work for a boy," said a voice across the street
that sounded familiar, and Chad looked across to see General Dean and
Margaret watching him. The boy blushed furiously when his eyes met Margaret's
and he thought he saw her start slightly, but he lowered his eyes and hurried
away.

It was only a few days later that, going up from town toward the campus, he
turned a corner and there was Margaret alone and moving slowly ahead of him.
Hearing his steps she turned her head to see who it was, but Chad kept his
eyes on the ground and passed her without looking up. And thus he went on,
although she was close behind him, across the street and to the turnstile. As
he was passing through, a voice rose behind him:

"You aren't very polite, little boy." He turned quickly--Margaret had not
gone around the corner: she, too, was coming through the campus and there she
stood, grave and demure, though her eyes were dancing.

"My mamma says a NICE little boy always lets a little GIRL go FIRST."

"I didn't know you was comin' through."

"Was comin' through!" Margaret made a little face as though to say--"Oh,
dear."

"I said I didn't know you were coming through this way."

Margaret shook her head. "No," she said; "no, you didn't."

"Well, that's what I meant to say." Chad was having a hard time with his
English. He had snatched his cap from his head, had stepped back outside the
stile and was waiting to turn it for her. Margaret passed through and waited
where the paths forked.

"Are you going up to the college?" she asked.

"I was--but I ain't now--if you'll let me walk a piece with you." He was
scarlet with confusion--a tribute that Chad rarely paid his kind. His way of
talking was very funny, to be sure, but had she not heard her father say that
"the poor little chap had had no chance in life;" and Harry, that some day he
would be the best in his class?

"Aren't you--Chad?"

"Yes--ain't you Margaret--Miss Margaret?"

"Yes, I'm Margaret." She was pleased with the hesitant title and the boy's
halting reverence.

"An' I called you a little gal." Margaret's laugh tinkled in merry
remembrance. "An' you wouldn't take my fish."

"I can't bear to touch them."

"I know," said Chad, remembering Melissa.

They passed a boy who knew Chad, but not Margaret. The lad took off his hat,
but Chad did not lift his; then a boy and a girl and, when only the two girls
spoke, the other boy lifted his hat, though he did not speak to Margaret.
Still Chad's hat was untouched and when Margaret looked up, Chad's face was
red with confusion again. But it never took the boy long to learn and,
thereafter, during the walk his hat came off unfailingly. Everyone looked at
the two with some surprise and Chad noticed that the little girl's chin was
being lifted higher and higher. His intuition told him what the matter was,
and when they reached the stile across the campus and Chad saw a crowd of
Margaret's friends coming down the street, he halted as if to turn back, but
the little girl told him imperiously to come on. It was a strange escort for
haughty Margaret--the country-looking boy, in coarse homespun--but Margaret
spoke cheerily to her friends and went on, looking up at Chad and talking to
him as though he were the dearest friend she had on earth.

At the edge of town she suggested that they walk across a pasture and go back
by another street, and not until they were passing through the woodland did
Chad come to himself.

"You know I didn't rickollect when you called me 'little boy.'"

"Indeed!"

"Not at fust, I mean," stammered Chad.

Margaret grew mock-haughty and Chad grew grave. He spoke very slowly and
steadily. "I reckon I rickollect ever'thing that happened out thar a sight
better'n you. I ain't forgot nothin'--anything."

The boy's sober and half-sullen tone made Margaret catch her breath with a
sudden vague alarm.

Unconsciously she quickened her pace, but, already, she was mistress of an
art to which she was born and she said, lightly:

"Now, that's MUCH better." A piece of pasteboard dropped from Chad's jacket
just then, and, taking the little girl's cue to swerve from the point at
issue, he picked it up and held it out for Margaret to read. It was the first
copy of the placard which he had tied around Jack's neck when he sent him
home, and it set Margaret to laughing and asking questions. Before he knew it
Chad was telling her about Jack and the mountains; how he had run away; about
the Turners and about Melissa and coming down the river on a raft--all he had
done and all he meant to do. And from looking at Chad now and then, Margaret
finally kept her eyes fixed on his--and thus they stood when they reached the
gate, while crows flew cawing over them and the air grew chill.

"And did Jack go home?"

Chad laughed.

"No, he didn't. He come back, and I had to hide fer two days. Then, because
he couldn't find me he did go, thinking I had gone back to the mountains,
too. He went to look fer me."

"Well, if he comes back again I'll ask my papa to get them to let you keep
Jack at college," said Margaret.

Chad shook his head.

"Then I'll keep him for you myself." The boy looked his gratitude, but shook
his head again.

"He won't stay."

Margaret asked for the placard again as they moved down the street.

"You've got it spelled wrong," she said, pointing to "steel." Chad blushed.
"I can't spell when I write," he said. "I can't even talk--right."

"But you'll learn," she said.

"Will you help me?"

"Yes."

"Tell me when I say things wrong?"

"Yes."

"Where'm I goin' to see you?"

Margaret shook her head thoughtfully: then the reason for her speaking first
to Chad came out.

"Papa and I saw you on Sunday, and papa said you must be very strong as well
as brave, and that you knew something about horses. Harry told us who you
were when papa described you, and then I remembered. Papa told Harry to bring
you to see us. And you must come," she said, decisively.

They had reached the turnstile at the campus again.

"Have you had any more tournaments?" asked Margaret.

"No," said Chad, apprehensively.

"Do you remember the last thing I said to you?"

"I rickollect that better'n anything," said Chad.

"Well, I didn't hate you. I'm sorry I said that," she said gently. Chad
looked very serious.

"That's all right," he said. "I seed--I saw you on Sunday, too."

"Did you know me?"

"I reckon I did. And that wasn't the fust time." Margaret's eyes were opening
with surprise.

"I been goin' to church ever' Sunday fer nothin' else but just to see you."
Again his tone gave her vague alarm, but she asked:

"Why didn't you speak to me?"

They were nearing the turnstile across the campus now, and Chad did not
answer.

"Why didn't you speak to me?"

Chad stopped suddenly, and Margaret looked quickly at him, and saw that his
face was scarlet. The little girl started and her own face flamed. There was
one thing she had forgotten, and even now she could not recall what it
was--only that it was something terrible she must not know--old Mammy's words
when Dan was carried in senseless after the tournament. Frightened and
helpless, she shrank toward the turnstile, but Chad did not wait. With his
cap in his hand, he turned abruptly, without a sound, and strode away.

CHAPTER 16. AGAIN THE BAR SINISTER

And yet, the next time Chad saw Margaret, she spoke to him shyly but
cordially, and when he did not come near her, she stopped him on the street
one day and reminded him of his promise to come and see them. And Chad knew
the truth at once--that she had never asked her father about him, but had not
wanted to know what she had been told she must not know, and had properly
taken it for granted that her father would not ask Chad to his house, if there
were a good reason why he should not come. But Chad did not go even to the
Christmas party that Margaret gave in town, though the Major urged him. He
spent Christmas with the Major, and he did go to a country party, where the
Major was delighted with the boy's grace and agility dancing the quadrille,
and where the lad occasioned no little amusement with his improvisations in
the way of cutting pigeon's wings and shuffling, which he had learned in the
mountains. So the Major made him accept a loan and buy a suit for social
purposes after Christmas, and had him go to Madam Blake's dancing school, and
promise to go to the next party to which he was asked. And that Chad did--to
the big gray house on the corner, through whose widespread doors his longing
eyes had watched Margaret and her friends flitting like butterflies months
before.

It intoxicated the boy--the lights, music, flowers, the little girls in
white--and Margaret. For the first time he met her friends, Nellie Hunt,
sister to Richard; Elizabeth Morgan, cousin to John Morgan; and Miss Jennie
Overstreet, who, young as she was, wrote poems--but Chad had eyes only for
Margaret. It was while he was dancing a quadrille with her, that he noticed a
tall, pale youth with black hair, glaring at him, and he recognized Georgie
Forbes, a champion of Margaret, and the old enemy who had caused his first
trouble in his new home. Chad laughed with fearless gladness, and Margaret
tossed her head. It was Georgie now who blackened and spread the blot on
Chad's good name, and it was Georgie to whom Chad--fast learning the ways of
gentlemen--promptly sent a pompous challenge, that the difficulty might be
settled "in any way the gentleman saw fit." Georgie insultingly declined to
fight with one who was not his equal, and Chad boxed his jaws in the presence
of a crowd, floored him with one blow, and contemptuously twisted his nose.
Thereafter open comment ceased. Chad was making himself known. He was the
swiftest runner on the football field; he had the quickest brain in
mathematics; he was elected to the Periclean Society, and astonished his
fellow-members with a fiery denunciation of the men who banished Napoleon to
St. Helena--so fiery was it, indeed, that his opponents themselves began to
wonder how that crime had ever come to pass. He would fight at the drop of a
hat, and he always won; and by-and-by the boy began to take a fierce joy in
battling his way upward against a block that would have crushed a weaker soul.
It was only with Margaret that that soul was in awe. He began to love her with
a pure reverence that he could never know at another age. Every Saturday
night, when dusk fell, he was mounting the steps of her house. Every Sunday
morning he was waiting to take her home from church. Every afternoon he looked
for her, hoping to catch sight of her on the streets, and it was only when Dan
and Harry got indignant, and after Margaret had made a passionate defence of
Chad in the presence of the family, that the General and Mrs. Dean took the
matter in hand. It was a childish thing, of course; a girlish whim. It was
right that they should be kind to the boy--for Major Buford's sake, if not for
his own; but they could not have even the pretence of more than a friendly
intimacy between the two, and so Margaret was told the truth. Immediately,
when Chad next saw her, her honest eyes sadly told him that she knew the
truth, and Chad gave up then. Thereafter he disappeared from sports and from
his kind every way, except in the classroom and in the debating hall. Sullenly
he stuck to his books. From five o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at
night, he was at them steadily, in his room, or at recitation except for an
hour's walk with the school-master and the three half-hours that his meals
kept him away. He grew so pale and thin that the Major and Caleb Hazel were
greatly worried, but protest from both was useless. Before the end of the term
he had mounted into college in every study, and was holding his own. At the
end he knew his power--knew what he COULD do, and his face was set, for his
future, dauntless. When vacation came, he went at once to the Major's farm,
but not to be idle. In a week or two he was taking some of the reins into his
own hands as a valuable assistant to the Major. He knew a good horse, could
guess the weight of a steer with surprising accuracy, and was a past master in
knowledge of sheep. By instinct he was canny at a trade--what mountaineer is
not?--and he astonished the Major with the shrewd deals he made. Authority
seemed to come naturally to him, and the Major swore that he could get more
work out of the "hands" than the overseer himself, who sullenly resented
Chad's interference, but dared not open his lips. Not once did he go to the
Deans', and neither Harry nor Dan came near him. There was little intercourse
between the Major and the General, as well; for, while the Major could not,
under the circumstances, blame the General, inconsistently, he could not quite
forgive him, and the line of polite coolness between the neighbors was never
overstepped. At the end of July, Chad went to the mountains to see the Turners
and Jack and Melissa. He wore his roughest clothes, put on no airs, and, to
all eyes, save Melissa's, he was the same old Chad. But feminine subtlety
knows no social or geographical lines, and while Melissa knew what had
happened as well as Chad, she never let him see that she knew. Apparently she
was giving open encouragement to Dave Hilton, a tawny youth from down the
river, who was hanging, dog-like, about the house, and foolish Chad began to
let himself dream of Margaret with a light heart. On the third day before he
was to go back to the Bluegrass, a boy came from over Black Mountain with a
message from old Nathan Cherry. Old Nathan had joined the church, had fallen
ill, and, fearing he was going to die, wanted to see Chad. Chad went over with
curious premonitions that were not in vain, and he came back with a strange
story that he told only to old Joel, under promise that he would never make it
known to Melissa. Then he started for the Bluegrass, going over Pine Mountain
and down through Cumberland Gap. He would come back every year of his life, he
told Melissa and the Turners, but Chad knew he was bidding a last farewell to
the life he had known in the mountains. At Melissa's wish and old Joel's, he
left Jack behind, though he sorely wanted to take the dog with him. It was
little enough for him to do in return for their kindness, and he could see
that Melissa's affection for Jack was even greater than his own: and how
incomparably lonelier than his life was the life that she must lead! This time
Melissa did not rush to the yard gate when he was gone. She sank slowly where
she stood to the steps of the porch, and there she sat stone-still. Old Joel
passed her on the way to the barn. Several times the old mother walked to the
door behind her, and each time starting to speak, stopped and turned back, but
the girl neither saw nor heard them. Jack trotted by, whimpering. He sat down
in front of her, looking up at her unseeing eyes, and it was only when he
crept to her and put his head in her lap, that she put her arms around him and
bent her own head down; but no tears came.

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