The Jucklins Part 11

"Oh, but you are not shot, are you?" his wife exclaimed, starting toward him.

"Go in now, Susan, and don't come foolin' with me. Who said I was shot?

Go on to bed, everybody, and I'll come when I git ready."

"But you must be hungry, Limuel?"

"Hungry, the devil--excuse me, ma'm. I'll eat a snack mebby between now and mornin'."

"It's no use to talk to him," she said, with a sigh, and, turning to me, she added: "You and Alf must be nearly starved. We've kept the coffee warm. Guinea, go and pour it out for 'em."

"Will you tell me all about the fight?" the girl asked when we entered the dining-room. "I like to hear about such things."

I strove to make light of it, but, seeing that this would not satisfy her, I told of the burning of the house and of the capture of the Aimes brothers, colored our danger in the house, to see her lips whiten and her eyes stare; pictured myself as I must have looked when I seized the dog, to choke him, and to throw him far into the woods--told her all, except that I had caught the hammers of Alf's gun.

"I don't see how you kept from killing them when you got the chance,"

she said, leaning with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, musing: "I don't understand how you could keep from it."

Alf threw down his knife and fork and struck the table with his fist. "I wanted to kill Scott--had a bead on him, but Bill grabbed my gun.

Guinea, I'm glad you stand by me, you and father; but the General thinks I was wrong, and I was just about to think that everybody's heart was right but mine. I am glad you are with me, Guinea."

I looked at her as she sat there, musing; her hair was tangled as if a storm of thought had swept through her head, and sorely I wondered whether a care for me had been borne through the storm. I forgot the presence of Alf; I forgot everything except that I would have given my blood and my soul to please her, and with bitterness I said: "Oh, if I had known that you wanted him killed I would not only have let Alf kill him--I would have killed him myself."

She looked up from her att.i.tude of musing and met my outbreak with a quiet laugh. "The bigger a man is the sillier he is," she said, still laughing. "Why, I don't want him dead. I wouldn't like to have anyone killed. I merely wondered how, having come so close to being burned up, you could keep from killing him. I thought that I understood most men, but I don't understand you, Mr. Hawes."

"Yes, you do!" I cried; "you understand me too well, and that is why you torture me."

"What!" exclaimed Alf, springing to his feet, "are you on the gridiron?

Has she got you where somebody has got me? By--there comes mother."

I looked back as I pa.s.sed out of the room, and Guinea sat there, musing.

Alf put his arm about me as we went up the stairs. We did not light the lamp, but sat down in the dark, sat there and for a long time were silent.

"Bill, oh, Bill."

"Yes," I answered.

"Bill, don't ask me anything. Father may tell you something to-morrow.

G.o.d bless you, Bill. You have stood by me. Good-night."

CHAPTER IX.

It must have been daylight before I worried my way into a sleep that seemed jagged and sharp-cornered with many an evil turn; and when I awoke the sun was s.h.i.+ning. I looked out, and far across the field I saw Alf, walking behind his plow. The hour was late for one to rise in the country, for the sun was far above the tops of the trees. But I cared not for any impression that might be made by my apparent laziness; my head was heavy and my heart was crushed. No sound came from below, and after dressing--and how mean my clothes did look--I sat down at my writing desk--sat and mused, just as I had seen Guinea sitting, with her elbows on the table and with her chin in her hands. And Alf would ask the old man to tell me something. Tell me what?

I went down stairs. Mrs. Jucklin was sweeping the yard. She put down her broom upon seeing me and came forward, wiping her hands. I began to apologize for being so late. "Oh, that makes no difference," she said.

"Alf told us not to wake you. I will go in and fix you something to eat."

"Now, don't put yourself to any trouble, for, really, I couldn't eat a bite; I'm not very well. Where is Mr. Jucklin?"

"Why, you must eat something. He's gone to the blacksmith shop broke the point off his plow against a rock and had to go and get it fixed. He ought to be back by now. It ain't but a little ways down the road. Are you goin' over there? Well, if you see him tell him that Guinea and I are goin' to see Mrs. Parker and won't be back till evenin'. Tell him that we'll leave everything on the table."

Down the road I went, looking for the blacksmith shop, and I had not gone far before I saw the old man coming, with his plow on his shoulder.

He was talking to himself and did not see me until I spoke to him. "Let me take that plow," I said. "Give it to me. I'm stronger than you."

"I reckon you are right," he replied, looking up at me with a grin, "but I can tote it all right enough."

But I took the plow from him, and walked along with it on my shoulder, waiting for him to say something.

"You haven't seen Alf this mornin', have you?" he asked.

"No; I was asleep when he got up. Why?"

"Well, jest wanted to know. Alf takes some strange notions into his head once in a long while, and he had one this mornin'. Told me to tell you suthin' that very few folks know. Don't know why, unless he thinks more of you than he does of any other young man. Never saw him take to a person as he has to you. And I reckon I better tell you. But I hate to talk about it."

We walked on in silence, and in my impatience I s.h.i.+fted the plow from one shoulder to the other. "I'll take it when you git tired of it," he said. "Now, it may be putty hard for you to understand the situation, and I'm free to say that I can't make it so very plain, but I'll do the best I can. One day, a long time ago, old General Lundsford came to me--long after I had wallowed him, you understand. And now as to that wallowin', why, he could have killed me if he had wanted to. He's game.

Well, he came to me, and about as nearly as I can ricollect said this: 'My son Chydister, strong-headed little rascal that he is, vows an'

declares that when he grows up he is goin' to marry your daughter Guinea. I'll be frank with you and tell you that I didn't approve of it, and I scouted the idea, not that your daughter ain't as good as any girl, but because I don't mind tellin' you, I've got a family name to keep up. I told him this, but he was so young and so headstrong that he swore that it made no difference to him. You know they have played together, up and down the branch, and he thinks there aint n.o.body like her. Well, sir, he kept on talkin about it until I knowed that he was set, and that there wasn't any use to try to turn him, so I began to think it over seriously. That boy is my life's blood, and I want to please him in every way I can, and I don't want him to marry beneath him. I'm goin' to make a doctor out of him, the very best that can be made, and his companion must be an educated woman. They are goin' to marry when they grow up in spite of anything we can do, and now I've got a request to make of you. I know that you wouldn't let me give you a cent of money, but as an honest man you can't refuse to let me lend you enough money to send your daughter to school along with my own daughter; and whenever you think that you are able to pay me back, all right, and if you never are able, it will still be all right.'"

The old man paused, and now I walked, along carrying the plow in front of me, stumbling, seeing no road, caring not whither my feet might wander. "I'll take it now," he said, reaching for the plow. "You don't know how to tote it, nohow."

I pushed him back and said: "Go on with your story."

I was walking so fast that he was almost trotting to keep up with me.

"Right there I was weak," he said. "I thought of what a bright creature my girl was, thought of what education would do for her, thought that I could soon pay back the money, and I agreed. And I want to tell you that it has been hot ashes on me ever since. They are goin' to marry all right enough, but it galls me to think that I had to send her out to have her educated at another man's expense--cuts me to think that she wasn't good enough for any man just as I could give her to him. And I'm goin' to pay back that money if I have to sell this strip of poor dirt, that's what I'm goin' to do. Yes, sir, even if it's ten years after they are married. Chyd is off at school now, and has been for a long time; only comes home for a while at vacation, and it seems to me that if he's goin' to be a doctor it's time he was at it. But I understand that they are goin' to send him to another place after he gits through with this one. I don't know much about him, but they say that he's a first-rate sort of a fellow. Oh, I knowed him well enough when he was little, but I haven't seen so very much of him since he growed up.

Guinea thinks all the world of him, of course, and says that they were born for each other. Gimme that plow here. You don't know how to tote it nohow. I'm not goin' right straight back to the field; I'm goin' to the house. Them hot ashes is on me an inch thick."

I let him take the plow; I left him at the draw bars, and with heavy and dragging feet I climbed up to my room. I sat down to my desk, but not with elbows resting on the board, not with my chin in my hands; I couldn't bear to think of that att.i.tude. Now, I understood why she had said "Oh" with such coolness when I had declared that I hated doctors.

My heart was freezing, my head was hot, and in a fevered fancy I saw Guinea and that boy playing up and down the rivulet. I saw them wading in the water; heard him tell her that when they grew up she must be his wife, and I saw her, holding her dress about her ankles, look up at him and smile. I knew that he had never been awkward, I knew that he looked like Bentley, knew that he would have made fun of me, and down in my heart there was a poisonous hatred, yellow, green, venomous. I am seeking to hide nothing; I cannot paint myself as a generous and high-minded man. When stirred, I seem to have more rank sap than other men--less reason, more senseless pa.s.sion. I roared at the picture, sitting there gripping the desk, and frightened it away; and to myself I acknowledged the faults which I now set forth, but an acknowledgment of a fault is not within itself virtue. The fool's recourse is to call himself a fool, to upbraid himself, curse himself and then in graciousness to pardon himself. You might as well reason with a rattlesnake, striking at you--might as well seek to temporize and argue with a dog drooling hydrophobic foam, as to tell the human heart what it ought to do. Reason is a business matter and it can make matches, but it cannot make love.

Long I sat there, gripping the desk, gazing at the rafters overhead, groaning in the lover's conscious luxury of despair. Should I go away?

No; I would stay and see it out. I would be light and gay--a bear's waltz. I would laugh and rebuke fate; I would punish Guinea for having played with that boy up and down the brook; I would be all sorts of a fool.

The old man's voice came ringing through the air. "Hike, there, Sam; hike, there, Bob. Get him down. Hike, there!"

He was having a round with his chickens, to fan off the atmosphere of humiliation, to blow away the hot ashes that were so thick upon him. I remembered that I had not delivered Mrs. Jucklin's message, and I hastened out to the "stockade," and knocked at the gate. "Hike, there, boys! Who's that? Whoa, boys, that'll do! Go in there, Sam! Ho, it's you, eh?" he said, opening the gate. "Sorry, but you didn't git here quite in time. You had the opportunity, but you flung it away. What, gone over to Parker's? That's all right. Well, I must be gettin' back to the field. Looks like the gra.s.s will take me in spite of everything I can do. You'll help until they get the school-house built? Now, I'm much obleeged to you, but we can't rig up another outfit. Why, yander you go already," he added, pointing to a wagon load of lumber drawn along the road. "It's Perdue's wagon. Yander comes another one, with Ren Bowles, the carpenter, on board. Oh, they are goin' to rush things. I've heard that already this mornin'. You never saw a neighborhood stirred up much worse than this one is over that affair, and there is strong talk of lynchin' them fellers; and this mornin' a party went over to see old Aimes and told him that if he wan't gone by 10 o'clock they would string him up, and I reckon he's gone by this time. They are makin' great heroes oute'n you and Alf, I tell you. A number of 'em wanted to see you, but Alf wouldn't let 'em wake you up. I saw Parker while I was down at the shop; he'd jest got back from town; and he told me that the grand jury that's now in session would indict them fellers to-day, and as court is already set they may be brought to trial for murderous a.s.sault and arson right away, and I want to tell you that they'll do well if they save their necks. Parker said that he reckoned you and Alf better go over to Purdy to-morrow. Well, I must git back, for that gra.s.s is musterin' its forces every minute I'm away."

I worried through the day, saw Guinea in a haze, heard her voice afar off, and at night I went to bed worn out and limp. Alf did not come up until some time after I lay down. He came softly whistling a doleful air to prove that his sympathies were with me, sat down upon the edge of my bed and remained there a long time motionless and silent. I knew not what to say to him and he was evidently puzzled as to what he ought to say to me. Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth may speak, but out of the heart's fullness there also flows a silence.

"Bill," he said, reaching over and turning down the light which I had left brightly burning, "I killed a snake to-day that I reckon must be six feet long. Came crawling across the field as if he had important business over in the woods, but he didn't get there. Ever kill many big snakes?"

"Not very many," I answered, "but I am well acquainted with them and I have been bitten by a big snake that lies coiled about the universe, striking at a heart whenever he sees it."

He got up, blew out the low blaze of the lamp, and sat down on his own bed, I could tell from the creaking of the slats; and after a time he said something about the gridiron on which a man was compelled to wallow. Ordinarily I would have laughed, hot ashes on the father and hot coals under the son, but now I sighed deeply.

"Bill, you know, the other day I said that there was something in my favor, an outgrowth of my sister's education. A family union, don't you see? But I had no idea when I said it that this very thing would put the fire under a man that has stood by me. I'm awfully sorry that things had to be shaped that way. You know what I mean; father told you all about it. Is it bad, Bill? I won't say a word about it and the old folks don't suspect a thing, but do you love her much? Tell me just as if she wasn't any kin to me."