Scarcely a month before the events described in the opening chapter took place, the stranger and a young woman, who was his companion, had appeared in the community. There was little that seemed mysterious about them at the outset. A long, uninhabited cabin, a score or so of yards from the mountain road, had been roughly patched up and taken possession of by them. There was nothing unusual in the circumstance except that they had appeared suddenly and entirely unheralded; but this in itself would have awakened no special comment. The mystery developed itself from their after reserve and seclusion. They guarded themselves from all advances by keeping out of sight when anyone approached their cabin. The young woman was rarely, if ever, seen. The man never called at the post-office for mail, and upon the few occasions on which a stray human being crossed his path, his manner was such as by no means encouraged the curious. Mr. Stamps was the only individual who had seen the woman face to face. There was an unmoved pertinacity in the character of Mr. Stamps which stood him in good stead upon all occasions. He was not easily abashed or rebuffed, the more especially when he held in view some practical object. Possibly he held some such object in view when he rode up to the tumbled down gateway and asked for the draught of water no woman of the region could refuse without some reasonable excuse.
“’Tain’t airs they’re puttin’ on, Cindy,” he said to the partner of his joys and sorrows the evening after his ride over the mountain. “Oh, no, ’tain’t airs, it’s somethin’ more curi’s than that!” And he bent over the fire in a comfortable lounging way, rubbing his hands a little, and blinked at the back log thoughtfully.
They were a friendly and sociable people, these mountaineers, all the more so because the opportunities for meeting sociably were limited. The men had their work and the women their always large families to attend to, and with a mile or so of rough road between themselves and their neighbours, there was not much chance for enjoyable gossip. When good fortune threw them together they usually made the best of their time. Consequently, the mystery of two human beings, who had shut themselves off with apparent intent from all intercourse with their kind, was a difficulty not readily disposed of. It was, perhaps, little to be wondered at that Mr. Stamps thought it over and gathered carefully together all the points presenting themselves to his notice. The subject had been frequently discussed at the Cross-roads post-office. The disposition to seclusion was generally spoken of as “curi’sness,” and various theories had been advanced with a view to explaining the “curi’sness” in question. “Airs” had been suggested as a solution of the difficulty, but as time progressed, the theory of “airs” had been abandoned.
“Fur,” said Uncle Jake Wooten, who was a patriarch and an authority, “when a man’s a-gwine to put on airs, he kinder slicks up more. A man that’s airy, he ain’t a-gwine to shut hisself up and not show out more. Like as not he’d wear store-clothes an’ hang round ‘n’ kinder blow; ‘n’ this feller don’t do nary one. ‘N’ as to the woman, Lord! I should think all you’unses knows how womenfolks does that’s airy. Ef this yere one wus that way, she’d be a-dressin’ in starched calikers ‘n’ sunbonnets ‘n’ bress-pins, ‘n’ mebbe rings ‘n’ congrist-gaiters. She’d be to the meetin’ every time there was meetin’ a-showin’ out ‘n’ lettin’ on like she didn’t know the rest on ’em wus seein’. It don’t sound to reason that either on ’em is airy.”
It had been suggested by a bold spirit capable of more extended flights of the imagination than the rest, that they were “Northerners” who for some unworthy object had taken up their abode within the bound of civilisation; but this idea was frowned down as being of a wild nature and not to be encouraged.
Finally the general interest in the subject had subsided somewhat, though it was ready to revive at any new comment or incident, which will explain the bodily awakening of the sleepers on the post-office porch when Mr. Stamps made his announcement of the approach of “thet thar feller.”
Up to the moment when the impulse seized him which led him to take his place behind the counter as the stranger entered the store, Tom De Willoughby had taken little or no part in numerous discussions held around him. He had listened with impartiality to all sides of the question, his portion of the entertainment being to make comments of an inspiriting nature which should express in a marked manner his sarcastic approval of any special weakness in a line of argument.
Among the many agreeable things said of him in his past, it had never been said that he was curious; he was too indolent to be curious, and it may be simply asserted that he had felt little curiosity concerning the popular mystery. But when he found himself face to face with his customer, a new feeling suddenly took possession of him. The change came when, for one instant, the man, as if in momentary forgetfulness, looked up and met his eyes in speaking. Each moved involuntarily, and Tom turned aside, ostensibly, to pick up a sheet of wrapping paper. The only words exchanged were those relating to the courtesies and the brief remarks heard by the loungers outside. After this the stranger rode away and Tom lounged back to his chair. He made no reply to Stamps’s explanatory aside, and no comment upon the remarks of the company whose curiosity had naturally received a new impetus which spurred them on to gossip a little in the usual vague manner. He gave himself up to speculation. The mere tone of a man’s voice had set his mind to work. His past life had given him experience in which those about him were lacking, and at the instant he heard the stranger speak this experience revealed to him as by a flash of light, a thing which had never yet been even remotely guessed at.
“A gentleman, by thunder!” he said to himself. “That’s it! A gentleman!”
He knew he could not be mistaken. Low and purposely muffled as the voice had been, he recognised in it that which marked it as the voice of a man trained to modulated speech. And even this was not all, though it had led him to look again, and more closely, at the face shadowed by the broad hat. It was not a handsome face, but it was one not likely to be readily forgotten. It was worn and haggard, the features strongly aquiline, the eyes somewhat sunken; it was the face of a man who had lived the life of an ascetic and who, with a capacity for sharp suffering, had suffered and was suffering still.
“But a gentleman and not a Southerner,” Tom persisted to himself. “A Yankee, as I’m a sinner; and what is a Yankee doing hiding himself here for?”
It was such a startling thing under the circumstances, that he could not rid himself of the thought of it. It haunted him through the rest of the day, and when night came and the store being closed, he retired as usual to the back part of the house, he was brooding over it still.
He lived in a simple and primitive style. Three rooms built on to the store were quite enough for him. One was his sitting- and bedroom, another his dining-room and kitchen, the third the private apartment of his household goddess, a stout old mulatto woman who kept his house in order and prepared his meals.
When he opened the door to-night the little boarded rooms were illuminated with two tallow candles and made fragrant with the odour of fried chicken and hoe-cakes, to which Aunt Mornin was devoting all her energies, and for the first time perhaps in his life, he failed to greet these attractions with his usual air of good cheer.
He threw his hat into a chair, and, stretching himself out upon the bedstead, lay there, his hands clasped above his head and his eyes fixed upon the glow of the fire in the adjoining room, where Aunt Mornin was at work.
“A gentleman!” he said, half aloud. “That’s it, by Jupiter, a gentleman!”
He remembered it afterwards as a curious coincidence that he should have busied his mind so actively with his subject in a manner so unusual with him.
His imagination not being sufficiently vivid to help him out of his difficulty to his own satisfaction, he laboured with it patiently, recurring to it again and again, and turning it over until it assumed a greater interest than at first. He only relinquished it with an effort when, going to bed later than usual, he made up his mind to compose himself to sleep.
“Good Lord!” he said, turning on his side and addressing some unseen presence representing the vexed question. “Don’t keep a man awake: settle it yourself.” And finally sank into unconsciousness in the midst of his mental struggle.
About the middle of the night he awakened. He felt that something had startled him from his sleep, but could not tell what it was. A few seconds he lay without moving, listening, and as he listened there came to his ear the sound of a horse’s feet, treading the earth restlessly outside the door, the animal itself breathing heavily as if it had been ridden hard; and almost as soon as he aroused to recognition of this fact, there came a sharp tap on the door and a man’s voice crying “Hallo!”
He knew the voice at once, and unexpected as the summons was, felt he was not altogether unprepared for it, though he could not have offered even the weakest explanation for the feeling.
“He’s in trouble,” he said, as he sat up quickly in bed. “Something’s gone wrong.” He rose and in a few seconds opened the door.
He had guessed rightly; it was the stranger. The moonlight fell full upon the side of the house and the road, and the panting horse stood revealed in a bright light which gave the man’s face a ghostly look added to his natural pallor. As he leaned forward, Tom saw that he was as much exhausted as was the animal he had ridden.
“I want to find a doctor, or a woman who can give help to another,” he said.
“There ain’t a doctor within fifteen miles from here,” began Tom. He stopped short. What he saw in the man’s face checked him.
“Look here,” he said, “is it your wife?”
The man made a sharp gesture of despair.
“She’s dying, I think,” he said, hoarsely, “and there’s not a human being near her.”
“Good Lord!” cried Tom, “Good Lord!” The sweat started out on his forehead. He remembered what Stamps had said of her youth and her pale face, and he thought of Delia Vanuxem, and from this thought sprang a sudden recollection of the deserted medical career in which he had been regarded as so ignominious a failure. He had never mentioned it since he had cut himself off from the old life, and the women for whose children he had prescribed with some success now and then had considered the ends achieved only the natural results of his multitudinous gifts. But the thought of the desolate young creature lying there alone struck deep. He listened one moment, then made his resolve.
“Go to the stable,” he said, “and throw a saddle over the horse you will find there. I know something of such matters myself, and I shall be better than nothing, with a woman’s help. I have a woman here who will follow us.”
He went into the back room and awakened Aunt Mornin.
“Get up,” he said, “and saddle the mule and follow me as soon as you can to the cabin in Blair’s Hollow. The wife of a man who lives there needs a woman with her. Come quickly.”
When he returned to the door his horse stood there saddled, the stranger sitting on his own and holding the bridle.
Tom mounted in silence, but once finally seated, he turned to his companion.
“Now strike out,” he said.
There were four miles of road before them, but they scarcely slackened rein until they were within sight of the Hollow, and the few words they exchanged were the barest questions and answers.
The cabin was built away from the road on the side of the hill, and leaving their horses tethered at the foot of the slope, they climbed it together.
When they reached the door, the stranger stopped and turned to Tom.
“There is no sound inside,” he faltered; “I dare not go in.”
Tom strode by him and pushed the door open.
In one corner of the room was a roughly made bedstead, and upon it lay a girl, her deathly pale face turned sideways upon the pillow. It was as if she lay prostrated by some wave of agony which had just passed over her; her breath was faint and rapid, and great drops of sweat stood out upon her young drawn face.
Tom drew a chair forward and sat down beside her. He lifted one of her hands, touching it gently, but save for a slight quiver of the eyelids she did not stir. A sense of awe fell upon him.
“It’s Death,” he said to himself. He had experience enough to teach him that. He turned to the man.
“You had better go out of the room; I will do my best.”
In a little over an hour Aunt Mornin dismounted from her mule and tethered it to a sapling at the side of the road below. She looked up at the light gleaming faintly through the pines on the hillside.
“I cum ’s fas’ ’s I could,” she said, “but I reckon I’d orter been here afore. De Lord knows dis is a curi’s ’casion.”
When she crossed the threshold of the cabin, her master pointed to a small faintly moving bundle lying at the foot of the bed over which he was bending.
“Take it into the other room and tell the man to come here,” he said. “There’s no time to lose.”
He still held the weak hand; but the girl’s eyes were no longer closed; they were open and fixed on his face. The great fellow was trembling like a leaf. The past hour had been almost more than he could bear. He was entirely unstrung.
“I wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing,” he had groaned more than once, and for the first time in his life thanked Fate for making him a failure.
As he looked down at his patient, a mist rose before his eyes, blurring his sight, and he hurriedly brushed it away.
She was perhaps nineteen years old, and had the very young look a simple trusting nature and innocent untried life bring. She was small, fragile, and fair, with the pure fairness born of a cold climate. Her large blue-gray eyes had in them the piteous appeal sometimes to be seen in the eyes of a timid child.
Tom had laid his big hand on her forehead and stroked it, scarcely knowing what he did.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said, with a tremor in his voice. “Close your eyes and try to be quiet for a few moments, and then——”
He stooped to bend his ear to her lips which were moving faintly.
“He’ll come directly,” he answered, though he did not hear her; “—directly. It’s all right.”
And then he stroked her hair again because he knew not what else to do, seeing, as he did, that the end was so very near, and that no earthly power, however far beyond his own poor efforts, could ward it off.
Just at that moment the door opened and the man came in.
That he too read the awful truth at his first glance, Tom saw. All attempts at disguise had dropped away. His thin, scholarly face was as colourless as the fairer one on the pillow, his brows were knit into rigid lines and his lips were working. He approached the bed, and for a few moments stood looking down as if trying to give himself time to gain self-control. Tom saw the girl’s soft eyes fixed in anguished entreaty; there was a struggle, and from the slowly moving lips came a few faint and broken words.
“Death!—They—never know.”
The man flung himself upon his knees and burst into an agony of such weeping that, seeing it, Tom turned away shuddering.
“No,” he said, “they will never know, they who loved you—who loved you—will never know! God forgive me if I have done wrong. I have been false that they might be spared. God forgive me for the sin!”
The poor child shivered; she had become still paler, and the breath came in sharp little puffs through her nostrils.
“God—God!—God!” she panted. But the man did not seem to hear her. He was praying aloud, a struggling, disjointed prayer.
“O God of sinners,” he cried, “Thou who forgivest, Thou who hast died, forgive—forgive in this hour of death!”
Tom heard no more. He could only listen to the soft, panting breath sinking lower and lower.
Suddenly the piteous eyes turned towards him—the stranger—as if in great dread: perhaps they saw in the mere human pity of his face what met some sharp last need.
He went to his old place as if in answer to the look, and took the poor little hand once more, closing the warmth of his own over its coldness. He was weeping like a child.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said; “—not afraid. It’s—it’s all right.”
And almost as he said it, with her eyes still fixed upon his own, and with her hand in his, she gave a low sob—and died.
Tom touched the kneeling man upon the shoulder.
“There’s no need of that now,” he said; “it’s over.”
When a few minutes later he went into the back room, he found Aunt Mornin sitting before the big fireplace in which burned a few logs of wood. The light the snapping sticks gave fell full upon her black face, and upon the small bundle upon her spacious knee.
As he entered she turned sharply towards him.
“Don’t nobody keer nothin’ for this yere?” she said, “ain’t nobody comin’ nigh? Whar’s he? Don’t he take no int’rus’ in the pore little lonesome child? I ’spect yo’ll haf to take it ye’self, Mars’ De Willerby, while I goes in dar.”
Tom stopped short, stricken with a pang of remorse. He looked down at the small face helplessly.
“Yes,” he said, “you’ll have to go in there; you’re needed.”
The woman looked at him in startled questioning.
“Mars De Willerby,” she said, “does dat ar mean she’s cl’ar gone?”
“Yes,” answered Tom. “She’s gone, Mornin.”
With the emotional readiness of her race, the comfortable creature burst into weeping, clasping the child to her broad bosom.
“Pore chile!” she said, “an’ poor chile lef behin’! De Lord help ’em bofe.”
With manifest fear Tom stooped and took the little red flannel bundle from her arms.
“Never mind crying,” he said. “Go into the room and do what’s to be done.”
When left alone with his charge, he sat down and held it balanced carefully in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. He was used to carrying his customers’ children, a great part of his popularity being based upon his jovial fondness for them. But he had never held so small a creature as this in his arms before. He regarded it with a respectful timidity.
“It wasn’t thought of,” he said, reflectively. “Even she—poor thing, poor thing—” he ended, hurriedly, “there was no time.”
He was still holding his small burden with awkward kindliness when the door opened and the man he had left in the room beyond came in. He approached the hearth and stood for a few seconds staring at the fire in a stupefied, abstracted way. He did not seem to see the child. At last he spoke.
“Where shall I lay her?” he asked. “Where is the nearest churchyard?”
“Fifteen miles away,” Tom answered. “Most of the people like to have their dead near them and lay them on the hillsides.”
The man turned to him with a touch of horror in his face.
“In unconsecrated ground?” he said.
“It doesn’t trouble them,” said Tom. “They sleep well enough.”
The man turned to the fire again—he had not looked at the child yet—and made a despairing gesture with his hands.
“That she—” he said, “that she should lie so far from them, and in unconsecrated ground!”
“There is the place I told you of,” said Tom.
“I cannot go there,” with the gesture again. “There is no time. I must go away.”
He made no pretence at concealing that he had a secret to hide. He seemed to have given up the effort.
Tom looked up at him.
“What are you going to do with this?” he asked.
Then for the first time he seemed to become conscious of the child’s presence. He turned and gave it a startled sidelong glance, as if he had suddenly been struck with a new fear.
“I—do not know,” he stammered. “I—no! I do not know. What have I been doing?”
He sank into a chair and buried his face in his trembling hands.
“God’s curse is upon it,” he cried. “There is no place for it on earth.”
Tom rose with a sudden movement and began to pace the floor with his charge in his arms.
“It’s a little chap to lay a curse on,” he said. “And helpless enough, by Gad!”
He looked down at the diminutive face, and as he did so, a wild thought flashed through his mind. It had the suddenness and force of a revelation. His big body trembled with some feeling it would have gone hard with him to express, and his heart warmed within him as he felt the light weight lying against it.
“No place for it!” he cried. “By God, there is! There is a place here—and a man to stand by and see fair-play!”
“Give her to me,” he said, “give her to me, and if there is no place for her, I’ll find one.”
“What do you mean?” faltered the man.
“I mean what I say,” said Tom. “I’ll take her and stand by her as long as there is breath in me; and if the day should ever come in spite of me when wrong befalls her, as it befell her mother, some man shall die, so help me God!”
The warm Southern blood which gave to his brothers’ love-songs the grace of passion, and which made them renowned for their picturesque eloquence of speech, fired him to greater fluency than was usual with him, when he thought of the helplessness of the tiny being he held.
“I never betrayed a woman yet, or did one a wrong,” he went on. “I’m not one of the lucky fellows who win their hearts,” with a great gulp in his throat. “Perhaps if there’s no one to come between us, she may—may be fond of me.”
The man gave him a long look, as if he was asking himself a question.
“Yes,” he said at last, “she will be fond of you. You will be worthy of it. There is no one to lay claim to her. Her mother lies dead among strangers, and her father——”
For a few moments he seemed to be falling into a reverie, but suddenly a tremour seized him and he struck one clenched hand against the other.
“If a man vowed to the service of God may make an oath,” he said, “I swear that if the day ever dawns when we stand face to face, knowing each other, I will not spare him!”
The child stirred in Tom’s arms and uttered its first sharp little cry, and as if in answer to the summons, Aunt Mornin opened the door.
“It’s all done,” she said. “Gib me de chile, Mars De Willerby, and go in an’ look at her.”
When he entered the little square living room, Tom paused at the foot of the bed. All was straight and neat and cold. Among the few articles in the one small trunk, the woman had found a simple white dress and had put it on the dead girl. It was such a garment as almost every girl counts among her possessions. Tom remembered that his sisters had often worn such things.
“She looks very pretty,” he said. “I dare say her mother made it and she wore it at home. O Lord! O Lord!” And with this helpless exclamation, half sigh, half groan, he turned away and walked out of the front door into the open air.
It was early morning by this time, and he passed into the dew and sunlight not knowing where he was going; but once outside, the sight of his horse tethered to a tree at the roadside brought to his mind the necessity of the occasion.
“I’ll ride in and see Steven,” he said. “It’s got to be done, and it’s no work for him!”
When he reached the Cross-roads there were already two or three early arrivals lounging on the store-porch and wondering why the doors were not opened.
The first man who saw him, opened upon him the usual course of elephantine witticisms.
“Look a yere, Tom,” he drawled, “this ain’t a-gwine to do. You a-gittin’ up ’fore daybreak like the rest of us folks and ridin’ off Goddlemighty knows whar. It ain’t a-gwine to do now. Whar air ye from?”
But as he rode up and dismounted at the porch, each saw that something unusual had happened. He tied his horse and came up the steps in silence.
“Boys,” he said, when he stood among them, “I want Steven. I’ve been out to the Hollow, and there’s a job for him there. The—the woman’s dead.”
“Dead!” they echoed, drawing nearer to him in their excitement. “When, Tom?”
“Last night. Mornin’s out there. There’s a child.”
“Thunder ‘n’ molasses!” ejaculated the only family man of the group, reflectively. “Thunder ‘n’ molasses!” And then he began to edge away, still with a reflective air, towards his mule.
“Boys,” he explained, “there’d ought to be some women folks around. I’m gwine for Minty, and she’ll start the rest on ’em. Women folks is what’s needed. They kin kinder organize things whar thar’s trouble.”
“Well,” said Tom, “perhaps you’re right; but don’t send too many of ’em, and let your wife tell ’em to talk as little as possible and leave the man alone. He’s got enough to stand up under.”
Before the day was over there were women enough in the hillside cabin. Half a dozen faded black calico riding-skirts hung over the saddles of half a dozen horses tethered in the wood round the house, while inside half a dozen excellent souls disposed themselves in sympathetic couples about the two rooms.
Three sat in the front room, their sunbonnets drawn well down over their faces in the true mourner’s spirit, one at the head of the bed slowly moving a fan to and fro over the handkerchief-covered face upon the pillow. A dead silence pervaded the place, except when it was broken by occasional brief remarks made in a whisper.
“She was a mighty purty-lookin’ young critter,” they said. “A sight younger-lookin’ than her man.”
“What’s the child?”
“Gal.”
“Gal? That’s a pity. Gals ain’t much chance of bein’ raised right whar they’re left.”
“Hain’t they any folks, neither on ’em?”
“Nobody don’t know. Nobody hain’t heerd nothin’ about ’em. They wus kinder curi’s about keepin’ to themselves.”
“If either on ’em had any folks—even if they wus only sort o’ kin—they might take the chile.”
“Mebbe they will. Seems to reason they must have some kin—even if they ain’t nigh.”
Then the silence reigned again and the woman at the bed’s head gave her undivided attention to the slow, regular motion of her palm-leaf fan.
In the room beyond a small fire burned in spite of the warmth of the day, and divers small tin cups and pipkins simmered before and upon the cinders of it, Aunt Mornin varying her other duties by moving them a shade nearer to the heat or farther from it, and stirring and tasting at intervals.
Upon a low rocking-chair before the hearth sat the wife of the family man before referred to. She was a tall, angular creature, the mother of fifteen, comprising in their number three sets of twins. She held her snuff-stick between her teeth and the child on her lap, with an easy professional air.
“I hain’t never had to raise none o’ mine by hand since Martin Luther,” she remarked. “I’ve been mighty glad on it, for he was a sight o’ trouble. Kinder colicky and weakly. Never done no good till we got him off the bottle. He’d one cow’s milk, too, all the time. I was powerful partickerler ’bout that. I’d never have raised him if I hadn’t bin. ‘N’ to this day Martin Luther hain’t what ’Poleon and Orlando is.”
“Dis yere chile ain’t gwine to be no trouble to nobody,” put in Aunt Mornin. “She’s a powerful good chile to begin with, ‘n’ she’s a chile that’s gwine to thrive. She hain’t done no cryin’ uv no consequence yit, ‘n’ whar a chile starts out dat dar way it speaks well for her. If Mornin had de raisin’ o’ dat chile, dar wouldn’t be no trouble ’t all. Bile der milk well ‘n’ d’lute down right, ‘n’ a chile like dat ain’t gwine to have no colick. My young Mistis Mars D’Willerby bought me from, I’ve raised three o’ hern, an’ I’m used to bilin’ it right and d’lutin’ it down right. Dar’s a heap in de d’lutin’. Dis yere bottle’s ready now, Mis’ Doty, ef ye want it.”
“It’s the very bottle I raised Martin Luther on,” said Mrs. Doty. “It brings back ole times to see it. She takes it purty well, don’t she? Massy sakes! How f’erce she looks for sich a little thing!”
Later in the day there arose the question of how she should be disposed of for the night, and it was in the midst of this discussion that Tom De Willoughby entered.
“Thar ain’t but one room; I s’pose he’ll sleep in that,” said Mrs. Doty, “‘n’ the Lord knows he don’t look the kind o’ critter to know what to do with a chile. We hain’t none o’ us seen him since this mornin’. I guess he’s kinder wanderin’ round. Does any of you know whar he is? We might ax what he ’lows to do.”
Tom bent down over the child as it lay in the woman’s lap. No one could see his face.
“I know what he’s going to do,” he said. “He’s going away to-morrow after the funeral.”
“‘N’ take the child?” in a chorus.
“No,” said Tom, professing to be deeply interested in the unclosing of the small red fist. “I’m going to take the child.”
There were four sharp exclamations, and for a second or so all four women gazed at him with open mouths. It was Mrs. Doty who first recovered herself sufficiently to speak. She gave him a lively dig with her elbow.
“Now, Tom D’Willerby,” she said, “none of your foolin’. This yere ain’t no time for it.”
“Mars D’Willerby,” said Aunt Mornin, “dis chile’s mother’s a-lyin’ dead in the nex’ room.”
Tom stooped a trifle lower. He put out both his hands and took the baby in them.
“I’m not foolin’,” he said, rather uncertainly. “I’m in earnest, ladies. The mother is dead and the man’s going away. There’s nobody else to claim her, he tells me, and so I’ll claim her. There’s enough of me to take care of her, and I mean to do it.”
It was so extraordinary a sensation, that for a few moments there was another silence, broken as before by Mrs. Doty.
“Waal,” she remarked, removing her snuff-stick and expectorating into the fire. “Ye’ve allus been kinder fond o’ chillun, Tom, and mebbe she ain’t as colicky by natur’ as Martin Luther was, but I mus’ say it’s the curi’sest thing I ever heern—him a-gwine away an’ givin’ her cl’ar up as ef he hadn’t no sort o’ nat’ral feelin’s—I do say it’s curi’s.”
“He’s a queer fellow,” said Tom, “a queer fellow! There’s no denying that.”
That this was true was proven by his conduct during the time in which it was liable to public comment. Until night he was not seen, and then he came in at a late hour and, walking in silence through the roomful of watchers, shut himself up in an inner chamber and remained there alone.
“He’s takin’ it mighty hard,” they said. “Seems like it’s kinder onsettled his mind. He hain’t never looked at the child once.”
He did not appear at all the next day until all was ready and Tom De Willoughby went to him.
He found him lying on the bed, his haggard face turned towards the window. He did not move until Tom touched him on the shoulder.
“If you want to see her——” he said.
He started and shuddered.
“What, so soon?” he said. “So soon?”
“Now,” Tom answered. “Get up and come with me.”
He obeyed, following him mechanically, but when they reached the door, Tom stopped him.
“I’ve told them a story that suits well enough,” he said. “I’ve told them that you’re poor and have no friends, and can’t care for the child, and I’ve a fancy for keeping it. The mother is to lie out here on the hillside until you can afford to find a better place for her—perhaps at your own home. I’ve told the tale my own way. I’m not much of a hand at that kind of thing, but it’ll do. I’ve asked you no questions.”
“No,” said the man, drearily. “You’ve asked me no questions.”
Then they went together into the other room. There were twenty or thirty people in it, or standing about the door. It was like all mountain funerals, but for an air of desolateness even deeper than usual. The slender pine coffin was supported upon two chairs in the middle of the room, and the women stood or sat about, the more easily moved weeping a little under the shadow of their calico sunbonnets. The men leaned against the door-posts, or sat on the wooden steps, bare-headed, silent, and rather restless.
When Tom led his charge into the apartment, there was a slight stir and moving back of chairs to make way for him. He made his way straight to the coffin. When he reached it and looked down, he started. Perhaps the sight of the white dress with its simple girlish frills and homelike prettiness brought back to him some memory of happier days when he had seen it worn before.
The pure, childlike face had settled into utter calm, and across the breast and in the hands were long, slender branches of the thickly flowering wild white clematis. Half an hour before Tom had gone into the woods and returned with these branches, which he gave to one of the younger women.
“Put them on her,” he said, awkwardly; “there ought to be some flowers about her.”
For a few moments there reigned in the room a dead silence. All eyes were fixed upon the man who stood at the coffin side. He simply looked down at the fair dead face. He bestowed no caresses upon it, and shed no tears, though now and then there was to be seen a muscular contraction of his throat.
At length he turned towards those surrounding him and raised his hand, speaking in a low voice.
“Let us pray.”
It was the manner of a man trained to rigid religious observances, and when the words were uttered, something like an electric shock passed through his hearers. The circuit-riders who stopped once or twice a month at the log churches on the roadside were seldom within reach on such an occasion as this, and at such times it was their custom to depend on any good soul who was considered to have the gift of prayer. Perhaps some of them had been wondering who would speak the last words now, as there was no such person on the spot; but the trained manner and gesture, even while it startled them by its unexpectedness, set their minds at rest.
They settled themselves in the conventional posture, the women retiring into their bonnets, the men hanging their heads, and the prayer began.
It was a strange appeal—one which only one man among them could grasp the meaning of, though all regarded its outpouring words with wonder and admiration. It was an outcry full of passion, dread, and anguish which was like despair. It was a prayer for mercy—mercy for those who suffered, for the innocent who might suffer—for loving hearts too tender to bear the bitter blows of life.
“The loving hearts, O God!” he cried, “the loving hearts who wait—who——”
More than one woman looked up from under her bonnet; his body began to tremble—he staggered and fell into a chair, hiding his face, shaking from head to foot in an agony of weeping. Tom made his way to him and bent over him.
“Come with me,” he said, his great voice broken. “Come with me into the air, it will quiet you, and we can wait until—until they come.”
He put his arm under his and supported him out of the house.
Two or three women began to rock themselves to and fro and weep aloud hysterically. It was only the stronger ones who could control themselves. He was standing at Tom’s side then; when they came out a short time afterwards, walking slowly and carrying the light burden, which they lowered into its resting-place beneath the pines.
He was quite calm again, and made no sound or movement until all was over. Then he spoke to Tom.
“Tell them,” he said, “that I thank them. I can do no more.”
He walked back to the desolate house, and in a little while the people went their ways, each of them looking back a little wistfully at the cabin as he or she rode out of sight.
When the last one was lost to view, Tom, who had loitered about, went into the cabin.
The man was sitting in the empty room, his gaze fixed upon the two chairs left standing in the middle of it a few paces from each other.
Tom moved them away and then approached him.
“The child has been taken to my house,” he said. “You don’t want to see it?”
“No.”
“Is there anything else I can do?”
“No, nothing else,” monotonously.
“Are you going away?”
“Yes—to-night.”
Tom glanced around him at the desolation of the poor, bare little place, at the empty bed, and the small trunk at the foot of it.
“You are not going to stay here alone, man?” he said.
“Yes,” he was answered. “I have something to do; I must be alone.”
Tom hesitated a moment.
“Well,” he said, at length, “I suppose I’ve done, then. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” he was answered. “The Lord—the Lord will reward you.”
And then Tom crossed the room slowly and reluctantly, passed out, and closed the door after him.
When he opened his own door, he struck his foot against something and stumbled over it. It was a primitive wooden cradle—somewhat like a box on rockers—a quilt of patchwork covered it, and upon the small pillow rested the round black head of his new possession. He stopped short to regard it. Aunt Mornin had left it there while she occupied herself with preparing supper in the kitchen. It really looked quite comfortable. Gradually a smile established itself upon Tom’s countenance.
“By thunder!” he said, “here you are, youngster, ain’t you? You’ve come to stay—that’s what you’ve come for.”
And, being answered by a slight stirring of the patchwork quilt, he put his foot out with much cautiousness, touched the rocker, and, finding to his great astonishment that he had accomplished this much safely, he drew up a chair, and, sitting down, devoted himself with laudable enthusiasm to engineering the small ark with a serious and domestic air.
In two days’ time the whole country had heard the news. The mystery of Blair’s Hollow was revived and became a greater mystery than ever. The woman was dead, the man had disappeared. The cabin stood deserted, save for the few household goods which had been left just as they were on the day of the funeral. Not an article had been moved, though the woman to whom Tom De Willoughby, as the person most concerned, handed over the discarded property, did not find the little trunk, and noticed that articles had been burned in the fireplace in the front room.
“Thar wus a big pile o’ ashes on the ha’th,” she said to her friends, “sorter like as if he’d been burnin’ a heap a little things o’ one sort or ’nother. It kinder give me cold chills, it looked so lonesome when I shut the door arter the truck was gone. I left the ashes a-lyin’ thar. I kinder had a curi’s feelin’ about touchin’ on ’em. Nothing wouldn’t hire me to live thar. D’Willerby said he reckoned I could hev moved right in ef I wanted to, but, Lawsy! I wouldn’t have done it fer nothin’.”
But that which roused the greatest excitement in the community was Tom De Willoughby’s course.
At first Mrs. Doty’s story of Big Tom’s adoption of the child was scarcely accepted as being a possibility. The first man who heard it received it with a grin of disbelief. This individual was naturally Mr. Doty himself.
“Minty,” he said, “don’t ye let him fool ye. Don’t ye know Tom D’Willerby by this time? Ye’d orter. It’s jest some o’ his gas. Don’t ye s’pose he hain’t got no more sense? What’d he do with it?”
“Ye can believe it or not,” replied Mrs. Doty, sharply, “but he’s gwine to raise that young’n, as shore as your name’s Job. Mornin’s got her this minute.”
Mr. Doty indulged in a subdued chuckle.
“A nice-lookin’ feller he is to raise a infant babe!” he remarked. “Lord a massy! if thet thar ain’t jest like one o’ his doggoned tales! He is the derndest critter,” with reflective delight, “the derndest! Thar ain’t nothin’ in Hamlin to come up to him.”
But the next day even Mr. Doty was convinced. After his customary visit to the Cross-roads, he returned to his family wearing a bewildered expression. It became a sheepish expression when his wife confronted him on the doorstep.
“Wal, Job Doty,” she remarked, “I guess you’ve found out by this time whether I was right or wrong.”
“Wal,” answered Mr. Doty, throwing his saddle down on the porch, “I reckon I hev. She’s thar shore enough, ‘n’ it seems like he’s gwine to keep her; but I wouldn’t hev believed it ef I hadn’t seen it, doggoned ef I would! But, Lord, it’s like him, arter all.” And he brightened up and chuckled again.
“I reckon he don’t scarcely know what he’s tuk in hand,” said Mrs. Doty.
“Him!” answered Mr. Doty. “Tom! Lord! ’tain’t a-gwine to trouble Tom. He’ll get along, Tom will. Tom’d jus’ as lief as she wus twins as not, mebbe liefer. It’d be a bigger thing for him to engineer ‘n’ gas about ef she wus. Ef you’d seen him bring her into the store to the boys ‘n’ brag on her ‘n’ spread hisself, I reckon ye wouldn’t hev minded ’bout Tom. Why, he’s set on her, Minty, a’reddy, as set as he kin be.”
The Cross-roads post-office had indeed been the scene of a sort of informal levée held by the newcomer, who had been thus presented to her fellow-citizens. One man after another had dropped in to hear the truth of the story related, and each one had been dumfounded at the outset by Tom’s simple statement of fact.
“Yes, I’m going to keep her, boys,” he said. “She’s in the back part of the house now. According to my calculations, she’s drunk about three quarts of milk since morning, and seems to stand it pretty well, so I suppose she’s all right.”
There were a great many jokes made at first, and a general spirit of hilariousness reigned, but it was observed by one of the keener witted ones that, despite his jocular tone, there was an underlying seriousness in Tom’s air which might argue that he felt the weight of his responsibility. When the women began to come in, as they did later in the day, he received them with much cordiality, rising from his chair to shake hands with each matron as she appeared.
“Come in to see her, have you?” he said. “That’s right. She’s in the back room. Walk right in. Mis’ Simpson and Mis’ Lyle, I’d like some of you ladies to have a look at her. I’ll go with you myself and hear what you have to say.”
He made the journey each time with a slight air of anxiety, leading the way to the wooden cradle, and standing over it like a Herculean guardian angel, listening attentively to all the comments made and all the advice given.
“She seems to be getting on pretty well, doesn’t she?” he enquired.
“Lor’, yes!” said one matron; “jest keep her kivered up ‘n’ don’t let no air strike her, ‘n’ ye won’t hev no trouble with her, I reckon.”
“No air?” enquired Tom, in some trepidation; “none at all?”
“Wal, thet’s my way,” was the answer. “Some folks does diff’rent, but I didn’t never expose ’em none till they was more’n amonth old. New-born babies is tender things!”
“Yes,” said Tom. “Good Lord, yes!”
His visitor started at him perplexedly for a moment.
“Wal,” she said. “My man allus used to say they kinder skeered him ’long at the first—he kinder felt as if they’d mebbe come apart, or sumthin’. They allus sorter ’minded me o’ young mice. Wal, you jest tell Mornin to giv’ her es much milk as she calls fer, an’ don’t let it bile too long, ‘n’ she’ll come on fine.”
The next visitor that entered uttered an exclamation of dismay.
“Ye’re gwine ter kill her!” she said. “Thar ain’t a breath o’ air in the room, ‘n’ thar ain’t nothin’ a new-born baby wants more ’n plenty o’ air. They’re tender critters, ‘n’ they cayn’t stand to be smothered up. Ye’ll hev her in spasms afore the day’s over.”
Tom flung the doors and windows open in great alarm.
“It is hot,” he said. “It’s hot enough out of doors, but Mis’ Simpson told me to keep her shut up, and I thought she’d had experience enough to know.”
“Jane Simpson!” with ill-concealed scorn. “She’d orter! She’s had six to die in their second summer. I reckon she told ye to give her half-b’iled milk as often as she wanted it?”
Tom reflected in manifest trepidation.
“She did tell me not to boil it too much, and to give it to her when she called for it,” he said, slowly.
“Wal, if ye don’t want ter kill her, take my advice an’ bile it a good half hour, ‘n’ don’t give it to her oftener than once in three hours. She’ll cry fur it, but ye needn’t mind. Ye’ll get used ter it. I don’t believe in lettin’ young uns hev nuthin’ out o’ their reg’lar time.”
The next caller found Tom somewhat discouraged. He preceded her into the reception-chamber with less alacrity than he had shown in his previous visits.
She was a younger woman than the rest, and when she reached the cradle’s side, she bent down and rearranged the cover with a soft touch.
“She’s gwine to be a purty little thing,” she said; “she’ll be sorter dark-complected, but she’s gwine to hev purty hair ‘n’ eyes. Ye’ll be right proud of her, Tom, when she’s grown, ‘n’ I guess she’ll be a heap o’ company to you. Lord!” with a motherly sigh, “it seems sorter curi’s her bein’ left to a man; but you’ll do well by her, Tom, you’ll do well by her. I hain’t no doubt o’ that. You was always mighty clever with children.”
“I’ll do all I can for her,” said Tom, “though I suppose that isn’t much.”
The young woman—she had left her own baby in the store with her husband—patted the little pillow lightly into shape.
“Ye’ll larn a heap by watchin’ her,” she said. “Jest watch her close ‘n’ she’ll teach you herself. What do you do about her milk?” anxiously.
“I’ve been told to do several things,” said Tom. “I’ve been told to boil it half an hour and not to boil it at all, and to give her all she wanted and not to give her all she wanted. I’m a little mixed about it.”
“Wal, I hain’t had but five, but I’ve allus let it come to a bile an’ then kinder used my reason about givin’ it. Seems like the mejumer ye air with children, the better. But, Lordy! I guess Mornin knows. She raised her young mistress’s.”
She kissed the child before she left it, and when she reentered the store, hurriedly took her own struggling offspring from its father’s arms, settled its pink dress and sunbonnet with a nervous, caressing motion, and, carrying it to the door, stood with it pressed against her breast while she seemed to be looking out at the distant mountains. She did not move until her husband had completed his purchases and came to her. And when she followed him out to take her place in the waggon, her eyes were bright and moist.
“Don’t ye take the Blair’s Holler road, Dave,” she said, as he touched up his horses. “Go round by Jones’s.”
“What’s yer notion, Louizy?” he asked.
“’Tain’t nothin’ but a notion, I reckon,” she answered; “but I don’t—I don’t want to hev to pass by that thar grave jest to-day. Take the other road.”
And being an easy-going, kindly fellow, he humoured her and went the other way.
In the store itself the spirit of hilariousness increased as the day advanced. By mail-time the porch was crowded and Tom had some slight difficulty in maintaining order.
“Say, boys,” he said, “there’s got to be quiet here. If we can’t carry on the establishment without disturbing the head of the household at present asleep in the back room, this post-office has to close and you can get a new postmaster. That’d suit you, I daresay. Some fellow, now, that wouldn’t half’tend to his business, not more than half, and that hadn’t legislative ability enough to carry on a precinct, let alone a county. You want a man of that kind, I suppose. That’s what you’re working for.”
“Tom,” said one of the younger ones, “bring her out ‘n’ let’s see her. You’ve been braggin’ on her all day, but ye hain’t let us see her.”
Half a dozen others joined in the cry.
“Yes,” they said, “bring her out, Tom.”
Tom did not rise from his seat. He tilted his chair back and balanced himself on his heels, his hands thrust into his pockets.
“Boys,” he said, “I’ll bring her out on one condition, and that is that there shall be no shines. I wouldn’t have her scared or upset for a good deal. There’s a joke in this sort of thing, I daresay; but it ain’t all joke. If I bring her out and show her, there’s to be no crowding and no row.”
It was agreed that there should be none, and he left his chair and went to the inner room again. When he returned, the men who had been lounging in the porch had come in, though perhaps not one among them understood his own unusual interest in the affair. Babies were not rarities in Hamlin County, every cabin and farm-house in the region being filled to overflowing with white-headed, sunburnt youngsters. And yet when Tom appeared there was a moment of silence. The child was asleep, its tiny black head resting peacefully against the huge chest of its bearer. There was no trace of confusion or awkwardness in his face, he seemed well content with his burden, and perhaps it was the quiet of his manner as much as anything else which caused the slight hush to fall upon those around him.
At last a middle-aged farmer stepped forward. He gave the child a long and rather curious look.
“Gal, ain’t it?” he enquired.
“Yes,” Tom answered.
“Wal, ’tain’t a bad thing fer her she’s got some un to stan’ by her; gals needs it.”
Tom gave her a long look too. She was sleeping very quietly; it might have been her mother’s breast she was lying against.
“Well,” he said, “here’s a man to stand by her,” and then he raised his head and looked at the rest of them.
“Boys,” he said, “that’s a promise. Remember it.”
And he carried her back.