Читать книгу The Man Thou Gavest - Harriet T. Comstock - Страница 6

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The furnishing of the room was bare and plain—a deal table, a couple of wooden chairs, a broad comfortable couch, a cupboard with some nondescript crockery, and a good-sized mirror in the space between the front door and the window. Before this glass a strange figure was walking to and fro, enjoying hugely its own remarkable reflection. Truedale’s bedraggled bath robe hung like a mantle from the shoulders of the intruder—they were very straight, slim young shoulders; an old ridiculous fez—an abomination of his freshman year, kept for sentimental reasons—adorned the head of the small stranger and only partly held in check the mass of shadowy hair that rippled from it and around a mischievous face.

Surprise, then wonder, swayed Truedale. When he reached the wonder stage, thought deserted him. He simply looked and kept on wondering. Through this confusion, words presently reached him. The masquerader within was bowing and scraping comically, and in a low, musical voice said:

“How-de, Mister Outlander, sir! How-de? I saw your smoke a-curling way back from home, sir, and I’ve come a-visiting ’long o’ you, Mister Outlander.”

Another sweeping curtsey reduced Truedale to helpless mirth and he fairly shouted, doubling up as he did so.

The effect of his outburst upon the young person within was tremendous. She seemed turned to stone. She stared at the face in the window; she turned red and white—the absurd fez dangling over her left ear. Then she emitted what seemed to be one word, so lingeringly sweet was the drawl.

“Godda’mighty!”

Seeing that there was going to be no other concession, Truedale pulled himself together, went around to the front door and knocked, ceremoniously. The girl turned, as if on a pivot, but spoke no word.

She had the most wonderful eyes—innocent and pleading; she was a mere child and, although she looked awed now, was evidently a forward young native who deserved a good lesson. Truedale determined to give her one!

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’ll come in and sit down.”

This he did while the big, solemn eyes followed him alertly.

“And now will you be kind enough to tell me what you mean by—wearing my clothes?”

Still the silence and the blank stare.

“You must answer my questions!” Truedale’s voice sounded stern. “I suppose you didn’t expect me back so soon?”

The deep eyes confirmed this by the drooping of the lids.

“And you broke in—what for?”

No answer.

“Who are you?”

Really the situation was becoming unbearable, so Truedale changed his tactics. He would play with the poor little thing and reassure her.

“Now that I look at you I see what you are. You’re not a human at all. You’re a spirit of something or other—probably of one of those perky mountains over yonder. The White Maid, I bet! You had to don my clothes in order to materialize before my eyes and you had to use that word of the hills—so that I could understand you. It’s quite plain now and you are welcome to my—my bath robe; I dare say that, underneath it, you are decked out in filmy clouds and vapours and mists. Oh! come now—” The strange eyes were filling—but not overflowing!

“I was only joking. Forgive me. Why—”

The wretched fez fell from the soft hair—the bedraggled robe from the rigid shoulders—and there, garbed in a rough home-spun gown, a little plaid shawl and a checked apron, stood—

“It’s the no-count,” thought Truedale. Aloud he said, “Nella-Rose!”

With the dropping of the disguise years and dignity were added to the girl and Truedale, who was always at his worst in the presence of strange young women, gazed dazedly at the one before him now.

“Perhaps”—he began awkwardly—“you’ll sit down. Please do!” He drew a chair toward her. Nella-Rose sank into it and leaned her bowed head upon her arms, which she folded on the table. Her shoulders rose and fell convulsively, and Truedale, looking at her, became hopelessly wretched.

“I’m a beast and nothing less!” he admitted by way of apology and excuse. “I—I wish you could forgive me.”

Then slowly the head was raised and to Truedale’s further consternation he saw that mirth, not anguish, had caused the shaking of those deceiving little shoulders.

“Oh! I see—you are laughing!” He tried to be indignant.

“Yes.”

“At what?”

“Everything—you!”

“Thank you!” Then, like a response, something heretofore unknown and unsuspected in Truedale rose and overpowered him. His shyness and awkwardness melted before the warmth and glow of the conquering emotion. He got up and sat on the corner of the table nearest his shabby little guest, and looking straight into her bewitching eyes he joined her in a long, resounding laugh.

It was surrender, pure and simple.

“And now,” he said at last, “you must stay and have a bite. I am about starved. And you?”

The girl grew sober.

“I’m—I’m always hungry,” she admitted softly.

They drew the table close to the roaring fire, leaving doors and windows open to the crisp, sweet; morning air.

“We’ll have a party!” Truedale announced. “I’ll step over to Jim’s cabin and bring the best he’s got.”

When he returned Nella-Rose had placed cups, saucers, and plates on the table.

“Do you—often have parties?” she asked.

“I never had one before. I’ll have them, though, from now on if—if you will come!”

Truedale paused with his arms full of pitchers and platters of food, and held the girl with his admiring eyes.

“And you will let me come and see you—you and your sister and your father? I know all about you. White has explained—everything. He—”

Nella-Rose braced herself against the table and quietly and definitely outlined their future relations.

“No, you cannot come to see us-all. You don’t know Marg. If she doesn’t find things out, there won’t be trouble; when she does find things out there’s goin’ t’ be a right smart lot of trouble brewing!”

This was said with such comical seriousness that Truedale laughed again, but sobered instantly when he recalled the incident of the white bantam which Jim had so vividly portrayed.

“But you see,” he replied, “I don’t want to let you go after this first party, and never see you again!”

The girl shrugged her shoulders and apparently dismissed the matter. She sat down and, with charming abandon, began to eat. Presently Truedale, amused and interested, spoke again:

“It would be very unkind of you not to let me see you.”

“I’m—thinking!” Nella-Rose drew her brows together and nibbled a bit of corn bread meditatively. Then—quite suddenly:

“I’m coming here!”

“You—you mean that?” Truedale flushed.

“Yes. And the big woods—you walk in them?”

“I certainly do.”

“Sometimes—I am in the big woods.”

“Where—specially?” Truedale was playing this new game with the foolish skill of the novice.

“There’s a Hollow—where—” (Nella-Rose paused) “where the laurel tangle is like a jungle—”

Truedale broke in: “I know it! There’s a little stream running through it, and—trails.”

“Yes!” Nella-Rose leaned back and showed her white teeth alluringly.

“I—I should not—permit this!” For a moment Truedale broke through the thin ice of delight that was luring him to unknown danger and fell upon the solid rock of conservatism.

“Why?” The eyes, so tenderly innocent, confronted him appealingly. “There are nuts there and—and other things! You are just teasing; you’ll let me—show you the way about?”

The girl was all child now and made Truedale ashamed to hold her to any absurd course that his standards acknowledged but that hers had never conceived.

“Of course. I’ll be glad to have you for a guide. Jim White has no ideas about nuts and things—he goes to the woods to kill something; he’s there now. I dare say mere are other things in the mountains besides—prey?”

Nella-Rose nodded.

“Let’s sit by the fire!” she suddenly said. “I—I want to tell you—something, and then I must go.”

The lack of shyness and reserve might so easily have become boldness—but they did not! The girl was like a creature of the wilds which, knowing no reason for fear, was revelling in heretofore unsuspected enjoyment. Truedale pulled the couch to the hearth for Nella-Rose, piled the pillows on one end and then seated himself on the stump of a tree which served as a settee.

“Now, then!” he said, keeping his eyes on his breezy little guest. “What have you got to tell me—before you go?”

“It’s something that happened—long ago. You will not laugh if I tell you? You laugh right much.”

“I? You think I laugh a good deal? Good Lord! Some folk think I don’t laugh enough.” He had his friends back home in mind, and somehow the memory steadied him for an instant.

“P’r’aps they-all don’t know you as well as I do.” This with amusing conviction.

“Perhaps they don’t.” Truedale was deadly solemn. “But go on, Nella-Rose. I promise not to laugh now.”

“It was the beginning of—you!” The girl turned her eyes to the fire—she was quaintly demure. “At first when I saw you looking in that window, yonder, I was right scared.”

Jim White’s statement that Nella-Rose wasn’t more than half real seemed, in the light of present happenings, little less than bald fact.

“It was the way you looked—way back there when I was ten years old. I had run away—”

“Are you always running away?” asked Truedale from the hollow depths of unreality.

“I run away a smart lot. You have to if you want to—see things and be different.”

“And you—you want to be different, Nella-Rose?”

“I—why, can’t you see?—I am different.”

“Of course. I only meant—do you like to be different.”

“I have to like it. I was born with a cawl.”

“In heaven’s name, what’s that?”

“Something over your eyes, and when they take it off you see more, and farther, than any one else. You’re part ha’nt.”

Truedale wiped his forehead—the room was getting hot, but the heat alone was not responsible for his emotions; he was being carried beyond his depth—beyond himself—by the wild fascination of the little creature before him. He would hardly have been surprised had a draught of air wafted her out of the window like a bit of mountain mist.

“But you mustn’t interrupt so much!” She turned a stern face upon him. “I ran away that time to see a—railroad train! One of the niggers told me about it—he said it was the Bogy Man. I wanted to know, so I went to the station. It’s a right smart way down and I had to sleep one night under the trees. Don’t the stars look starry sometimes?”

The interruption made Truedale jump.

“They certainly do,” he said, looking at the soft, dark eyes with their long lashes.

“I wasn’t afraid—and I didn’t hurry. It was evening, and the sun just a-going down, when I got to the station. There wasn’t any one about so I—I ran down the big road the train comes on—to meet it. And then” (here Nella-Rose clasped her hands excitedly and her breath came short), “and then I saw it a-coming and a-coming. The big fire-eye a-glaring and the mighty noise a-snorting and I reckoned it was old Master Satan and I just—couldn’t move!”

“Go on! go on!” Truedale bent close to her—she had caught him in the mesh of her dramatic charm.

“I saw it a-coming, and set on—on devouring o’ me, and still I couldn’t stir. Everything was growing black and black except a big square with that monster eye a-glaring into the soul o’ me!”

The girl’s face was set—her eyes vacant and wild; suddenly they softened, and her little white teeth showed through the childish, parted lips.

“Then the eye went away, there was a blackness in the square place, and then a face came—a kind face it was—all a-laughing and it—it kept going farther and farther off to one side and I kept a-following and a-following and then—the big noise went rushing by me, and there I was right safe and plump up against a tree!”

“Good Lord!” Again Truedale wiped his brow.

“Since then,” Nella-Rose relaxed, “I can shut my eyes and always there is the black square and sometimes—not always, but sometimes—things come!”

“The face, Nella-Rose?”

“No, I can’t make that come. But things I want to, do and have. I always think, when I see things, that I’m going to do a big, fine thing some day. I feel upperty and then—poof! off go the pictures and I am just—lil’ Nella-Rose again!”

A comically heavy sigh brought Truedale back to earth.

“But the face you saw long ago,” Truedale whispered, “was it my face, do you think?”

Nella-Rose paused—then quietly:

“I—reckon it was. Yes, I’m mighty sure it was your face. When I saw it at that window”—she pointed across the room—“I certainly thought my eyes were closed and that—it had come—the kind, good face that saved me!” A sweet, friendly smile wreathed the girl’s lips and she rose with rare dignity and held out her thin, delicate hand:

“Mister Outlander, we’re going to be neighbours, aren’t we?”

“Yes—neighbours!” Truedale took the hand with a distinct sense of suffocation, “but why do you call me an outlander?”

“Because—you are! You’re not of our mountains.”

“No, I wish I were!”

“Wishing can’t make you. You are—or you aren’t.”

Truedale noted the girl’s language. Distorted and crude as it often was, it was never positively illiterate. This surprised him.

“You—oh! you’re not going yet!” He put his hand out, for the definite way in which Nella-Rose turned was ominous. Already she seemed to belong to the cabin room—to Truedale himself. Not a suggestion of strangeness clung to her. It was as if she had always been there but that his eyes had been holden.

“I must go!”

“Wait—oh! Nella-Rose. Let me walk part of the way with you. I—I have a thousand things to say.”

But she was gone out of the door, down the path.

Truedale stood and looked after her until the long shadows reached up to Lone Dome’s sharpest edge. White’s dogs began nosing about, suggesting attention to affairs nearer at hand. Then Truedale sighed as if waking from a dream. He performed the duties Jim had left to his tender mercy—the feeding of the animals, the piling up of wood. Then he forced himself to take a long walk. He ate his evening meal late, and finally sat down to his task of writing letters. He wrote six to Brace Kendall and tore them up; he wrote one to his uncle and put it aside for consideration when the effect of his day dreams left him sane enough to judge it. Finally he managed a note to Dr. McPherson and one to Lynda Kendall.

“I think”—so the letter to Lynda ran—“that I will work regularly, now, on the play. With more blood in my own body I can hope to put more into that. I’m going to get it out to-morrow and begin the infusion. I wish you were here to-night—to see the wonderful effect of the moon on the mists—but there! if I said more you might guess where I am. When I come back I shall try to describe it and some day you must see it. Several times lately I have imagined an existence here with one’s work and enough to subsist on. No worry, no nerve-racking, and always the tremendous beauty to inspire one! Nothing seems wholly real here.”

Then Truedale put down his pen. Nella-Rose crowded Lynda Kendall from the field of vision; later, he simply signed his name and let the note go with that.

As for Nella-Rose, as soon as she left Truedale, her mind turned to sterner matters close at hand. She became aware before long of some one near by. The person, whoever it was, seemed determined to remain hidden but for that very reason it called out all the girl’s cunning and cleverness. It might be—Burke Lawson! With this thought Nella-Rose gasped a little. Then, it might be Marg; and here the dark eyes grew hard—the lips almost cruel! She got down upon her knees and crawled like a veritable little animal of the wilds. Keeping close to the ground, she advanced to where the trail from Lone Dome met the broader one, and there, standing undecided and bewildered, was a tall, fair girl.

Nella-Rose sprang to her feet, her eyes ablaze.

“Marg! What you—hounding me for?”

“Nella-Rose, where you been?”

“What’s that to you?”

“You’ve been up to Devil-may-come Hollow!”

“Have I? Let me pass, Marg. Have your mully-grubs, if you please; I’m going home.”

As Nella-Rose tried to pass, Marg caught her by the arm.

“Burke’s back!” she whispered, “he’s hiding up to Devil-may-come! He’s been seen and you know it!”

“What if I do?” Nella-Rose never ignored a possible escape for the future.

“You’ve been up there—to meet him. You ought to be licked. If you don’t let him alone—let him and me alone—I’ll turn Jed on him, I will; I swear it!”

“What is he—to you!” Nella-Rose confronted her sister squarely. Blue eyes—bold, cold blue they were—looked into dark ones even now so soft and winning that it was difficult to resist them.

“If you let him alone, he’ll be everything to me!” Marg blurted out. “What do you want of him, Nella-Rose?—of him or any other man? But if you must have a sweetheart, pick and choose and let me have my day.”

The rough appeal struck almost brutally on Nella-Rose’s ears. She was as un-moral, perhaps, as Marg, but she was more discriminating.

“I’m mighty tired of cleaning and cooking for—for father and you!” Marg tossed her head toward Lone Dome. “Father’s mostly always drunk these days and you—what do you care what becomes of me? Leave me to get a man of my own and then I’ll be human. I’ve been—killing the hog to-day!” Marg suddenly and irrelevantly burst out; “I—I shall never do it again. We’ll starve first!”

“Why didn’t father?” Nella-Rose said, softly.

“Father? Huh! he couldn’t have held the knife. He went for the jug—and got it full! No, I had to do it, but it’s the last time. Nella-Rose, tell me where Burke is hidden—tell me! Leave me free to—to win him; let me have my chance!”

“And then who’ll kill the pig?” Nella-Rose shuddered.

“Who cares?” Marg flung back.

“No! Find him if you can. Fair play—no favours; what I find is open to you!” Nella-Rose laughed impishly and, darting past her sister, ran down the path.

Marg stood and watched her with baffled rage and hate. For a moment she almost decided to take her chances and seek Burke Lawson in the distant Hollow. But night was coming—the black, drear night of the low places. Marg was desperate, but a primitive conservatism held her. Not for all she hoped to gain would she brave Burke Lawson alone in the secret places of Devil-may-come Hollow! So she followed after Nella-Rose and reached home while her sister was preparing the evening meal.

Peter Greyson, the father, sat huddled in a big chair by the fire. He had arrived at that stage of returning consciousness when he felt that it was incumbent upon him to explain himself. He had been a handsome man, of the dashing cavalry type and he still bore traces of past glory. In his worst moments he never swore before ladies, and in his best he remembered what was due them and upheld their honour and position with fervour.

“Lil’ Nella-Rose,” he was saying as Marg paused outside the door in the dark, “why don’t you marry Burke Lawson and settle down here with me?”

“He hasn’t asked me, father.”

“He isn’t in any position now to pick and choose”—this between hiccoughs and yawns—“I saw him early this morning; I know his back anywhere. I’d just met old Jim White. I reckon Burke was calculating to shoot Jim, but my coming upset his plans. Shooting a sheriff ain’t safe business.” What Greyson really had seen was Truedale’s retreat after parting company with Jim, but not knowing of Truedale’s existence he jumped to the conclusion which to his fuddled wits seemed probable, and had so informed Marg upon his return.

“I tell yo’, Nella-Rose,” he ran on, “yo’ better marry Burke and tame him. There ain’t nothing as tames a man like layin’ responsibilities on him.”

“Come, father, let me help you to the table. I don’t want to talk about Burke. I don’t believe he’s back.” She steadied the rolling form to the head of the table.

“I tell yo’, chile, I saw Burke’s back; don’t yo’ reckon I know Lawson when I see him, back or front? Don’t yo’ want ter marry Lawson, Nella-Rose?”

“No, I wouldn’t have him if he asked me. It would be like marrying a tree that the freshet was rolling about. I’m not going to seek and hide with any man.”

“Why don’t yo’ let Marg have ’im then? She’d be a right smart responsibility.”

“She can have him and welcome, if she can find him!” Then, hearing her sister outside, she called:

“Come in, Marg. Shut out the cold and the dark. What’s the use of acting like a little old hateful?”

Marg slouched in; there was no other word to describe her indifferent and contemptuous air.

“He’s coming around?” she asked, nodding at her father.

“Yes—he’s come,” Nella-Rose admitted.

“All right, then, I’m going to tell him something!” She walked over to her father and stood before him, looking him steadily in the eyes.

“I—I killed the hog to-day;” she spoke sharply, slowly, as to a dense child. Peter Greyson started.

“You—you—did that?”

“Yes. While you were off—getting drunk, and while Nella-Rose was traipsing back there in the Hollow I killed the hog; but I’ll never do it again. It sickened the soul of me. I’m as good as Nella-Rose—just as good. If you can’t do your part, father, and she won’t do hers, that’s no reason for me being benastied with such work as I did to-day. You hear me?”

“Sure I hear you, Marg, and I’m plumb humiliated that—that I let you. It—it sha’n’t happen again. I’ll keep a smart watch next year. A gentleman can’t say more to his daughter than that—can he?”

“Saying is all very well—it’s the doing.” Marg was adamant. “I’m going to look out for myself from now on. You and Nella-Rose will find out.”

“What’s come to you, Marg?” Peter looked concerned.

“Something that hasn’t ever come before,” Marg replied, keeping her eyes on Nella-Rose. “There be times when you have to take your life by the throat and strangle it until it falls into shape. I’m gripping mine now.”

“It’s the killing of that hog!” groaned Peter. “It’s stirred you, and I can’t blame you. Killing ain’t for a lady; but Lord! what a man you’d ha’ made, Marg!”

“But I ain’t!” Marg broke in a bit wildly, “and other things are not for—for women to do and bear. I’m through. It’s Nella-Rose and me to share and share alike, or—”

But there was nothing more to say—the pause was eloquent. The three ate in silence for some moments and then talked of trivial things. Peter Greyson went early to bed and the sisters washed the dishes, sharing equally. They did the out-of-door duties of caring for the scanty live stock, and at last Nella-Rose went to her tiny room under the eaves, while Marg lay down upon the living-room couch.

When everything was at rest once more Nella-Rose stole to the low window of her chamber and, kneeling, looked forth at the peaceful moonlit scene. How still and white it was and how safe and strong the high hills looked! What had happened? Why, nothing could happen and yet—and yet—Then Nella-Rose closed her eyes and waited. With all her might she tried to force the “good, kind face” to materialize, but to no purpose. Suddenly an owl hooted hideously and, like a guilty thing, the girl by the window crept back to bed.

Owls were very wise and they could see things in the dark places with their wide-open eyes! Just then Nella-Rose could not have borne any investigation of her throbbing heart.