Читать книгу Pole Baker - Will N. Harben - Страница 7

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T was Sunday morning a week later. Springtown's principal church stood in the edge of the village on the red-clay road leading up the mountain-side, now in the delicate green dress of spring, touched here and there by fragrant splotches of pink honeysuckle and white, dark-eyed dog-wood blossoms. The building was a diminutive affair, with five shuttered windows on either side, a pulpit at one end, and a door at the other. A single aisle cut the rough benches into two parts, one side being occupied by the men, and the other by the women. The only exception to this rule was the bench reserved, as if by common consent, for Captain Duncan, who always sat with his family, as did any male guests who attended service with them.

The Rev. Jason Hillhouse was the regular pastor. He was under thirty years of age, very tall, slight of build, and of nervous temperament. He wore the conventional black frock-coat, high-cut waistcoat, black necktie, and gray trousers. He was popular. He had applied himself closely to the duties of his calling and was considered a man of character and worth. While not a college graduate, he was yet sufficiently well-read in the Bible and religious literature to suit even the more progressive of mountain church-goers. He differed radically from many of the young preachers who were living imitations of that noted evangelist, the Rev. Tom P. Smith, “the whirlwind preacher,” in that he was conservative in the selection of topics for discourse and in his mild delivery.

To-day he was at his best. Few in the congregation suspected it, but, if he distributed his glances evenly over the upturned faces, his thoughts were focussed on only one personality—that of modest Cynthia Porter, who, in a becoming gray gown, sat with her mother on the third bench from the front. Mrs. Porter, a woman of fifty-five years of age, was very plainly attired in a calico dress, to which she had added no ornament of any kind. She wore a gingham poke-bonnet, the hood of which hid her face even from the view of the minister. Her husband, old Nathan Porter, sat directly across the aisle from her. He was one of the roughest-looking men in the house. He had come without his coat, and wore no collar or neck-tie, and for comfort, as the day was warm, he had even thrown off the burden of his suspenders and they lay in careless loops about his hips. He had a broad expanse of baldness, to the edge of which hung a narrow fringe of white hair, and a healthful, pink complexion, and mild, blue eyes.

When the sermon was over and the doxology sung, the preacher stepped down into the congregation to take the numerous hands cordially extended to him. While he was thus engaged old Mayhew came from the “amen corner,” on the right, and nodded and smiled patronizingly.

“You did pretty well to-day, young man,” he said. “I like doctrinal talks. There's no getting around good, sound doctrine, Hillhouse. We'd have less lawlessness if we could keep our people filled plumb-full of sound doctrine. But you don't look like you've been eating enough, my boy. Come home with me and I'll give you a good dinner. I heard a fat hen squeal early this morning, as my cook, old Aunt Nancy, jerked her head off. It looks a pity to take life on a Sunday, but if that hen had been allowed to live she might have broken a commandment by hunting for worms on this day of rest. So the divine intention may be carried out, after all. Come on with me.”

“I can't, Brother Mayhew, not to-day, thank you.” The young man flushed as his glance struggled on to the Porters, who were waiting near the door. “The fact is, I've already accepted an invitation.”

“From somebody with a girl in the family, I'll bet,” Mayhew laughed, as he playfully thrust the crooked end of his walking-stick against the preacher's side.

“I wish I knew why women are so dead-set on getting a preacher in the family. It may be because they know they will be provided for, after some fashion or other, by the church at large, in case of death or accident.”

The preacher laughed as he moved on shaking hands and dispensing cheery words of welcome right and left. Presently the way was clear and he found himself near Cynthia and her mother.

“Sorry to keep you standing here,” he said, his color rising higher as he took the hand of the girl and shook it.

“Oh, it doesn't matter at all, Brother Hillhouse,” the old woman assured him. “I'll go on an' overtake Mr. Porter; you and Cynthia can stroll home by the shadiest way. You needn't walk fast; you'll get hot if you do. Cynthia, I won't need you before dinner. I've got everything ready, with nothing to do but lay back the cloth and push the plates into their places. I want Brother Hillhouse just to taste that pound-cake you made. I'm a good hand at desserts myself, Brother Hillhouse, but she can beat me any day in the week.”

“Oh, I know Miss Cynthia can cook,” said the minister. “At the picnic at Cohutta Springs last week she took the prize on her fried chicken.”

“I told you all that mother fried that chicken,” said the girl, indifferently. She had seen Nelson Floyd mounting his fine Kentucky horse among the trees across the street, and had deliberately turned her back towards him.

“Well, I believe I did fix the chicken,” Mrs. Porter admitted, “but she made the custards and the cake and icing, besides the poor girl was having a lot of trouble with her dress. She washed and did up that muslin twice—the iron spoiled it the first time. I declare I'd have been out of heart, but she was cheerful all through it. There is Nathan now. He never will go home by himself; he is afraid I'll lag behind and he'll get a late dinner.”

“How are you to-day, Brother Porter?” Hillhouse asked as they came upon the old man, under the trees, a little way from the church.

“Oh, I'm about as common,” was the drawling answer. “You may notice that I limp a little in my left leg. Ever since I had white-swellin' I've had trouble with that self-same leg. I wish you folks would jest stop an' take a peep at it. It looks to me like the blood's quit circulatin' in it. It went to sleep while you was a-talkin' this mornin'—now, I'll swear I didn't mean that as a reflection.” He laughed dryly as he paused at a fallen tree and put his foot upon it and started to roll up the leg of his trousers, but his wife drew him on impatiently.

“I wonder what you'll do next!” she said, reprovingly. “This is no time and place for that. What would the Duncans think if they were to drive by while you were doing the like of that on a public road? Come on with me, and let's leave the young folks to themselves.”

Grumblingly Porter obeyed. His wife walked briskly and made him keep pace with her, and they were soon several yards ahead of the young couple. Hillhouse was silent for several minutes, and his smooth-shaven face was quite serious in expression.

“I'm afraid I'm going to bore you on that same old line, Miss Cynthia,” he said, presently. “Really, I can't well help it. This morning I fancied you listened attentively to what I was saying.”

“Oh, yes, I always do that,” the girl returned, with an almost perceptible shudder of her shoulders.

“It helped me wonderfully, Miss Cynthia, and once a hope actually flashed through me so strong that I lost my place. You may have seen me turning the pages of the Bible. I was trying to think where I'd left off. The hope was this: that some day if I keep on begging you, and showing my deep respect and regard, you will not turn me away. Just for one minute this morning it seemed to me that you had actually consented, and—and the thought was too much for me.”

“Oh, don't say any more about it, Mr. Hillhouse,” Cynthia pleaded, giving him a full look from her wonderful brown eyes. “I have already said as much as I can on that subject.”

“But I've known many of the happiest marriages to finally result from nothing but the sheer persistence of the man concerned,” the preacher went on, ardently, “and when I think of that I live, Miss Cynthia—I live! And when I think of the chance of losing you it nearly drives me crazy. I can't help feeling that way. You are simply all I care for on earth. Do you remember when I first met you? It was at Hattie Mayfield's party just after I got this appointment; we sat on the porch alone and talked. I reckon it was merely your respect for my calling that made you so attentive, but I went home that night out of my head with admiration. Then I saw that Frank Miller was going with you everywhere, and that people thought you were engaged, and, as I did not admire his moral character, I was very miserable in secret. Then I saw that he stopped, and I got it from a reliable source that you had turned him down because you didn't want to marry such a man, and my hopes and admiration climbed still higher. You had proved that you were the kind of woman for a preacher's wife—the kind of woman I've always dreamed of having as my companion in life.”

“I didn't love him, that was all,” Cynthia said, quietly. “It would not have been fair to him or myself to have received his constant attentions.”

“But now I am down in the dregs again, Miss Cynthia.” Hillhouse gave a sigh. It was almost a groan.

She glanced at him once, and then lowered her eyes half fearfully to the ground. And, getting his breath rapidly, the preacher bent more closely over her shoulder, as if to catch some reply from her lips. She made none.

“Yes, I'm in the dregs again—miserable, afraid, jealous! You know why, Miss Cynthia. You know that any lover would be concerned to see the girl upon whom he had based his every hope going often with Nelson Floyd, a man about whom people say—”

“Stop!” the girl turned upon him suddenly and gazed into his eyes steadily. “If you have anything to say against him, don't do it to me. He's my friend, and I will not listen to anything against those I like.”

“I'm not going to criticise him.” Hillhouse bit his white, unsteady lip, as he pinched it between his thumb and index finger. “A man's a fool that will try to win a woman by running down his rival. The way to run a man up in a woman's eye is to openly run him down. Men are strong enough to bear such things, but women don't think so. They shelter them like they do their babies. No, I wasn't going to run him down, but I am afraid of him. When you go out driving with him, I—”

Again Cynthia turned upon him and looked at him steadily, her eyes flashing. “Don't go too far; you might regret it,” she said. “It is an insult to be spoken to as you are speaking to me.”

“Oh, don't, don't! You misunderstand me,” protested the bewildered lover. “I—I am not afraid of—you understand, of course, I'm not afraid you will not be able to—to take care of yourself, but he has so many qualities that win and attract women that—Oh, I'm jealous, Miss Cynthia, that's the whole thing in a nutshell. He has the reputation of being a great favorite with all women, and now that he seems to admire you more than any of the rest—” The girl raised her eyes from the ground; a touch of color rose to her cheeks. “He doesn't admire me more than the others,” she said, tentatively. “You are mistaken, Mr. Hillhouse.”

He failed to note her rising color, the subtle eagerness oozing from her compact self-control.

“No, I'm not blind,” he went on, blindly building up his rival's cause. “He admires you extravagantly—he couldn't help it. You are beautiful, you have vivacity, womanly strength, and a thousand other qualities that are rare in this out-of-the-way place. Right here I want to tell you something. I know you will laugh, for you don't seem to care for such things, but you know Colonel Price is quite an expert on genealogical matters. He's made a great study of it, and his chief hobby is that many of these sturdy mountain people are the direct descendants of fine old English families from younger sons, you know, who settled first in Virginia and North Carolina, and then drifted into this part of Georgia. He didn't know of my admiration for you, but one day, at the meeting of the Confederate Veterans at Springtown, he saw you on the platform with the other ladies, and he said: 'I'll tell you, Hill-house, right there is a living proof of what I have always argued. That daughter of Nathan Porter has a face that is as patrician as any woman of English royal birth. I understand,' the colonel went on to say, 'that her mother was a Radcliffe, which is one of the best and most historic of the Virginia families, and Porter, as rough as he is, comes from good old English stock.' Do you wonder, Cynthia, that I agree with him? There really is good blood in you. Your grandmother is one of the most refined and gentle old ladies I have ever met anywhere, and I have been about a good deal.”

“I am not sure that Colonel Price is right,” the girl responded. “I've heard something of that kind before. I think Colonel Price had an article in one of the Atlanta papers about it, with a list of old family names. My father knows little or nothing about his ancestry, but my grandmother has always said her forefathers were wealthy people. She remembers her grandmother as being a fine old lady who, poor as she was, tried to make her and the other children wear their bonnets and gloves in the sun to keep their complexions white. But I don't like to discuss that sort of thing, Mr. Hillhouse. It won't do in America. I think we are what we make ourselves, not what others have made of themselves. One is individuality, the other open imitation.”

The young man laughed. “That's all very fine,” he said. “When it was your forefathers who made it possible for you to have the mental capacity for the very opinion you have just expressed. At any rate, there is a little comfort in your view, for if you were to pride yourself on Price's theories, as many a woman would, you might look higher than a poor preacher with such an untraceable name as mine. And you know, ordinary as it is, you have simply got to wear it sooner or later.”

“You must not mention that again,” Cynthia said, firmly. “I tell you, I am not good enough for a minister's wife. There is a streak of worldliness in me that I shall never overcome.”

“That cuts me like a knife,” said Hillhouse. “It hurts because it reminds me of something I once heard Pole Baker say in a group at the post-office. He said that women simply do not like what is known as a 'goody-goody' man. Sometimes as coarse a fellow as Pole hits the nail of truth on the head while a better-educated man would miss and mash his thumb. But if I am in the pulpit, I'm only human. It seemed to me the other day when I saw you and Nelson Floyd driving alone up the mountain that the very fires of hell itself raged inside of me. I always hold family prayer at home for the benefit of my mother and sister, but that night I cut it out, and lay on the bed rolling and tossing like a crazy man. He's handsome, Miss Cynthia, and he has a soft voice and a way of making all women sympathize with him—why they do it, I don't know. It's true he's had a most miserable childhood, but he is making money hand over hand now, and has everything in his favor.”

“He's not a happy man, Mr. Hillhouse; any one who knows him can see that.”

“Oh, I suppose he broods over the mystery that hangs over his origin,” said the preacher. “That's only natural for an ambitious man. I once knew a fellow who was a foundling, and he told me he never intended to get married on that account. He was morbidly sensitive about it, but it is different with Floyd. He does know his name, at least, and he will, no doubt, discover his relatives some day. But it hurts me to see you with him so much.”

“Why, he goes with other girls,” Cynthia said, her lips set together tightly, her face averted.

“And perhaps you know, Miss Cynthia, that people talk about some of the girls he has been with.”

“I know that,” said the girl, looking at him with an absent glance. “There is no use going over it. I hear nothing all day long at home except that—that—that! Oh, sometimes I wish I were dead!”

“Ah, that hurts worse than anything I have heard you say,” declared the minister, stroking his thin face with an unsteady hand. “Why should a beautiful, pure, human flower like you be made unhappy because of contact with a—”

“Stop, I tell you, stop!” the girl stared at him with flashing eyes. “I am not going to have you talk to me as if I were a child. I know him as well as you do. You constantly preach that a person ought to be forgiven of his sins, and yet you want to load some people down with theirs—that is, when it suits you. He has as good a right to—to—to reform as any one, and I myself have heard you say that the vilest sin often purifies and lifts one up. Don't get warped all to one side, Mr. Hillhouse. I shall not respect your views any more if you do.”

The minister was white in the face and trembling helplessly.

“You are tying me hand and foot,” he said, with a sigh. “If I ever had a chance to gain my desires I am killing them, but God knows I can't help it. I am fighting for my life.”

“And behind another's back,” added the girl, bravely. “You've got to be fair to him. As for myself, I don't believe half the things that the busy-bodies have said about him. Let me tell you something.” They had come to a little brook which they had to cross on brown, almost submerged stepping-stones, and she paused, turned to him and laid her small hand on his arm, and said, portentously: “Nelson Floyd has been alone with me several times, and has never yet told me that he loved me.”

“I'm not going to say what is in my mind,” Hill-house said, with a cold, significant, even triumphant sneer on his white lip, as he took her hand and helped her across the stream.

“You say you won't?” Cynthia gave him her eyes, almost pleadingly.

“That is, not unless you will let me be plain with you,” Hillhouse answered, “as plain as I'd be to my sister.”

They walked on side by side in silence, now very near her father's house.

“You may as well finish what you were going to say,” the girl gave in, with a sigh of resignation not untinged with a curiosity which had devoured her precaution.

“Well, I was going to say that, if what I have gathered here and there is true, it is Nelson Floyd's favorite method to look, do you understand?—to look, not talk love to the girls he goes with. He has never, it seems, committed himself by a scratch of a pen or by word of mouth, and yet every silly woman he has paid attention to (before he began to go with you) has secretly sworn to herself that she was the world and all to him.”

Cynthia's face became grave. Her glance went down, and for a moment she seemed incapable of speech. Finally, however, her color rose, and she laughed defiantly.

“Well, here is a girl, Mr. Hillhouse, who will not be fooled that way, you may rely on that. So don't, worry about me. I'll take care of myself.”

“I've no doubt you will,” said the preacher, gloomily.

“Yes, you'll see that I can,” Cynthia declared, with animation. “There's mother on the porch. Good gracious! do change the subject. If she sets in on it, I'll not come to the table. Like you, she believes all she has heard against him. She likes you and hates the ground he walks on.”

“Perhaps that, too, will be my damnation,” Hill-house retorted. “I know something about human nature. I may see the day that I'd be glad of a doubtful reputation.”

He caught her reproachful glance at this remark as he opened the gate for her and followed her in. Porter sat on the porch in the shade reading a newspaper, and his wife stood in the door-way.

“Run in and take off your things, Cynthia,” Mrs. Porter said, with a welcoming smile. “Brother Hillhouse can sit with your pa till we call dinner. I want you to help me a little bit. Your grandmother is lying down, and doesn't feel well enough to come to the table.”

When the women had gone in, and the preacher had seated himself in a rough, hide-bottomed chair near his host, Porter, with a chuckle, reached down to the floor and picked up a short, smooth stick, to the end of which was attached a piece of leather about three inches wide and four inches long.

“That's an invention o' mine,” Porter explained, proudly, as he tapped his knee with the leather. “Brother Hillhouse, ef you was to offer me a new five-dollar note fer this thing, an' I couldn't git me another, I'd refuse p'int blank.”

“You don't say,” said Hillhouse, concentrating his attention to the article by strong effort; “what is it for?”

“I don't know any other name fer it than a 'fly-flap,'” said Porter. “I set here one day tryin' to read, an' the flies made sech a dead-set at my bald head that it mighty nigh driv' me crazy. I kept fightin' 'em with my paper an' knockin' my specks off an' losin' my place at sech a rate that I got to studyin' how to git out of the difficulty, fer thar was a long fly-spell ahead of us. Well, I invented this thing, an' I give you my word it's as good fun as goin' a-fishin'. I kin take it in my hand—this away—an' hold the paper, too, an' the minute one o' the devilish things lights on my scalp, I kin give a twist o' the wrist an' that fly's done fer. You see the leather is too flat an' saft to hurt me, an' I never seed a fly yit that was nimble enough to git out from under it. But my fun is mighty nigh over,” Porter went on. “Flies has got sense; they profit by experience the same as folks does; at any rate, they seem to know thar's a dead-fall set on my bald-spot, an' they've quit tryin' to lay the'r eggs in the root-holes o' my hair. Only now and then a newcomer is foolhardy and inclined to experiment. The old customers are as scared o' my head as they are of a spider-web.”

“It certainly is a rare device,” said Hillhouse. “I don't know that I ever heard of one before.”

“I reckon not,” the farmer returned, placidly. “Somebody always has to lead out in matters of improvement. My wife an' daughter was dead-set agin me usin' it at fust. They never looked into the workin' of it close, an' thought I mashed my prey on my head, but thar never was a bigger mistake. The flap don't even puncture the skin, as tender as the'r hides are. I know it don't, beca'se they always fall flat o' the'r backs an' kick awhile before givin' up. I invented another thing that I value mighty nigh as high as I do this. I never have seed another one o' them in use, nuther. It's in my room in the bureau-drawer. It's a back-scratcher. It's got a long, white-oak handle, like this, an' a little, rake-shaped trick with hickory teeth at the end. Well, sir, you may not believe it, but I kin shove that thing down under my shirt an' hit a ticklin' spot before you kin bat yore eye, while I used to rub the bark off'n the trees, all about, in my effort to git bodily relief. You may 'a' seed me leave meetin' right in the middle o' some o' yore talks. Well, that's beca'se my wife an' Cynthia won't let me take it to church with me. They'd a thousand times ruther I'd go outside an' rub agin a tree like a razor-back shote than have me do a thing that the Prices an' Duncans hain't accustomed to. Sech folks are agin progress.”

Hillhouse laughed obligingly, his mind on what Cynthia had said to him, and then Mrs. Porter came to the door and announced that dinner was served.