At four o’clock that afternoon, at which time the train bearing Mr. Thompson and Azalea was due at Lee, Ma McBirney went to the “Outlook” and fastened an old sheet in the crotch of the tulip trees, and there being a fine breeze blowing across the flank of the mountain, it caught the folds of this copious flag and spread it to the breeze.
“Azalea will be the first to see it, likely,” thought Mrs. McBirney. “She has such sharp eyes.”
But the sharp eyes of Azalea were busy, at that moment, staring disconsolately from the car window, many miles from home. For there was a freight wreck not far ahead of them, and, according to the conductor, there was no telling when they could move on.
It was quite possible for Mary McBirney to hear the roar of the approaching train from her high-swung home-nest, although the railroad lay across the valley from them, but Jim had come home from school and heard all the story, and he and Hi had sat on the bench and nearly stared their eyes out watching for the locomotive to push its black nose over the gap, and supper had been eaten, and the darkness settled down for the night, before the shrill and apologetic whistle of the engine was heard.
“That child will be clean starved,” ma said to the boys. “And pa, too, unless he had the sense to go to the inn and get supper. And I don’t suppose he did, me not being along. Seems like married men didn’t know enough to eat unless their wives was by to tell ’em when to do it.”
Not that Ma McBirney was scolding. She was merely passing the time.
“I reckon we’d best take that there sheet in, ma, and swing out the lantern,” Jim said as he heard the distant shriek of the train.
“It sure will cheer them up to see it,” ma said. “It’s all ready for use, Jim. I filled it and polished it yesterday.”
So Jim climbed up the tulip tree to the first long, out-reaching branch, and swung out a serviceable headlight lantern.
“There!” said Jim descending, “It looks like the morning star.”
And so it did to the homesick eyes of the girl who sat snuggled close to Pa McBirney, sitting all starched and prim, in the pink gingham frock of little Barbara Summers.
“What’s that, please?” she cried, nudging pa’s arm. “That away up on the mountain? That’s not a star, is it? It’s too low down.”
“Sho!” ejaculated pa, “that’s ma’s lantern. She’s telling us to hurry up. You hear, you there?” he called good-naturedly to the horses.
“Perhaps the boys will come down to meet us.”
“No they won’t, Azalea. At least, Jim won’t. He’ll stay with his ma. As much as we can, Azalea, we-all must stay with ma. It ain’t good for her to be alone too much. I’ve been talking that over with Jim and he thinks just like I do. She’s had too much trouble, ma has, to be left alone to brood over them. Not that she’s a fretting one. But she’s deep, ma is.”
“I know.”
“It just seemed like her heart would break when you was took away, Azalea. She sets great store by you—almost as much as she did by Molly. You see, she’s turned the love she had for Molly, right on you. So you be good to her, sister, won’t you now?”
“Oh, indeed I will! Just as good as I know how.”
“You’re a bright girl, Zalie, and I feel it in my bones that there’s fine things in store for you. But I’m going to say right now, that if you can, I want you to stick to ma. If you can, Azalea. Of course I don’t want you to stand in your own light.”
The girl slipped a hand into the arm of Pa McBirney. Then she pointed up the valley to where the light shone from the “Outlook.”
“That’s my light, pa,” she said softly.
Haystack Thompson, who had stayed in town for the night, putting up at the inn and intending to return to his neglected farm in the morning, had given Mr. McBirney an account of Azalea’s adventures, but now pa begged to hear them again from the girl’s lips. So she told him everything in her sweet wistful voice.
“It seems like I’m a dreadful lot of trouble to you,” she said. “I can’t see why it is that I had to bring you all this worry.”
“Why tain’t your fault, Zalie. What’s the use of talking like that?”
“It seems like I’m not the way other girls are. I’ve had such a strange life, Pa McBirney.”
“Well it hain’t been very long yet, girl—hardly long enough to be strange, you might say.”
“Yes it has, pa. It’s been short and strange. Now really, you know, I ought to be living in The Shoals. That’s my house—at least, I mean it might have been. That old Colonel Atherton you told Jim about, and that he told me about, was my grandfather.”
She said it in a musing way, as if she attached very little importance to it, and her hand still rested on the arm of Pa McBirney.
“What’s that!” roared pa. “What you saying, girl? Whoa there, Mac. Whoa Nannie.” He brought the horses to such a short stop that the stones crashed away from hoofs and wheels down the steep grade of the road. “Just say that again, will ye?”
“I found it out while I was away, pa. Betty Bowen told me. She said mamma never wanted to come down this way, so near her old home, until just at the last, when she knew she couldn’t live. But it don’t matter, pa. You don’t think any less of me for being the granddaughter of that man, do you? I can’t help being related to him anyway.”
“Sho!” exclaimed pa. “What you talking about, girl? He may have been a foolish man in the heat of all the trouble of the war, and done things that hadn’t ought to have been done, but he was quality, Azalea. They was great folks, the Athertons.”
“Well, the only ones I know anything about,” said Azalea with a choke in her voice, “were wandering show folks; and one of them was a friendless orphan, Pa McBirney, till you and ma took her in. There wasn’t any great folks about her. There was just a miserable little wretch. Don’t change toward me, pa, please, please! Don’t go and tell Jim and Hi. Maybe they’d think I was putting on airs. Just let everything go on the way it is.”
“Nothing ever goes on the way it was,” said pa profoundly, clucking to his horses. “But I see what you mean, girl, and since you and me is pretty good friends, I’ll do what you want me to do. I’ll stand by you because we are friends.”
He felt the girl’s grateful lips pressed against the rough sleeve of his coat, and he laughed down at her in a kindly, almost pitying way.
“See here, Zalie,” he said, “don’t you get to caring too much for us. Don’t you get to caring too much for nothing. You hear me? Keep calm, Zalie. Keep calm. Folks that cares too much gets in a lot of trouble.”
“Do they?” laughed the girl. The remark seemed to strike her as very funny, and her gay laughter rang out like silver bells on the night air. The horses quickened their steps as they heard it, and a discouraged looking old “houn’-dog” came out from a tumble-down cabin and bayed at them.
But Pa McBirney refused to be amused. “I mean what I say,” he declared.
Azalea pulled herself together and stopped laughing.
“I know I’m silly, pa, but I’m so happy! You can’t think how happy I am! There now, don’t you try to tell me not to be too happy, because I’ve simply got to be happy to-night. Now, I’ll be good and talk like a sensible person all the rest of the ride. I want to tell you more about Mr. Summers, and my cousin Barbara.”
“Yes, Mrs. Summers, you know. She’s so little she seems almost like a girl. And we made up our minds to be kin.”
“Oh, you did, did you?”
“Yes. We’re going to write to each other just like we were cousins. See?”
“Eh-huh.”
“I just love her!”
“There you go again.”
“Well, I can’t help it if I do. Tell me about Carin, pa.”
“I reckon she’ll be up to see you to-morrow to tell you everything herself. She’s going into some kind of picture making, and her pa and ma is simply rooting up the earth, doing things.” He told her about the project for developing the mountain industries and the part they all were to play in it.
“Something laid out for every last one of us, you see.”
“Except me, pa. Didn’t they make plans for me?”
“They didn’t mention any, but I suspicion that they’ve got more plans for you than for anybody else. And that makes me feel kind o’ bothered, on ma’s account. Now that you tell me about your being the granddaughter of old Colonel Atherton, with a sort of right to live in the great house—though it did pass out of the family years ago—I’m more bothered than ever.”
Azalea laughed again.
“I don’t believe you’re bothered at all, pa,” she declared. “Why, here we are, home! Why, we’re really home! Didn’t the time pass quickly? Ma! Ma! Hullo, boys! Where’s ma?”
Mary McBirney folded the slight form of the girl in her arms.
“My prayers was answered,” she said simply. “Just bear witness, children. They was all answered. It’s a lesson to us, ain’t it? If we want anything of the Lord, just ask him, believing. Are you clean starved out, pet? Come right along in and have supper. Pa, the boys will put up the horses. You hike in the house and eat something decent. I suppose you had some kind of stuff down at that there inn. My land, it’s a wonder to me them folks can’t learn how to cook.”
She led the girl in and seated her before the table with its fine bread, its glasses of foaming milk, its cottage cheese and honey. Then she pushed her husband to his seat, and hung over him, then fluttered to Azalea to hang over her like an anxious mother bird.
“Here’s a little hot ham to help quell your appetites. And here’s some hominy cakes. My goodness, Azalea, do eat something. Pa, you just ruined your appetite down there in that miserable eating place. Ain’t it wonderful to have Zalie home again, pa? The ways of the Lord are past our comprehending. You must tell me everything, Zalie—every last thing.”
The lights from the homemade candles fluttered softly against the brown walls. Far off, the whippoorwills called. The chill freshness of the night-enshrouded mountain stole in the door, and when the boys had returned from putting up the horses, the family shut out the silent, shadowy world about them and drew around the table. Their faces, earnest, eager, loving, came into the full light from the candle dips. And there, far into the night, Azalea talked to them, secure in her sense of love and peace.
Afterward, when they all had lighted her to her chamber, and then had left her, she stood for a while on her little gallery listening to the whippoorwills and looking at the low stars. It seemed as if messages of good will came from the birds, from the near dark forest, from the loud-singing stream. All was familiar and dear. And her fragrant chamber welcomed her with the silent sweetness to be found only in well-loved rooms.
Among the wide acres of the Atherton place was a certain field known since the memory of the grandfathers as “The Field of Arrows.” It was a level, sunny spot, surrounded by low hills. It backed, indeed, against a hill, and a little stream with mirror-like pools ran around it with scythe-like grace. The Field of Arrows was almost a semicircle, and it was as pleasant a spot as any around about Lee, beautiful though that region was.
It had taken its name from the great number of flint arrowheads, the handicraft of the Cherokees or of some earlier race, who had camped or fought in that spot. Perhaps they had raised their maize there too. At any rate, the good Indian corn was growing there now, putting up its blade-like leaves courageously to the young summer air. Midway of the field, that is to say, reaching from the center of its base and running to the highest point of its circle, a fine broad pathway stretched, and beside this path poppies and daisies, mint and mountain pinks had leave to grow when their hour should come. The path led from the stepping stones and the shady cove where the kettles and tubs stood for washing, to a cabin with two picturesque outside chimneys made of the field stone and the reliable red clay, which held them together with brave determination. A light gallery ran in front of the house, with benches made of stout ash, pushed back against the wall, and that best of drinking cups, a long-handled, polished gourd, hung on the wall above an old Indian water jar, hollowed from soapstone.
Within were four rooms of equal size, and back of the house was a summer kitchen. And everything about the place, from the latticed passageway that led to the kitchen, to the serviceable crane that swung in the chief fireplace, spoke of home and comfort. The little windows looked out on a prosperous scene; the mulberry tree, with its golden bark, had places of hiding and nestling for half a dozen children. The bowlders in the stream sheltered ideal swimming holes. The chestnut and butternut trees on the hill behind the house suggested happy autumn days.
“It will be a perfect place for children,” decided Mrs. Carson. “And that’s where Hi’s family shall live.”
She had taken him to see it, and he had looked at it with eyes which seemed to recognize it as a home returned to, rather than as one just found.
So, while he and Mr. Carson took their three days’ journey to Hi’s home, Mrs. Carson busied herself with the cabin. The lattice was freshly whitewashed; the fireplaces within the house and the chimneys that ran up visibly to the ceiling, were painted a dark red. The floors and walls were purified, and the whole place furnished with new, strong mountain furniture. Rag rugs were put on the floor, fresh curtains at the windows, a good stove set up in the kitchen, the comfortable beds were provided with new bedding, and a fine little old clock, taken from the attic of The Shoals, and a mirror from the same place, in its antique frame, were set in place.
“Tell your mother to come right along,” Mrs. Carson had warned Hi. “If she has any particular treasure she wishes to bring, well and good. But she’s not to bother about anything else. She’ll be glad to have new things to look at. Women get dreadfully tired looking at the same furniture day in and day out. I believe a new outfit for the house at the right time would have kept many a woman from going insane.”
“Yessum,” agreed Jim. “Going over and over a thing is what wears you out, ain’t it?”
Mrs. Carson had held some doubts as to the ability of her husband and Hi to persuade a woman to “pull up stakes” at an hour’s notice and to go to a place she perhaps had never heard of. But it appeared that Mrs. Kitchell, like her son, was ready for adventure. Asking no more time than it took to wash and iron the handful of clothes possessed by the family, she packed all her worldly goods—or at least, all she cared to retain—in an old haircloth trunk, and smiling and expectant, turned her face toward Lee. It was a little brown, nutlike face, much like Hi’s, and it was really carved in smiles in spite of all her troubles. There were worried marks between her brows, it is true, but the laughing marks about her eyes and the corners of her mouth, discounted them.
The democrat wagon from The Shoals was at the station to meet the party, and Mrs. Carson, who had driven down in her little pony cart, helped to get the family settled in it. The little hair trunk was put in behind, and the tribe of Kitchell, with a new light in their bright black eyes, turned to the future.
“A dear little strong, staunch woman, isn’t she?” said Lucy Carson to her husband as they drove toward their home. “And the two girls are as nice little daughters as anyone would care to have—much better looking than Hi. But the fourth child, the little boy, looks sickly. We’ll have to put him on special diet—plenty of milk and eggs.”
Mr. Carson smiled happily to himself. The languor was going out of his wife’s voice; the pallor of her face was flushed with a lovely rose pink. As she sat beside him, in her soft cream-colored frock, with her lilac scarf drifting from her shoulders, her pale amethysts in their setting of old yellow gold clasping collar and belt, he thought her the sweetest woman he ever had seen. She was sweeter even than before sorrow had come to her. He had loved her then; but there was something very like worship in the feeling he had toward her now.
“We’ll drive on through the hills the short way,” she said, brimful and flowing over with the home-romance of the Kitchells, “and be at the door to welcome them.”
And so they were. As the democrat wagon drew up, filled with the wondering and somewhat awed Kitchells, their good “neighbors”—they would not have tolerated the word “benefactors”—stood at the door of the cabin to meet them. And tired little Anne Kitchell, her four children following her, stepped into the door of her new home. The old life with the shame of a drunken husband, killed in a shameful row, was left behind. She had the chance to begin a new life, and to this feeling the new furniture of the house contributed more than she could realize.
Hi ran from room to room, staring, his big mouth open, his heart swelling. Once he waved his long arms over his head, unable to contain himself, and not wanting to really whoop with delight. He listened while Mrs. Carson talked to his mother of this and that; showed her the kitchen and the store closets, with their supplies of food and of house linen, and the plain, good wardrobes she had prepared for the family.
“If I’ve made any mistakes, Mrs. Kitchell, the things can be changed. I worked according to Hi’s direction. No, you’re not to thank me. Not at all. This is a sort of bonus offered you for your being so obliging in coming to us in our need. We want to get our factory started as soon as possible, and we couldn’t spare you the time to sew for your family.”
She spoke in a brisk bright way new to her, and even Hi, boy that he was, could see that a great change was coming over her. She had reminded him of a tall white lily, drooping at the close of a hot day; but now she was like that same lily in the morning, and her petals were touched with pink.
So Anne Kitchell was not allowed to weep out her gratitude, though a dozen times she thought she was going to; she was filled, instead, with a new desire to work and to “be somebody.” There was no one here to saddle the old shameful stories on her—to refer to her as a drunkard’s wife. She would be taken at her own valuation, and in her keen, quick little brain she began to understand that the valuation might be a high one if she chose to make it so.
Mary McBirney gave her only a day or two to settle herself in her new home, and then, with a pail of mountain honey and a crock of cottage cheese by way of gifts, she came to see her. They liked each other at once, though the life of one had enabled her to make the best of herself, and the life of the other had kept her fighting like an angry rat. But the honesty that underlay the character of each, and the interest each had in Hi, and in Azalea—indeed, in children in general—helped them over the little strangeness they might have felt.
But Ma McBirney was restless. There was something on her conscience—something that had been there ever since her husband had told her that Azalea was the granddaughter of old Colonel Atherton, and that, if fortune had treated her kindly, The Shoals, and all the comforts and opportunities that went with the possession of the estate, would have been hers. True, the fine place had passed legitimately into the hands of the Carsons; yet knowing the generous and abounding nature of the Carsons as she did, she realized that were they to be told the truth about Azalea, they would at once offer her a home, and would give her an education such as their own daughter was receiving.
“I’m a wicked woman,” said Mary McBirney to herself. “I’m selfish and sinful. Just to give myself happiness, I’m keeping that dear child away from what belongs to her.”
The thought had goaded her for days. More, it had crept into the wakeful hours of the night. It had tortured her as she watched Azalea busy about the house, singing, or thinking in her intense, curious way. When the girl flung her arms about Ma McBirney’s neck, calling her the sweetest thing in the world, and saying how happy she was to be back with her again, it seemed as if Ma McBirney’s heart actually turned over in her side, with dread of losing her, and with shame at her own cowardice.
So, on the day she called on Mrs. Kitchell, she summoned her better angel—though it was difficult to imagine that Mary McBirney could be surrounded with anything but good angels—and made her way to The Shoals.
From every window of the great white house fluttered orange and white awnings. The lawn was trim and green; the flower beds aglow with lovely fresh blooms. Hammocks and couches swung on the wide gallery, and linen-covered chairs and great East Indian jugs filled with growing plants, stood about. Ma McBirney paused before the wide door with its fan-shaped transom and looked about her wistfully. By saying a word, Azalea could leave the humble little home which was now hers, and come down to enjoy the bright hospitality of this beautiful place. Music, books, travel—all of these things would come to her. Mary McBirney remembered how she herself had longed for opportunity in those early days when she first became aware of her ignorance, and how she had “given up” and gone her quiet way—the way to which she was born. But Azalea was not like that. She could not be happy in giving up an education and all that would go to make her capable and able to measure herself with the best. What had meant contentment for her, Mary McBirney, would mean failure for Azalea.
She turned these matters over in her large, kind mind, and—rang Mrs. Carson’s doorbell.
Mrs. Carson’s parlor maid, black, smiling, and chubby, answered the summons.
“Tulula Darthula,” said Mrs. McBirney in her soft voice, “might I see your mistress?”
“I’ll inquiah, ma’am,” replied Tulula in even softer tones. “Be pleased to enteh.”
Mrs. McBirney would have been quite content to sit on the porch, but the thoughts surging in her brain impelled her to accept Tulula’s invitation.
“Will you be seated in the mornin’ room, ma’am?”
Mrs. McBirney hesitated a moment. Then she said shyly:
“If you don’t think Mrs. Carson would mind, Tulula, I’d like to sit in the drawing room this time.”
“Why ce’t’ney, ma’am. Suit yo’sef.”
Tulula rustled away with her message, and Mary McBirney, who all her life had seen only the mountain or the village homes, entered the long shadowy drawing room, with its paintings, its occasional white statue, its shining floor and carved furniture, and sitting there, measuring all this meant of knowledge and delight, steeled her heart for the sacrifice.
Then Mr. and Mrs. Carson entered together, and upborn by love, Mrs. McBirney went to meet them, saying:
“I asked to come in here for—for a reason. I hope you don’t mind, ma’am.”
“Our home is for our friends,” answered Mrs. Carson gently. “I would like to see you here often, friend.”
She knew, somehow, that Mary McBirney had a great thing to say.
“This is the reason:” said Mrs. McBirney. And then she told them the whole story.
* * * * *
It had been rainy Sunday. The rain began before daylight; it wiped out the sunrise, and it turned what should have been a golden midsummer day into mere blankness and desolation. At least, a person could look at it that way if he wanted to.
Up at the McBirney house no one had thought of dressing for church.
“No one but a fish could get anywhere to-day,” said Jim.
“I feel just as if we were living under a waterfall,” declared Azalea. “What’ll we do to-day, Jim?”
“I don’t know—’less you tell me stories.”
“Piggy, I don’t want to do all the thinking. If I tell stories you’ve got to tell them too. It’s nice we’re going to have chicken for dinner, isn’t it?” She sniffed the air contentedly.
“You bet it is. And strawberries and ’lasses cake!”
“I wonder what Carin’s doing, Jim?”
“Fooling ’round in that there studio of hern. My, but she can paint, can’t she? Did you see that picture she done of me sitting up in the willer?”
“Jim McBirney, what makes you talk like that? You know better than to say ‘done’ for ‘did’ and you know willow isn’t pronounced ‘willer.’”
“Now, look here, Zalie, you leave me alone and let me talk like I want to. I ain’t got on my Sunday clothes, have I? Well then, I don’t have to put on Sunday talk. Just let me feel comfortable, can’t you?”
“I wish Carin were up here to-day.”
“And Hi. I’d rather have Hi. Carin makes me kind o’ squirm. She’s a mighty nice girl, but she don’t make me feel to home.”
“Oh, Jim, she’s lovely. And such fun too! She can get up the best plays you ever heard of.”
“Girl plays, I reckon. She couldn’t think of anything that would interest boys.”
“Maybe boys wouldn’t have the sense to be interested, smarty.”
“Children,” broke in the soft voice of Ma McBirney, “I’ve got the dinner in the oven and there ain’t nothing occupying me just at present. Wouldn’t one of you read me a story from them Youth’s Companions Carin sent home by pa last night? Seems as if it would pass the time.”
The children flushed a little. They knew when ma disliked their way of talking. She had her own particular fashion of correcting them.
“You read, Azalea,” said Jim, sinking into a chair and staring out of the rain-beaten window. “And you’ll have to read good and loud to get ahead of this bellering and roaring.”
And, indeed, the wind shook the cabin, and the rain fluttered down the chimney; the stream that tumbled down the mountain side was fairly shouting and the trees were beating their drenched branches together with a sound like the rushing of great birds. But high above the elemental din, Azalea’s clear voice arose. And peace dwelt within the cabin. It dwelt there while the children set the table for the good dinner that Mrs. McBirney had cooked, and while they devoured that dinner with perfect concentration of purpose. And afterward, when ma had read a psalm to them, and pa had told a story about something that happened to him when he was a boy and the fires were raging over the mountains, they settled down to a quiet game of jack straws on the deal table.
And then, just as they were on the point of being bored again, the storm cleared. Above them the deep blue sky shone through the fleecy whiteness of the clouds, and beneath them torn fragments of cloud swam along like floating islands over the purple valley. The sunset came in rose and gold, and in the east a proud young moon, bright as a happy bride, swam up into the heavens.
The McBirneys, silent and happy, cloaked against the dampness, sat at “Outlook Point” and looked about them at the beautiful world.
“This is as good as church, to my way of thinking,” remarked Thomas McBirney. “If you can’t worship the Almighty when you see a thing like this, then there ain’t no manner of worship in you.”
“What’s that, Thomas? Singing?” asked his wife.
Something sweet and clear troubled the silence, and as the four harkened it swelled.
“Singing!” decided Thomas. “Who can it be?”
They listened.
“I know,” cried Azalea gayly. “It’s the Carsons! Oh, ma, it’s Carin and her father and mother.”
Something gripped Mary McBirney’s loving, jealous heart. She knew why they were coming. She had asked them to come for this very thing, but when the rain had set in, it had seemed like an answer to her secret prayers—those prayers which she would not admit to herself that she prayed, and which were no more than her “heart’s sincere desire.”
The horses drew nearer; the words of the song could be heard.
“Now the day is over,
Night is drawing nigh—”
The three voices, softly blended, sang the familiar lines to the slow motion of their horses.
Azalea ran to the edge of the “Outlook” and sent her clear voice, rested and refreshed from the strain it had undergone in the days of her enforced singing of noisy songs, ringing down the mountain side.
“Shadows of the evening,
Steal across the sky.”
The tightness at Ma McBirney’s heart increased. How like her Azalea was to these others—like them in voice and manner, and unafraid of them! They had heard her, for Mr. Carson interrupted himself to call out to her. Then the song went on, and there were four singing it.
“Jesus give the weary
Calm and sweet repose;
With Thy tenderest blessing,
May our eyelids close.”
Now the sounds grew fainter as the windings of the road took them away; then they swelled again, as the horses returned on the winding road. But Azalea sang on, delighting in the song her mother had taught her—the song that had comforted her when she had grown sick at heart at all the silly things she had been obliged to sing when she was “the show girl.”
“Grant to little children,
Visions bright of Thee;
Guard the sailors tossing
On the deep, blue sea.”
“They are here,” said Ma McBirney in so solemn a voice that Jim and Azalea stared at her, wondering.
And so they were. They dismounted easily, threw their bridles, Western fashion, over the heads of their horses, and walked forward with pleasant greetings. But even their voices were different. They too seemed solemn.
“It must be the night,” thought Azalea. She took Carin’s hand, and they all walked back to the Point, and sat there watching the little islands of cloud as they floated across the path of the moon and turned from cloud into something precious and radiant, not quite so pale as silver nor as bright as gold.
“We might be eagles—or angels,” murmured Mrs. Carson, sinking into her seat.
“We couldn’t stand it in the house any longer,” Carin explained. “We made up our minds we’d have a ride even if the roads were bad.”
“The ford must have been pretty deep,” remarked Pa McBirney.
“I took the leading straps of the horses the ladies were riding, and we made a rush for it together,” Mr. Carson explained.
Then silence fell. There certainly was something strange about the night.
“We had other reasons for coming up here to-night,” Mr. Carson said at last. “We came because we knew that we could sit out here with you all, and that we could all look at this wonderful scene, and forget all about our bodies, and our troubles, and our little human way of looking at things. We could be, as my wife said, like eagles, or like angels. We could realize that we really were spirits.”
It was Ma McBirney who murmured: “Yes.”
“We came,” went on Mr. Carson gently, “to ask Azalea to make a choice. We are going to invite her to live with us and to be as our own daughter. She will share equally with Carin in everything; at least as far as it is possible for us to make an equal division. We know the story of her life and that under more fortunate circumstances the home we live in would have been hers. She would have been educated in the best manner and fitted for the life of a lady of position. Now, of our four children only one is left. So we offer her a share of our hearts and our substance. Do you understand, Azalea?”
Carin threw an arm about Azalea’s waist.
“Oh, say yes, dear. We will be so happy.”
“We will make you welcome from our heart of hearts,” said Mrs. Carson. But it seemed as if she were holding something back; and Azalea saw her white hand laid upon Ma McBirney’s arms.
The moon had gone under a dense cloud, and they were left in the bland, moist darkness. And in that darkness there gleamed before Azalea’s mental gaze, the two homes—the great, beautiful manor, and the mountain cabin. She knew little of the life in the former, but what she did know of it came to her now with all its ease, its pleasure, and its promise. She thought of the struggle there in the mountain home; of the sacrifice, the hard work, the eternal “doing without.” Then, as if something above and beyond her came to her to lift her out of herself, she glimpsed the kind wishes and helpful affection of those in the manor; and over against them she placed the tense and tender love of Mary McBirney who had clasped her to her heart when she was motherless.
They did not need her at the manor; but she was greatly needed in the cabin. Love demanded tribute of her. And suddenly, Azalea knew what she must do. If Ma McBirney loved her like a mother, she, Azalea, gave back a daughter’s love. There was, after all, nothing worth thinking of save that—save love. A warm glow swept over her, and the deepest sense of contentment she ever had known in all her restless, curious life of change filled her heart.
“I’ve thought of everything,” she said. “And I thank you, thank you, thank you—you dears!” She turned toward the Carsons, and they could see that she was holding out her hands in the gloom. “But this is my home. Ma McBirney is dearer to me than any one now on the earth. I’ll stay with her—if she wants me.”
And then she suddenly remembered that Mrs. McBirney had not said a word to oppose Mr. Carson’s arguments. Could it be, that because of their poverty, they wished her to go to The Shoals? Little cold tremors ran over her, and her heart turned sick.
“But, ma, do you want me?” she cried with sharp agony.
“Want you!” sobbed ma, holding out her arms. “Want you, honey bird?”
The moon swam out again into the clear sky, transfiguring their world. A mocking bird began to sing, whistling low, muffled notes of sad sweetness.
“It is the word of truth you have spoken, Azalea,” said Mr. Carson slowly, “and I thank you for your honesty, and for your nobility too, my dear. We understand everything; don’t we Lucy, my love?”
“Everything,” replied Mrs. Carson.
“But now we have something to say which is not a request, but practically a command. Next week Miss Parkhurst, a friend of mine and a teacher of unusual ability, is coming to instruct Carin. You are to come daily, Azalea, to share her lessons with her. And that the going and coming may not be too much for you, we are sending a well-trained little horse to you. Its feed and keep shall be, so far as possible, the care of my stable boys, so that my good friend McBirney, who is so willing to take other people’s burdens on him, may not have another one added. But I promise you all, for myself and for Mrs. Carson and Carin, that you shall be thought of, Azalea, as the daughter of this home here on the mountains. And while we shall give you all you will take in the way of schooling and development, we will not do one thing to win you away from the life you have chosen.”
“Thank you, sir,” murmured Azalea. She could say no more.
“Oh, thank you,” added Ma McBirney, crushing down the tormenting little doubts that would arise in her heart. Could she really keep this scarlet tanager in her wren’s nest?
But no doubts troubled the others. Jim sat thinking and thinking. What wonderful things came to Zalie! And he—he was a gawk—a dunce—a silly hill billy! He wondered Azalea paid any attention to him! And yet, somehow, she seemed to think of herself as his sister. Well, then, he’d stick by her, sir, no matter what happened. Till he was an old man with long white whiskers he’d stick by her, and if anyone did her any sort of harm, he’d fix him. He almost leaped to his feet and stood there straight and fierce with his own combat, beside the girl.
He stood there, straight and fierce
“I forgot to say,” observed Mr. Carson in his slow way, “that there will be two little horses. They were a pair and the man didn’t want to sell them singly. So the second one is for Jim.”
“No!” cried Jim, and his voice sounded almost defiant in his excitement.
“Yes!” cried Mr. Carson, mocking him. “Shake hands on it.” And he wrung Jim’s hand in his own. Then the boy’s shyness came on him and made him slip away in the darkness. Yet he was on hand to hold the horses when the Carsons were ready to mount.
They rode away in the moonlight, with the bewitching world of cloud and shine about them. The trees were transformed into enchanted silver things amid which elves and dryads seemed to hide; the rushing water was a torrent of dancing crystal where the water maidens played. The three who rode away, went singing. But this time it was a song that Azalea did not know. She said so to Ma McBirney with a troubled smile.
“What a lovely, lovely song! And I never so much as heard it before.”
Ma McBirney kissed her slowly, and said with meaning:
“But you see, Zalie, they are going to teach it to you.”
Azalea did not answer. She lighted her candle.
“’Night, Jim,” she called. “You couldn’t get rid of me, could you?”
“Could if I tried. Didn’t try.”
“Good night, Pa McBirney.”
“Good night, daughter.” It was the first time he ever had called her that. She slipped over and bending above him, dropped a kiss on his brow as he sat there in the open room—the queer two-sided chamber that divided the closed rooms of the house.
“I reckon I’d better go to your room with you,” said Ma McBirney, “and see you safe.”
So together they climbed the rude stairs to that cotelike chamber that looked out on the transfigured mountain. All about them, save for the throating of the mocking bird, was silence. And in silence the two parted for the night. They had no need of words. Stronger than any mere accident of relationship was the love and trust in their hearts.
THE END.