Читать книгу Paul Rundel - Will N. Harben - Страница 11

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BY chance he met her a week or so later. She and her mother were spending the day at Hoag's, and near noon Ethel had strolled across the pasture, gathering wild-flowers. Paul had been working at the tannery assisting a negro crushing bark for the vats, and was starting home to get his dinner when he saw her. She wore a big sailor hat and a very becoming dress of a different color from the one he had first seen her in. He wanted to take a good look at her, but was afraid she would see him. She had her hands full of flowers and fern leaves, and was daintily picking her way through the thick broom-sedge. He had passed on, and his back was to her when he heard her scream out in fright, and, turning, he saw her running toward him. He hurried back, climbed over the rail fence, and met her. “A snake, a snake!” she cried, white with terror. “Where?” he asked, boyishly conscious that his moment had arrived for showing contempt for all such trivialities.

“There,” she pointed, “back under those rocks. It was coiled up right under my feet and ran when it saw me.”

There was a fallen branch of a tree near by, and coolly picking it up he broke it across his knee to the length of a cudgel, then twisted the twigs and bark off. He swung it easily like a ball-player handling a bat.

“Now, come show me,” he said, riding on a veritable cloud of self-confidence. “Where did it go?”

“Oh, I'm afraid!” she cried. “Don't go, it will bite you!”

He laughed contemptuously. “How could it?” he sneered. “It wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance against this club.” He advanced to the pile of rocks she now indicated, and she stood aloof, holding her breath, her little hands pressed to her white cheeks, as he began prying the stones and boldly thrusting into crevices. Presently from the heap a brownish snake ran. Ethel saw it and screamed again; but even as he struck she heard him laugh derisively. “Don't be silly!” he said, and the next moment he had the dying thing by the tail, calmly holding it up for her inspection, its battered and flattened head touching the ground.

“It's a highland moccasin,” he nonchalantly instructed her. “They are as poisonous as rattlers. It's a good thing you didn't step on it, I tell you. They lie in the sun, and fellers mowing hay sometimes get bit to the bone.”

“Drop it! Put it down!” Ethel cried, her pretty face still pale. “Look, it's moving!”

“Oh, it will wiggle that way till the sun goes down,” he smiled down from his biological height; “but it is plumb done for. Lawsy me! I've killed more of them than I've got fingers and toes.”

Reassured, she drew nearer and looked at him admiringly. He was certainly a strong, well-formed lad, and his courage was unquestionable. Out of respect for her fears he dropped the reptile, and she bent down and examined it. Again the strange, new power she had from the first exercised over him seemed to exude from her whole being, and he felt a return of the cold, insecure sensation of the hotel dining-room. His heart seemed to be pumping its blood straight to his face and brain. Her little white hands were so frail and flower-like; her golden tresses, falling over her proud shoulders like a gauzy mantle, gave out a delicate fragrance. What a vision of loveliness! Seen close at hand, she was even prettier than he had thought. He had once admired Sally Tibbits, whom he had kissed at a corn-husking, as a reward for finding the red ear which lay almost in Sally's lap, and which, according to the game, she could have hidden; but Sally had never worn shoes, that he could remember, and as he recalled her now, by way of comparison, her legs were ridiculously brown and brier-scratched; her homespun dress was a poor bag of a thing, and her dingy chestnut hair seemed as lifeless as her neglected complexion. And Ethel's voice! He had never heard anything so mellow, soft, and bewitching. She seemed like a princess in one of his storybooks, the sort tailors' sons used to meet and marry by rubbing up old lamps.

“What are you going to do with it?” She looked straight at him, and he felt the force of her royal eyes.

“Well, I don't intend to take it to the graveyard,” he boldly jested. “I'll leave it here for the buzzards.” He pointed to the cloud-flecked sky, where several vultures were slowly circling. “They'll settle here as soon as our backs are turned. Folks say they go by the smell of rotten flesh, but I believe their sense is keener than that. I wouldn't be much surprised if they watched and seed me kill that snake.”

“How funny you talk!” Ethel said, in no tone of disrespect, but rather that of the mild inquisitiveness of a stranger studying a foreign tongue. “You said seed for saw. Why, my teacher would give me awful marks if I made a mistake like that. Of course, it may be correct here in the mountains.” Paul flushed a deeper red; there was a touch of resentment in his voice.

“Folks talk that way round here,” he blurted out; “grown-up folks. We don't try to put on style like stuck-up town folks.”

“Please forgive me.” Ethel's voice fell; she put out her hand and lightly touched his. “I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, and I never will say such a thing again—never, on my honor.”

He bitterly repented it afterward, but he rudely drew his hand away, and stood frowning, his glance averted.

“I am very sorry,” Ethel said, “and I can't blame you—I really can't. What I said was a great deal worse than your little mistake. My mother says rudeness is never excusable.”

“Oh, it's all right,” he gave in, as gracefully as he could.

“And are you sure you aren't mad with me?” she pursued, anxiously.

“Nothin' to be mad about,” he returned, kicking the snake with his foot.

“Well, I hope you won't hate me,” she said. “I feel that I know you pretty well. Uncle told us a lot about you that day at the hotel. He said you were the bravest boy he ever saw and the hardest worker. I saw you looked embarrassed that day, and he had no right to tease you as he did; but he was—of course, you know what was the matter with him?”

Paul nodded. “I wasn't going to pay any attention to him,” he declared. “I wasn't—wasn't fixed up fit to—to be seen by anybody, any more than I am now, for that matter; but I can't do the work I have to do and go dressed like a town dude.”

“Of course not—of course not,” Ethel agreed, sympathetically, “and Uncle says you spend all you make on others, anyway. He was telling us about how you loved your father and took care of him. You know, I think that is wonderful, and so does mama. Boys are not like that in Atlanta; they are lazy and spoiled, and bad, generally. People in a city are so different, you know. Mama says the greatest men were once poor country boys. I'd think that was encouraging, if I was—if I were you—see, I make slips myself! After if you must always say were to be strictly correct. Just think of it, when I am grown up you may be a great man, and be ashamed even to know me.”

He shrugged his shoulders and frowned. The flush had partly left his face, leaving splotches of white here and there. “No hopes of me ever mak-in' any sort of rise,” he declared. “There is too much to do at home; I don't get time to go to school or study.”

“What a pity!” Ethel sighed. She swept him from head to foot critically. Touches of pink lay on her cheeks just below her earnest eyes. “You are good-looking—you—you really are handsome, and so strong and brave! Somehow I feel certain that you are going to be successful. I—I am going to pray for it. They say God answers prayers when they are the right kind, and I know mine would be right.”

“I don't believe any of that rubbish,” he said, loftily. “I've heard your uncle Jim laugh at the preachers and folks that get converted one day and are plumb over it the next. He says they are the biggest fools in the world.”

“I know he talks that way, and it worries mama awfully,” the girl said. “I'm afraid he's terribly bad. You see, he drinks, plays cards, curses, and is hard on the negroes who work for him. Now, the truth is that the people who go to church really are better than he is, and that, in itself, ought to show he's wrong—don't you think so?”

“He just uses his natural brain,” Paul returned, philosophically. “He says there is just one life, an' he's goin' to get all he can out of it. I don't blame him. He's rich—he can buy and sell the folks round here that say he don't know what he's talkin' about. He says there ain't no God, and he can prove it. He made it purty plain one day while he was talking to a crowd at the tan-yard. He told 'em, if they believed there was any such thing, for 'em to pray for some'n and see if they'd get it. He told about a gang of Methodists that was praying for money to make a church bigger, and the lightning struck it and burned it down.”

“Did you never pray yourself?” Ethel questioned, quite irrelevantly.

He hesitated; his color flamed again in his face, and he avoided her gentle, upward gaze. “Not—not since I was very little,” he said, awkwardly. “I don't believe in it; the whole shoutin', singin-and-prayin' bunch of meetin'-folks make me sick.

“Uncle is responsible for all that,” Ethel declared. “You naturally would look up to him; but I believe he is wrong—I really do. I like good people, and, while he is my uncle, I—well, I don't feel the same toward him as I would if he were a different sort of man.”

“He's all right,” Paul defended. “He's rough, and curses some when he's mad, but you can count on him to keep his word in a deal. He's no hypocrite. Lots of folks believe as he does, but are afraid to own it; he stands his ground and tells them all exactly what he thinks, and says they can lump it.”

They had been walking side by side across the grass, and had reached the point where their ways parted. He was turning homeward, when she advanced impulsively and touched him almost timidly on the arm. Her pretty red lip was quivering and her hand shook visibly.

“I don't care what uncle says—or what any one says. I believe there is a God, and I believe He is good, and I am going to pray to Him to make you have faith.”

There were incipient tears in her eyes, and, as if to avoid his wondering stare, she lowered her head suddenly and walked away.

At the front gate his father stood waiting for him, a mild look of excitement in his weary eyes. “Heard the news?” he inquired.

“No; what's happened?” Paul answered.

“Enough, I reckon, to them that's hit by it,” Ralph returned. “Old Alf Rose, over t'other side o' the mountain, was found dead in a thicket close to his house. He was beat bad, his skull was all mashed in.”

“Who did it?” Paul asked.

“They don't know for sure; but he was robbed of all he had in his pockets, an' his hat was gone. A nigger, Pete Watson, is missin', and they say the sheriff and a passle o' deputies, an' half the county, are out scourin' the woods for 'im. Ef they ketch 'im thar 'll be a lynchin' as sure as preachin'.”

A voice now came from the farm-house. It was Amanda leaning out of the kitchen window.

“Come on in an' git yore dinner,” she cried. “Don't listen to that stuff or you won't eat a bite. Yore pa's chatter has already turned my stomach inside out.”

“That's the woman of it,” Ralph sniffed, wearily. “They both begged an' begged for particulars, an' wormed every bit they could out o' me, an' now they talk about its gaggin' em.”