Books: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

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

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At first Hale thought that she had shrunk from kissing him in the
car because other people were around. He knew better now. At that
moment he was as rough and dirty as the chain-carrier opposite
him, who was just in from a surveying expedition in the mountains,
as the sooty brakeman who came through to gather up the fares--as
one of those good-natured, profane inebriates up in the corner.
No, it was not publicity--she had shrunk from him as she was
shrinking now from black smoke, rough men, the shaking of the
train--the little pool of tobacco juice at her feet. The truth
began to glimmer through his brain. He understood, even when she
leaned forward suddenly to look into the mouth of the gap, that
was now dark with shadows. Through that gap lay her way and she
thought him now more a part of what was beyond than she who had
been born of it was, and dazed by the thought, he wondered if he
might not really be. At once he straightened in his seat, and his
mind made up, as he always made it up--swiftly. He had not
explained why he had not met her that morning, nor had he
apologized for his rough garb, because he was so glad to see her
and because there were so many other things he wanted to say; and
when he saw her, conscious and resentful, perhaps, that he had not
done these things at once--he deliberately declined to do them
now. He became silent, but he grew more courteous, more
thoughtful--watchful. She was very tired, poor child; there were
deep shadows under her eyes which looked weary and almost
mournful. So, when with a clanging of the engine bell they stopped
at the brilliantly lit hotel, he led her at once upstairs to the
parlour, and from there sent her up to her room, which was ready
for her.

"You must get a good sleep," he said kindly, and with his usual
firmness that was wont to preclude argument. "You are worn to
death. I'll have your supper sent to your room." The girl felt the
subtle change in his manner and her lip quivered for a vague
reason that neither knew, but, without a word, she obeyed him like
a child. He did not try again to kiss her. He merely took her
hand, placed his left over it, and with a gentle pressure, said:

"Good-night, little girl."

"Good-night," she faltered.

* * * * * * *

Resolutely, relentlessly, first, Hale cast up his accounts,
liabilities, resources, that night, to see what, under the least
favourable outcome, the balance left to him would be. Nearly all
was gone. His securities were already sold. His lots would not
bring at public sale one-half of the deferred payments yet to be
made on them, and if the company brought suit, as it was
threatening to do, he would be left fathoms deep in debt. The
branch railroad had not come up the river toward Lonesome Cove,
and now he meant to build barges and float his cannel coal down to
the main line, for his sole hope was in the mine in Lonesome Cove.
The means that he could command were meagre, but they would carry
his purpose with June for a year at least and then--who knew?--he
might, through that mine, be on his feet again.

The little town was dark and asleep when he stepped into the cool
night-air and made his way past the old school-house and up
Imboden Hill. He could see--all shining silver in the moonlight--
the still crest of the big beech at the blessed roots of which his
lips had met June's in the first kiss that had passed between
them. On he went through the shadowy aisle that the path made
between other beech-trunks, harnessed by the moonlight with silver
armour and motionless as sentinels on watch till dawn, out past
the amphitheatre of darkness from which the dead trees tossed out
their crooked arms as though voicing silently now his own soul's
torment, and then on to the point of the spur of foot-hills where,
with the mighty mountains encircling him and the world, a
dreamland lighted only by stars, he stripped his soul before the
Maker of it and of him and fought his fight out alone.

His was the responsibility for all--his alone. No one else was to
blame--June not at all. He had taken her from her own life--had
swerved her from the way to which God pointed when she was born.
He had given her everything she wanted, had allowed her to do what
she pleased and had let her think that, through his miraculous
handling of her resources, she was doing it all herself. And the
result was natural. For the past two years he had been harassed
with debt, racked with worries, writhing this way and that,
concerned only with the soul-tormenting catastrophe that had
overtaken him. About all else he had grown careless. He had not
been to see her the last year, he had written seldom, and it
appalled him to look back now on his own self-absorption and to
think how he must have appeared to June. And he had gone on in
that self-absorption to the very end. He had got his license to
marry, had asked Uncle Billy, who was magistrate as well as
miller, to marry them, and, a rough mountaineer himself to the
outward eye, he had appeared to lead a child like a lamb to the
sacrifice and had found a woman with a mind, heart and purpose of
her own. It was all his work. He had sent her away to fit her for
his station in life--to make her fit to marry him. She had risen
above and now HE WAS NOT FIT TO MARRY HER. That was the brutal
truth--a truth that was enough to make a wise man laugh or a fool
weep, and Hale did neither. He simply went on working to make out
how he could best discharge the obligations that he had
voluntarily, willingly, gladly, selfishly even, assumed. In his
mind he treated conditions only as he saw and felt them and
believed them at that moment true: and into the problem he went no
deeper than to find his simple duty, and that, while the morning
stars were sinking, he found. And it was a duty the harder to find
because everything had reawakened within him, and the starting-
point of that awakening was the proud glow in Uncle Billy's kind
old face, when he knew the part he was to play in the happiness of
Hale and June. All the way over the mountain that day his heart
had gathered fuel from memories at the big Pine, and down the
mountain and through the gap, to be set aflame by the yellow
sunlight in the valley and the throbbing life in everything that
was alive, for the month was June and the spirit of that month was
on her way to him. So when he rose now, with back-thrown head, he
stretched his arms suddenly out toward those far-seeing stars, and
as suddenly dropped them with an angry shake of his head and one
quick gritting of his teeth that such a thought should have
mastered him even for one swift second--the thought of how
lonesome would be the trail that would be his to follow after that
day.

XXIII

June, tired though she was, tossed restlessly that night. The one
look she had seen in Hale's face when she met him in the car, told
her the truth as far as he was concerned. He was unchanged, she
could give him no chance to withdraw from their long
understanding, for it was plain to her quick instinct that he
wanted none. And so she had asked him no question about his
failure to meet her, for she knew now that his reason, no matter
what, was good. He had startled her in the car, for her mind was
heavy with memories of the poor little cabins she had passed on
the train, of the mountain men and women in the wedding-party, and
Hale himself was to the eye so much like one of them--had so
startled her that, though she knew that his instinct, too, was at
work, she could not gather herself together to combat her own
feelings, for every little happening in the dummy but drew her
back to her previous train of painful thought. And in that
helplessness she had told Hale good-night. She remembered now how
she had looked upon Lonesome Cove after she went to the Gap; how
she had looked upon the Gap after her year in the Bluegrass, and
how she had looked back even on the first big city she had seen
there from the lofty vantage ground of New York. What was the use
of it all? Why laboriously climb a hill merely to see and yearn
for things that you cannot have, if you must go back and live in
the hollow again? Well, she thought rebelliously, she would not go
back to the hollow again--that was all. She knew what was coming
and her cousin Dave's perpetual sneer sprang suddenly from the
past to cut through her again and the old pride rose within her
once more. She was good enough now for Hale, oh, yes, she thought
bitterly, good enough NOW; and then, remembering his life-long
kindness and thinking what she might have been but for him, she
burst into tears at the unworthiness of her own thought. Ah, what
should she do--what should she do? Repeating that question over
and over again, she fell toward morning into troubled sleep. She
did not wake until nearly noon, for already she had formed the
habit of sleeping late--late at least, for that part of the world-
-and she was glad when the negro boy brought her word that Mr.
Hale had been called up the valley and would not be back until the
afternoon. She dreaded to meet him, for she knew that he had seen
the trouble within her and she knew he was not the kind of man to
let matters drag vaguely, if they could be cleared up and settled
by open frankness of discussion, no matter how blunt he must be.
She had to wait until mid-day dinner time for something to eat, so
she lay abed, picked a breakfast from the menu, which was spotted,
dirty and meagre in offerings, and had it brought to her room.
Early in the afternoon she issued forth into the sunlight, and
started toward Imboden Hill. It was very beautiful and soul-
comforting--the warm air, the luxuriantly wooded hills, with their
shades of green that told her where poplar and oak and beech and
maple grew, the delicate haze of blue that overlay them and
deepened as her eyes followed the still mountain piles north-
eastward to meet the big range that shut her in from the outer
world. The changes had been many. One part of the town had been
wiped out by fire and a few buildings of stone had risen up. On
the street she saw strange faces, but now and then she stopped to
shake hands with somebody whom she knew, and who recognized her
always with surprise and spoke but few words, and then, as she
thought, with some embarrassment. Half unconsciously she turned
toward the old mill. There it was, dusty and gray, and the
dripping old wheel creaked with its weight of shining water, and
the muffled roar of the unseen dam started an answering stream of
memories surging within her. She could see the window of her room
in the old brick boarding-house, and as she passed the gate, she
almost stopped to go in, but the face of a strange man who stood
in the door with a proprietary air deterred her. There was Hale's
little frame cottage and his name, half washed out, was over the
wing that was still his office. Past that she went, with a passing
temptation to look within, and toward the old school-house. A
massive new one was half built, of gray stone, to the left, but
the old one, with its shingles on the outside that had once caused
her such wonder, still lay warm in the sun, but closed and
deserted. There was the playground where she had been caught in
"Ring around the Rosy," and Hale and that girl teacher had heard
her confession. She flushed again when she thought of that day,
but the flush was now for another reason. Over the roof of the
schoolhouse she could see the beech tree where she had built her
playhouse, and memory led her from the path toward it. She had not
climbed a hill for a long time and she was panting when she
reached it. There was the scattered playhouse--it might have lain
there untouched for a quarter of a century--just as her angry feet
had kicked it to pieces. On a root of the beech she sat down and
the broad rim of her hat scratched the trunk of it and annoyed
her, so she took it off and leaned her head against the tree,
looking up into the underworld of leaves through which a sunbeam
filtered here and there--one striking her hair which had darkened
to a duller gold--striking it eagerly, unerringly, as though it
had started for just such a shining mark. Below her was outspread
the little town--the straggling, wretched little town--crude,
lonely, lifeless! She could not be happy in Lonesome Cove after
she had known the Gap, and now her horizon had so broadened that
she felt now toward the Gap and its people as she had then felt
toward the mountaineers: for the standards of living in the Cove--
so it seemed--were no farther below the standards in the Gap than
they in turn were lower than the new standards to which she had
adapted herself while away. Indeed, even that Bluegrass world
where she had spent a year was too narrow now for her vaulting
ambition, and with that thought she looked down again on the
little town, a lonely island in a sea of mountains and as far from
the world for which she had been training herself as though it
were in mid-ocean. Live down there? She shuddered at the thought
and straightway was very miserable. The clear piping of a wood-
thrush rose far away, a tear started between her half-closed
lashes and she might have gone to weeping silently, had her ear
not caught the sound of something moving below her. Some one was
coming that way, so she brushed her eyes swiftly with her
handkerchief and stood upright against the tree. And there again
Hale found her, tense, upright, bareheaded again and her hands
behind her; only her face was not uplifted and dreaming--it was
turned toward him, unstartled and expectant. He stopped below her
and leaned one shoulder against a tree.

"I saw you pass the office," he said, "and I thought I should find
you here."

His eyes dropped to the scattered playhouse of long ago--and a
faint smile that was full of submerged sadness passed over his
face. It was his playhouse, after all, that she had kicked to
pieces. But he did not mention it--nor her attitude--nor did he
try, in any way, to arouse her memories of that other time at this
same place.

"I want to talk with you, June--and I want to talk now."

"Yes, Jack," she said tremulously.

For a moment he stood in silence, his face half-turned, his teeth
hard on his indrawn lip--thinking. There was nothing of the
mountaineer about him now. He was clean-shaven and dressed with
care--June saw that--but he looked quite old, his face seemed
harried with worries and ravaged by suffering, and June had
suddenly to swallow a quick surging of pity for him. He spoke
slowly and without looking at her:

"June, if it hadn't been for me, you would be over in Lonesome
Cove and happily married by this time, or at least contented with
your life, for you wouldn't have known any other."

"I don't know, Jack."

"I took you out--and it rests with you whether I shall be sorry I
did--sorry wholly on your account, I mean," he added hastily.

She knew what he meant and she said nothing--she only turned her
head away slightly, with her eyes upturned a little toward the
leaves that were shaking like her own heart.

"I think I see it all very clearly," he went on, in a low and
perfectly even voice. "You can't be happy over there now--you
can't be happy over here now. You've got other wishes, ambitions,
dreams, now, and I want you to realize them, and I want to help
you to realize them all I can--that's all."

"Jack!--" she helplessly, protestingly spoke his name in a
whisper, but that was all she could do, and he went on:

"It isn't so strange. What is strange is that I--that I didn't
foresee it all. But if I had," he added firmly, "I'd have done it
just the same--unless by doing it I've really done you more harm
than good."

"No--no--Jack!"

"I came into your world--you went into mine. What I had grown
indifferent about--you grew to care about. You grew sensitive
while I was growing callous to certain--" he was about to say
"surface things," but he checked himself--" certain things in life
that mean more to a woman than to a man. I would not have married
you as you were--I've got to be honest now--at least I thought it
necessary that you should be otherwise--and now you have gone
beyond me, and now you do not want to marry me as I am. And it is
all very natural and very just." Very slowly her head had dropped
until her chin rested hard above the little jewelled cross on her
breast.

"You must tell me if I am wrong. You don't love me now--well
enough to be happy with me here"--he waved one hand toward the
straggling little town below them and then toward the lonely
mountains--"I did not know that we would have to live here--but I
know it now--" he checked himself, and afterward she recalled the
tone of those last words, but then they had no especial
significance.

"Am I wrong?" he repeated, and then he said hurriedly, for her
face was so piteous--"No, you needn't give yourself the pain of
saying it in words. I want you to know that I understand that
there is nothing in the world I blame you for--nothing--nothing.
If there is any blame at all, it rests on me alone." She broke
toward him with a cry then.

"No--no, Jack," she said brokenly, and she caught his hand in both
her own and tried to raise it to her lips, but he held her back
and she put her face on his breast and sobbed heart-brokenly. He
waited for the paroxysm to pass, stroking her hair gently.

"You mustn't feel that way, little girl. You can't help it--I
can't help it--and these things happen all the time, everywhere.
You don't have to stay here. You can go away and study, and when I
can, I'll come to see you and cheer you up; and when you are a
great singer, I'll send you flowers and be so proud of you, and
I'll say to myself, 'I helped do that.' Dry your eyes, now. You
must go back to the hotel. Your father will be there by this time
and you'll have to be starting home pretty soon."

Like a child she obeyed him, but she was so weak and trembling
that he put his arm about her to help her down the hill. At the
edge of the woods she stopped and turned full toward him.

"You are so good," she said tremulously, "so GOOD. Why, you
haven't even asked me if there was another--"

Hale interrupted her, shaking his head.

"If there is, I don't want to know."

"But there isn't, there isn't!" she cried, "I don't know what is
the matter with me. I hate--" the tears started again, and again
she was on the point of breaking down, but Hale checked her.

"Now, now," he said soothingly, "you mustn't, now--that's all
right. You mustn't." Her anger at herself helped now.

"Why, I stood like a silly fool, tongue-tied, and I wanted to say
so much. I--"

"You don't need to," Hale said gently, "I understand it all. I
understand."

"I believe you do," she said with a sob, "better than I do."

"Well, it's all right, little girl. Come on."

They issued forth into the sunlight and Hale walked rapidly. The
strain was getting too much for him and he was anxious to be
alone. Without a word more they passed the old school-house, the
massive new one, and went on, in silence, down the street. Hitched
to a post, near the hotel, were two gaunt horses with drooping
heads, and on one of them was a side-saddle. Sitting on the steps
of the hotel, with a pipe in his mouth, was the mighty figure of
Devil Judd Tolliver. He saw them coming--at least he saw Hale
coming, and that far away Hale saw his bushy eyebrows lift in
wonder at June. A moment later he rose to his great height without
a word.

"Dad," said June in a trembling voice, "don't you know me?" The
old man stared at her silently and a doubtful smile played about
his bearded lips.

"Hardly, but I reckon hit's June."

She knew that the world to which Hale belonged would expect her to
kiss him, and she made a movement as though she would, but the
habit of a lifetime is not broken so easily. She held out her
hand, and with the other patted him on the arm as she looked up
into his face.

"Time to be goin', June, if we want to get home afore dark!"

"All right, Dad."

The old man turned to his horse.

"Hurry up, little gal."

In a few minutes they were ready, and the girl looked long into
Hale's face when he took her hand.

"You are coming over soon?"

"Just as soon as I can." Her lips trembled.

"Good-by," she faltered.

"Good-by, June," said Hale.

From the steps he watched them--the giant father slouching in his
saddle and the trim figure of the now sadly misplaced girl, erect
on the awkward-pacing mountain beast--as incongruous, the two, as
a fairy on some prehistoric monster. A horseman was coming up the
street behind him and a voice called:

"Who's that?" Hale turned--it was the Honourable Samuel Budd,
coming home from Court.

"June Tolliver."

"June Taliaferro," corrected the Hon. Sam with emphasis.

"The same." The Hon. Sam silently followed the pair for a moment
through his big goggles.

"What do you think of my theory of the latent possibilities of the
mountaineer--now?"

"I think I know how true it is better than you do," said Hale
calmly, and with a grunt the Hon. Sam rode on. Hale watched them
as they rode across the plateau--watched them until the Gap
swallowed them up and his heart ached for June. Then he went to
his room and there, stretched out on his bed and with his hands
clenched behind his head, he lay staring upward.

Devil Judd Tolliver had lost none of his taciturnity. Stolidly,
silently, he went ahead, as is the custom of lordly man in the
mountains--horseback or afoot--asking no questions, answering
June's in the fewest words possible. Uncle Billy, the miller, had
been complaining a good deal that spring, and old Hon had
rheumatism. Uncle Billy's old-maid sister, who lived on Devil's
Fork, had been cooking for him at home since the last taking to
bed of June's step-mother. Bub had "growed up" like a hickory
sapling. Her cousin Loretta hadn't married, and some folks allowed
she'd run away some day yet with young Buck Falin. Her cousin Dave
had gone off to school that year, had come back a month before,
and been shot through the shoulder. He was in Lonesome Cove now.

This fact was mentioned in the same matter-of-fact way as the
other happenings. Hale had been raising Cain in Lonesome Cove--"A-
cuttin' things down an' tearin' 'em up an' playin' hell
ginerally."

The feud had broken out again and maybe June couldn't stay at home
long. He didn't want her there with the fighting going on--whereat
June's heart gave a start of gladness that the way would be easy
for her to leave when she wished to leave. Things over at the Gap
"was agoin' to perdition," the old man had been told, while he was
waiting for June and Hale that day, and Hale had not only lost a
lot of money, but if things didn't take a rise, he would be left
head over heels in debt, if that mine over in Lonesome Cove didn't
pull him out.

They were approaching the big Pine now, and June was beginning to
ache and get sore from the climb. So Hale was in trouble--that was
what he meant when he said that, though she could leave the
mountains when she pleased, he must stay there, perhaps for good.

"I'm mighty glad you come home, gal," said the old man, "an' that
ye air goin' to put an end to all this spendin' o' so much money.
Jack says you got some money left, but I don't understand it. He
says he made a 'investment' fer ye and tribbled the money. I haint
never axed him no questions. Hit was betwixt you an' him, an'
'twant none o' my business long as you an' him air goin' to marry.
He said you was goin' to marry this summer an' I wish you'd git
tied up right away whilst I'm livin', fer I don't know when a
Winchester might take me off an' I'd die a sight easier if I
knowed you was tied up with a good man like him."

"Yes, Dad," was all she said, for she had not the heart to tell
him the truth, and she knew that Hale never would until the last
moment he must, when he learned that she had failed.

Half an hour later, she could see the stone chimney of the little
cabin in Lonesome Cove. A little farther down several spirals of
smoke were visible--rising from unseen houses which were more
miners' shacks, her father said, that Hale had put up while she
was gone. The water of the creek was jet black now. A row of rough
wooden houses ran along its edge. The geese cackled a doubtful
welcome. A new dog leaped barking from the porch and a tall boy
sprang after him--both running for the gate.

"Why, Bub," cried June, sliding from her horse and kissing him,
and then holding him off at arms' length to look into his steady
gray eyes and his blushing face.

"Take the horses, Bub," said old Judd, and June entered the gate
while Bub stood with the reins in his hand, still speechlessly
staring her over from head to foot. There was her garden, thank
God--with all her flowers planted, a new bed of pansies and one of
violets and the border of laurel in bloom--unchanged and weedless.

"One o' Jack Hale's men takes keer of it," explained old Judd, and
again, with shame, June felt the hurt of her lover's
thoughtfulness. When she entered the cabin, the same old rasping
petulant voice called her from a bed in one corner, and when June
took the shrivelled old hand that was limply thrust from the bed-
clothes, the old hag's keen eyes swept her from head to foot with
disapproval.

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