Books: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

J >> John Fox, Jr. >> The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

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"I brought along several things of different sizes and I am going
to try at any rate. Oh," she added hastily, "only of course until
she can get some clothes of her own."

"Sure," said Hale, "but--" His sister waved one hand and again
Hale kept still.

June had bathed her eyes and was lying down when Helen entered,
and she made not the slightest objection to anything the latter
proposed. Straightway she fell under as complete subjection to her
as she had done to Hale. Without a moment's hesitation she drew
off her rudely fashioned dress and stood before Helen with the
utmost simplicity--her beautiful arms and throat bare and her hair
falling about them with the rich gold of a cloud at an autumn
sunset. Dressed, she could hardly breathe, but when she looked at
herself in the mirror, she trembled. Magic transformation!
Apparently the chasm between the two had been bridged in a single
instant. Helen herself was astonished and again her heart warmed
toward the girl, when a little later, she stood timidly under
Hale's scrutiny, eagerly watching his face and flushing rosy with
happiness under his brightening look. Her brother had not
exaggerated--the little girl was really beautiful. When they went
down to the dining-room, there was another surprise for Helen
Hale, for June's timidity was gone and to the wonder of the woman,
she was clothed with an impassive reserve that in herself would
have been little less than haughtiness and was astounding in a
child. She saw, too, that the change in the girl's bearing was
unconscious and that the presence of strangers had caused it. It
was plain that June's timidity sprang from her love of Hale--her
fear of not pleasing him and not pleasing her, his sister, and
plain, too, that remarkable self-poise was little June's to
command. At the table June kept her eyes fastened on Helen Hale.
Not a movement escaped her and she did nothing that was not done
by one of the others first. She said nothing, but if she had to
answer a question, she spoke with such care and precision that she
almost seemed to be using a foreign language. Miss Hale smiled but
with inward approval, and that night she was in better spirits.

"Jack," she said, when he came to bid her good-night, "I think
we'd better stay here a few days. I thought of course you were
exaggerating, but she is very, very lovely. And that manner of
hers--well, it passes my understanding. Just leave everything to
me."

Hale was very willing to do that. He had all trust in his sister's
judgment, he knew her dislike of interference, her love of
autocratic supervision, so he asked no questions, but in grateful
relief kissed her good-night.

The sister sat for a long time at her window after he was gone.
Her brother had been long away from civilization; he had become
infatuated, the girl loved him, he was honourable and in his heart
he meant to marry her--that was to her the whole story. She had
been mortified by the misstep, but the misstep made, only one
thought had occurred to her--to help him all she could. She had
been appalled when she first saw the dusty shrinking mountain
girl, but the helplessness and the loneliness of the tired little
face touched her, and she was straightway responsive to the mute
appeal in the dark eyes that were lifted to her own with such
modest fear and wonder. Now her surprise at her brother's
infatuation was abating rapidly. The girl's adoration of him, her
wild beauty, her strange winning personality--as rare and as
independent of birth and circumstances as genius--had soon made
that phenomenon plain. And now what was to be done? The girl was
quick, observant, imitative, docile, and in the presence of
strangers, her gravity of manner gave the impression of uncanny
self-possession. It really seemed as though anything might be
possible. At Helen's suggestion, then, the three stayed where they
were for a week, for June's wardrobe was sadly in need of
attention. So the week was spent in shopping, driving, and
walking, and rapidly as it passed for Helen and Hale it was to
June the longest of her life, so filled was it with a thousand
sensations unfelt by them. The city had been stirred by the spirit
of the new South, but the charm of the old was distinct
everywhere. Architectural eccentricities had startled the sleepy
maple-shaded rows of comfortable uniform dwellings here and there,
and in some streets the life was brisk; but it was still possible
to see pedestrians strolling with unconscious good-humour around
piles of goods on the sidewalk, business men stopping for a social
chat on the streets, street-cars moving independent of time, men
invariably giving up their seats to women, and, strangers or not,
depositing their fare for them; the drivers at the courteous
personal service of each patron of the road--now holding a car and
placidly whistling while some lady who had signalled from her
doorway went back indoors for some forgotten article, now twisting
the reins around the brakes and leaving a parcel in some yard--and
no one grumbling! But what was to Hale an atmosphere of amusing
leisure was to June bewildering confusion. To her his amusement
was unintelligible, but though in constant wonder at everything
she saw, no one would ever have suspected that she was making her
first acquaintance with city scenes. At first the calm unconcern
of her companions had puzzled her. She could not understand how
they could walk along, heedless of the wonderful visions that
beckoned to her from the shop-windows; fearless of the strange
noises about them and scarcely noticing the great crowds of
people, or the strange shining vehicles that thronged the streets.
But she had quickly concluded that it was one of the demands of
that new life to see little and be astonished at nothing, and
Helen and Hale surprised in turn at her unconcern, little
suspected the effort her self-suppression cost her. And when over
some wonder she did lose herself, Hale would say:

"Just wait till you see New York!" and June would turn her dark
eyes to Helen for confirmation and to see if Hale could be joking
with her.

"It's all true, June," Helen would say. "You must go there some
day. It's true." But that town was enough and too much for June.
Her head buzzed continuously and she could hardly sleep, and she
was glad when one afternoon they took her into the country again--
the Bluegrass country--and to the little town near which Hale had
been born, and which was a dream-city to June, and to a school of
which an old friend of his mother was principal, and in which
Helen herself was a temporary teacher. And Rumour had gone ahead
of June. Hale had found her dashing about the mountains on the
back of a wild bull, said rumour. She was as beautiful as Europa,
was of pure English descent and spoke the language of Shakespeare-
-the Hon. Sam Budd's hand was patent in this. She had saved Hale's
life from moonshiners and while he was really in love with her, he
was pretending to educate her out of gratitude--and here doubtless
was the faint tracery of Miss Anne Saunder's natural suspicions.
And there Hale left her under the eye of his sister--left her to
absorb another new life like a thirsty plant and come back to the
mountains to make his head swim with new witcheries.

XX

The boom started after its shadow through the hills now, and Hale
watched it sweep toward him with grim satisfaction at the
fulfilment of his own prophecy and with disgust that, by the
irony of fate, it should come from the very quarters where years
before he had played the maddening part of lunatic at large. The
avalanche was sweeping southward; Pennsylvania was creeping down
the Alleghanies, emissaries of New York capital were pouring into
the hills, the tide-water of Virginia and the Bluegrass region of
Kentucky were sending in their best blood and youth, and friends
of the helmeted Englishmen were hurrying over the seas. Eastern
companies were taking up principalities, and at Cumberland Gap,
those helmeted Englishmen had acquired a kingdom. They were
building a town there, too, with huge steel plants, broad avenues
and business blocks that would have graced Broadway; and they
were pouring out a million for every thousand that it would have
cost Hale to acquire the land on which the work was going on.
Moreover they were doing it there, as Hale heard, because they
were too late to get control of his gap through the Cumberland.
At his gap, too, the same movement was starting. In stage and
wagon, on mule and horse, "riding and tying" sometimes, and even
afoot came the rush of madmen. Horses and mules were drowned in
the mud holes along the road, such was the traffic and such were
the floods. The incomers slept eight in a room, burned oil at one
dollar a gallon, and ate potatoes at ten cents apiece. The Grand
Central Hotel was a humming Real-Estate Exchange, and, night and
day, the occupants of any room could hear, through the thin
partitions, lots booming to right, left, behind and in front of
them. The labour and capital question was instantly solved, for
everybody became a capitalist—carpenter, brick-layer, blacksmith,
singing teacher and preacher. There is no difference between
the shrewdest business man and a fool in a boom, for the boom
levels all grades of intelligence and produces as distinct a form
of insanity as you can find within the walls of an asylum.
Lots took wings sky-ward. Hale bought one for June for thirty
dollars and sold it for a thousand. Before the autumn was gone,
he found himself on the way to ridiculous opulence and, when
spring came, he had the world in a sling and, if he wished, he
could toss it playfully at the sun and have it drop back into his
hand again. And the boom spread down the valley and into the
hills. The police guard had little to do and, over in the
mountains, the feud miraculously came to a sudden close.

So pervasive, indeed, was the spirit of the times that the Hon.
Sam Budd actually got old Buck Falin and old Dave Tolliver to sign
a truce, agreeing to a complete cessation of hostilities until he
carried through a land deal in which both were interested. And
after that was concluded, nobody had time, even the Red Fox, for
deviltry and private vengeance--so busy was everybody picking up
the manna which was dropping straight from the clouds. Hale bought
all of old Judd's land, formed a stock company and in the trade
gave June a bonus of the stock. Money was plentiful as grains of
sand, and the cashier of the bank in the back of the furniture
store at the Gap chuckled to his beardless directors as he locked
the wooden door on the day before the great land sale:

"Capital stock paid in--thirteen thousand dollars;

"Deposits--three hundred thousand;

"Loans--two hundred and sixty thousand--interest from eight to
twelve per cent." And, beardless though those directors were, that
statement made them reel.

A club was formed and the like of it was not below Mason and
Dixon's line in the way of furniture, periodicals, liquors and
cigars. Poker ceased--it was too tame in competition with this new
game of town-lots. On the top of High Knob a kingdom was bought.
The young bloods of the town would build a lake up there, run a
road up and build a Swiss chalet on the very top for a country
club. The "booming" editor was discharged. A new paper was
started, and the ex-editor of a New York Daily was got to run it.
If anybody wanted anything, he got it from no matter where, nor at
what cost. Nor were the arts wholly neglected. One man, who was
proud of his voice, thought he would like to take singing lessons.
An emissary was sent to Boston to bring back the best teacher he
could find. The teacher came with a method of placing the voice by
trying to say "Come!" at the base of the nose and between the
eyes. This was with the lips closed. He charged two dollars per
half hour for this effort, he had each pupil try it twice for half
an hour each day, and for six weeks the town was humming like a
beehive. At the end of that period, the teacher fell ill and went
his way with a fat pocket-book and not a warbling soul had got the
chance to open his mouth. The experience dampened nobody.
Generosity was limitless. It was equally easy to raise money for a
roulette wheel, a cathedral or an expedition to Africa. And even
yet the railroad was miles away and even yet in February, the
Improvement Company had a great land sale. The day before it,
competing purchasers had deposited cheques aggregating three times
the sum asked for by the company for the land. So the buyers spent
the night organizing a pool to keep down competition and drawing
lots for the privilege of bidding. For fairness, the sale was an
auction, and one old farmer who had sold some of the land
originally for a hundred dollars an acre, bought back some of that
land at a thousand dollars a lot.

That sale was the climax and, that early, Hale got a warning word
from England, but he paid no heed even though, after the sale, the
boom slackened, poised and stayed still; for optimism was
unquenchable and another tide would come with another sale in May,
and so the spring passed in the same joyous recklessness and the
same perfect hope.

In April, the first railroad reached the Gap at last, and families
came in rapidly. Money was still plentiful and right royally was
it spent, for was not just as much more coming when the second
road arrived in May? Life was easier, too--supplies came from New
York, eight o'clock dinners were in vogue and everybody was happy.
Every man had two or three good horses and nothing to do. The
place was full of visiting girls. They rode in parties to High
Knob, and the ring of hoof and the laughter of youth and maid made
every dusk resonant with joy. On Poplar Hill houses sprang up like
magic and weddings came. The passing stranger was stunned to find
out in the wilderness such a spot; gayety, prodigal hospitality, a
police force of gentlemen--nearly all of whom were college
graduates--and a club, where poker flourished in the smoke of
Havana cigars, and a barrel of whiskey stood in one corner with a
faucet waiting for the turn of any hand. And still the foundation
of the new hotel was not started and the coming of the new
railroad in May did not make a marked change. For some reason the
May sale was postponed by the Improvement Company, but what did it
matter? Perhaps it was better to wait for the fall, and so the
summer went on unchanged. Every man still had a bank account and
in the autumn, the boom would come again. At such a time June came
home for her vacation, and Bob Berkley came back from college for
his. All through the school year Hale had got the best reports of
June. His sister's letters were steadily encouraging. June had
been very homesick for the mountains and for Hale at first, but
the homesickness had quickly worn off--apparently for both. She
had studied hard, had become a favourite among the girls, and had
held her own among them in a surprising way. But it was on June's
musical talent that Hale's sister always laid most stress, and on
her voice which, she said, was really unusual. June wrote, too, at
longer and longer intervals and in her letters, Hale could see the
progress she was making--the change in her handwriting, the
increasing formality of expression, and the increasing shrewdness
of her comments on her fellow-pupils, her teachers and the life
about her. She did not write home for a reason Hale knew, though
June never mentioned it--because there was no one at home who
could read her letters--but she always sent messages to her father
and Bub and to the old miller and old Hon, and Hale faithfully
delivered them when he could.

From her people, as Hale learned from his sister, only one
messenger had come during the year to June, and he came but once.
One morning, a tall, black-haired, uncouth young man, in a slouch
hat and a Prince Albert coat, had strode up to the school with a
big paper box under his arm and asked for June. As he handed the
box to the maid at the door, it broke and red apples burst from it
and rolled down the steps. There was a shriek of laughter from the
girls, and the young man, flushing red as the apples, turned,
without giving his name, and strode back with no little majesty,
looking neither to right nor left. Hale knew and June knew that
the visitor was her cousin Dave, but she never mentioned the
incident to him, though as the end of the session drew nigh, her
letters became more frequent and more full of messages to the
people in Lonesome Cove, and she seemed eager to get back home.
Over there about this time, old Judd concluded suddenly to go
West, taking Bud with him, and when Hale wrote the fact, an answer
came from June that showed the blot of tears. However, she seemed
none the less in a hurry to get back, and when Hale met her at the
station, he was startled; for she came back in dresses that were
below her shoe-tops, with her wonderful hair massed in a golden
glory on the top of her head and the little fairy-cross dangling
at a woman's throat. Her figure had rounded, her voice had
softened. She held herself as straight as a young poplar and she
walked the earth as though she had come straight from Olympus. And
still, in spite of her new feathers and airs and graces, there was
in her eye and in her laugh and in her moods all the subtle wild
charm of the child in Lonesome Cove. It was fairy-time for June
that summer, though her father and Bud had gone West, for her
step-mother was living with a sister, the cabin in Lonesome Cove
was closed and June stayed at the Gap, not at the Widow Crane's
boarding-house, but with one of Hale's married friends on Poplar
Hill. And always was she, young as she was, one of the merry
parties of that happy summer--even at the dances, for the dance,
too, June had learned. Moreover she had picked up the guitar, and
many times when Hale had been out in the hills, he would hear her
silver-clear voice floating out into the moonlight as he made his
way toward Poplar Hill, and he would stop under the beeches and
listen with ears of growing love to the wonder of it all. For it
was he who was the ardent one of the two now.

June was no longer the frank, impulsive child who stood at the
foot of the beech, doggedly reckless if all the world knew her
love for him. She had taken flight to some inner recess where it
was difficult for Hale to follow, and right puzzled he was to
discover that he must now win again what, unasked, she had once so
freely given.

Bob Berkley, too, had developed amazingly. He no longer said "Sir"
to Hale--that was bad form at Harvard--he called him by his first
name and looked him in the eye as man to man: just as June--Hale
observed--no longer seemed in any awe of Miss Anne Saunders and to
have lost all jealousy of her, or of anybody else--so swiftly had
her instinct taught her she now had nothing to fear. And Bob and
June seemed mightily pleased with each other, and sometimes Hale,
watching them as they galloped past him on horseback laughing and
bantering, felt foolish to think of their perfect fitness--the one
for the other--and the incongruity of himself in a relationship
that would so naturally be theirs. At one thing he wondered: she
had made an extraordinary record at school and it seemed to him
that it was partly through the consciousness that her brain would
take care of itself that she could pay such heed to what hitherto
she had had no chance to learn--dress, manners, deportment and
speech. Indeed, it was curious that she seemed to lay most stress
on the very things to which he, because of his long rough life in
the mountains, was growing more and more indifferent. It was quite
plain that Bob, with his extreme gallantry of manner, his smart
clothes, his high ways and his unconquerable gayety, had
supplanted him on the pedestal where he had been the year before,
just as somebody, somewhere--his sister, perhaps--had supplanted
Miss Anne. Several times indeed June had corrected Hale's slips of
tongue with mischievous triumph, and once when he came back late
from a long trip in the mountains and walked in to dinner without
changing his clothes, Hale saw her look from himself to the
immaculate Bob with an unconscious comparison that half amused,
half worried him. The truth was he was building a lovely
Frankenstein and from wondering what he was going to do with it,
he was beginning to wonder now what it might some day do with him.
And though he sometimes joked with Miss Anne, who had withdrawn
now to the level plane of friendship with him, about the
transformation that was going on, he worried in a way that did
neither his heart nor his brain good. Still he fought both to
little purpose all that summer, and it was not till the time was
nigh when June must go away again, that he spoke both. For Hale's
sister was going to marry, and it was her advice that he should
take June to New York if only for the sake of her music and her
voice. That very day June had for the first time seen her cousin
Dave. He was on horseback, he had been drinking and he pulled in
and, without an answer to her greeting, stared her over from head
to foot. Colouring angrily, she started on and then he spoke
thickly and with a sneer:

"'Bout fryin' size, now, ain't ye? I reckon maybe, if you keep on,
you'll be good enough fer him in a year or two more."

"I'm much obliged for those apples, Dave," said June quietly--and
Dave flushed a darker red and sat still, forgetting to renew the
old threat that was on his tongue.

But his taunt rankled in the girl--rankled more now than when Dave
first made it, for she better saw the truth of it and the hurt was
the greater to her unconquerable pride that kept her from
betraying the hurt to Dave long ago, and now, when he was making
an old wound bleed afresh. But the pain was with her at dinner
that night and through the evening. She avoided Hale's eyes though
she knew that he was watching her all the time, and her instinct
told her that something was going to happen that night and what
that something was. Hale was the last to go and when he called to
her from the porch, she went out trembling and stood at the head
of the steps in the moonlight.

"I love you, little girl," he said simply, "and I want you to
marry me some day--will you, June?" She was unsurprised but she
flushed under his hungry eyes, and the little cross throbbed at
her throat.

"SOME day-not NOW," she thought, and then with equal simplicity:
"Yes, Jack."

"And if you should love somebody else more, you'll tell me right
away--won't you, June?" She shrank a little and her eyes fell, but
straight-way she raised them steadily:

"Yes, Jack."

"Thank you, little girl--good-night."

"Good-night, Jack."

Hale saw the little shrinking movement she made, and, as he went
down the hill, he thought she seemed to be in a hurry to be alone,
and that she had caught her breath sharply as she turned away. And
brooding he walked the woods long that night.

Only a few days later, they started for New York and, with all her
dreaming, June had never dreamed that the world could be so large.
Mountains and vast stretches of rolling hills and level land
melted away from her wondering eyes; towns and cities sank behind
them, swift streams swollen by freshets were outstripped and left
behind, darkness came on and, through it, they still sped on. Once
during the night she woke from a troubled dream in her berth and
for a moment she thought she was at home again. They were running
through mountains again and there they lay in the moonlight, the
great calm dark faces that she knew and loved, and she seemed to
catch the odour of the earth and feel the cool air on her face,
but there was no pang of homesickness now--she was too eager for
the world into which she was going. Next morning the air was
cooler, the skies lower and grayer--the big city was close at
hand. Then came the water, shaking and sparkling in the early
light like a great cauldron of quicksilver, and the wonderful
Brooklyn Bridge--a ribbon of twinkling lights tossed out through
the mist from the mighty city that rose from that mist as from a
fantastic dream; then the picking of a way through screeching
little boats and noiseless big ones and white bird-like floating
things and then they disappeared like two tiny grains in a
shifting human tide of sand. But Hale was happy now, for on that
trip June had come back to herself, and to him, once more--and
now, awed but unafraid, eager, bubbling, uplooking, full of quaint
questions about everything she saw, she was once more sitting with
affectionate reverence at his feet. When he left her in a great
low house that fronted on the majestic Hudson, June clung to him
with tears and of her own accord kissed him for the first time
since she had torn her little playhouse to pieces at the foot of
the beech down in the mountains far away. And Hale went back with
peace in his heart, but to trouble in the hills.

* * * * * * *

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