Shehen went to the Presbyterian church, and he sang so well that the choirmaster requested him to join his baritones, which the young mountaineer did, with unfeigned pleasure. He sang with the open and flexible throat, knew his notes, and was as teachable as an intelligent child. He boarded with a widow who had two daughters, one other boarder and a flower garden. Bill used to work in the garden with the young daughter mornings before he went to the office. Her name was Summer MacDonald. She had had, far back, much the same ancestry as he. Something atavistic stirred in the two of them and gave them sympathies which could not be expressed. Besides, they were both young, they were training roses and weeding mignonette together, and at night they sometimes took a walk in the moonlight. They sang together, too, Summer selecting the songs, which were adagio and andantino, a trifle sad, and relating to love or religion. She had been going to the Congregational church, but she changed now, and went off every Sunday morning with Shehen, and after a while she got admitted to the choir, too, though her voice was not strong.
Bill liked it, however, the way it was. It flowed along like a pretty “branch” over the mica-starred soil of his mountains. Her face was pale and delicate, and she wore white frocks, and a wide white hat with drooping blue plumes on it. Even in the morning, about her work, she dressed in white, with fetching pink or blue gingham aprons, cut like a child’s pinafore, covering them for neatness. With her light braids down her back, she looked like a child. She and Shehen were as happy as they could be. They used, sometimes, when they were walking together in the garden, to catch hold of hands and swing back and forth, out of sheer lightness of heart, and just as little children do. Bill never kissed her, but sometimes, when he was sleeping and the summer wind, perfumed from her garden, blew in upon him, he dreamt that she had kissed him. The caress was as light as thistle down; it had the breath of violets, and it made him blush with happiness.
Berenson used to take Shehen around the Capitol, and to the Congressional Library and the Supreme Court Hall. He talked to him, casually, of government, of ideals of law, of the responsibility of a nation. He wished to make him comprehend what a nation meant, and to make clear that individualism need not include anarchy. He gave him a very good notion of how anarchy worked in cities, and he was not surprised to find Bill condemning it utterly. He loathed city crime, too, which seemed to offend him as being squalid and treacherous. Poverty touched him deeply. He could save nothing. He was always helping someone worse situated than himself. Berenson used to wonder if he was coming to have any notion of why the moon-shiners were offenders against the good order of the government; but though Bill’s impulses were all on the side of generosity and compassion, he still seemed to lack some comprehension of the real meaning of law. Berenson could never cure him of the habit of going armed. He would, at any time, have been willing to dispense with his uncomfortable collar, or his tie, but his toilet was never complete without his modest Smith and Wesson. The fact that he was, in wearing it, breaking a legal regulation concerned him not at all. It was a point of honour for a Shehen to go armed. That finished it.
“You’ll be getting a promotion some of these days, my boy,” Berenson said to him. “And then I suppose you and Miss Summer will be setting up for yourselves and making your own flower garden.”
Bill settled a spray of heliotrope in his buttonhole. Miss Summer had given it to him from her garden.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “If she knew about Ballington’s Gap and the still on Tulula Mountain, and all the Babbs we all had killed, perhaps she wouldn’t.”
“Tell her the story and see what she says,” urged Berenson.
“Yaas,” smiled Bill, “eat the mushroom and see if you die!”
As time went on it seemed, however, as if the mountaineer would be likely to eat the mushroom. Berenson used to meet Bill and Miss Summer together, dreamful, on summer nights, and he noticed what seraphic intonation could be given the simple word “we.”
“Have you told her yet?” he ventured to ask one day.
“I out with the whole yahn,” Bill confessed.
“And what was the effect of it?”
“Waal, it was as if she didn’t quite follow me. I reckon she thought I was layin’ it on. She said young men liked to play the Othello game—that they wanted to be loved for the dangers they had passed.”
“Miss Summer is a student of Shakespeare, then?”
“We’ve been readin’ it togethah,” murmured Bill happily.
Berenson could not help priding himself on his man. He felt that fine sense of partnership with the Creator which parents have when they regard a beautiful and virtuous child. Shehen the civilized, the pacific, the bookish, the lover, the citizen, the law-abider, was in part his product. Berenson talked of him at the newspaper office and at the club. People asked to meet him, and Berenson liked nothing better than a Sunday afternoon in Bill’s company. Berenson’s friends regarded his protégé with mingled amusement and affection, and the mountaineer found himself with a circle of surprisingly distinguished acquaintances.
Shehen finally brought word that he had rented a little cottage—a four-roomed affair with a garden plot. He had a charming view, and, with plenty of seeds and saplings from the Agricultural Department, he didn’t see why he couldn’t be perfectly happy. All he and Miss Summer wished, apparently, was to be together, to have a roof in case of storm or nightfall—and both seemed more or less unlikely in their atmosphere of high noon and sun—and to have a patch of earth to grow perfumed things in. Berenson was delighted. He had not enjoyed life so much for a long time. Having been under the necessity of setting aside the more idyllic department of life, he now regaled himself with his creature’s happiness. He had begun to visit the furniture stores with the view to a comprehensive wedding present, and he had set the day when he was to go with the prospective bride to make the selections.
Berenson had his own ideas about how a bride’s little drawing-room ought to be furnished. He had, indeed, treasured these ideas for many years. Now, for the first time, he had an opportunity for putting them into execution.
The evening before the day appointed for this agreeable task, Berenson and Bill had dinner together.
“I may be wrong,” said the newspaper man, “and I hope I am, my boy, but it strikes me that you’re not looking quite so enthusiastic as you should be. Haven’t you been sleeping well? You look like a man who’s been losing sleep.”
“I sleep well enough, but—”
“Yes. Well—”
“But three nights runnin’ I’ve had the oddes’ dream!”
“Not a disagreeable dream, I hope! You’ve enough pleasant things to dream about, I should think.”
“Well, yo’ might call it a bad dream, an’ yo’ might not, Mr. Berenson. It’s—it’s the houn’s, yo’ know. I heah ’em bahkin’ all up the side of Tulula—howlin’ an’ howlin’ like somethin’s goin’ wrong. It gives me a dreadful honin’ fo’ home.”
“Did you write to your father and brothers that you were to be married?”
“Oh, yes, sah, I wrote to all my kin. I asked ’em to come daown, but I know they won’t do that, sah.An’ what’s moah, the knowledge that I was about to be married would keep ’em from tellin’ me if anything was goin’ wrong.”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry. Dreams are out of date, you know. You are dreaming because you are nervous, and you’re nervous because you are going to be married. That’s all there is to that. It’s usual under the circumstances.”
“I reckon,” murmured the mountaineer, “but I suah did heah those houn’ dogs!”
He said no more about it, and left Berenson, to make his way to his sweet-heart’s house. Berenson, strolling along before going to his rooms, saw the two of them pacing back and forth in the little garden. He heard the low sound of their laughter. They were quite safe in Arcady, he concluded, and went to his bed well pleased with the idyll of his making.
The next morning he awoke with the consc
iousness of a singularly paternal feeling. He was to meet Miss MacDonald at ten, and nine o’clock found him at his club reading his paper and waiting for his breakfast.
He had unfolded his sheet and was settling back for the enjoyment of it when the door boy entered. He was making for Berenson, and that gentleman of well-arranged habits felt a touch of annoyance.
“A gentleman and lady to see you, sir.”
He presented a card. On it were written in the girl’s chirography the names of his lovers—just “Bill and Summer” in perfect confidence and unconventionality.
Something was wrong, evidently. Every step that Berenson took toward the little parlour into which they had been shown convinced him that something was very wrong.
It was, indeed, two white and drawn faces that he encountered, and the second glance showed him the girl’s face eloquent with appeal and the man’s set in stern and obstinate lines.
“For Heaven’s sake, what’s the trouble?” he broke out, closing the door behind him.
Bill pointed a quivering finger at the paper Berenson had unconsciously retained.
“Have yo’ read that, sah?”
“No, I haven’t. I was just about to when”—he had shaken the paper out and swept his practised glance over the headings. There, in their ancient and fatal juxtaposition, were the names of Shehen and Babb! Berenson’s eye ate up the despatch. The vendetta was on again. Tulula Mountain was a battlefield. Old Bill was slain. So was Loren, his eldest son. So was Dudley, the brother of the elder William. Dudley’s two sons and William’s second son, Lee, were entrenched in the old Shehen shack. The Babbs held them there, beleaguered—kept them at bay on one side and held off the officers of the law on the other. The Babbs, it appeared, had accessions to their side. The trouble had broken out when some of the contending factions met, during a four days’ rain-storm, where much corn whisky was dispensed.
“I’m going back, sah,” announced Bill when Berenson lifted his eyes from the page.
“I brought him here to you, sir,” cried the girl. “I could do nothing with him! He came an hour ago and told me, and I’ve pleaded and pleaded.”
“You’ll go to your death!” broke in Berenson, seizing the mountaineer by the arm. “Or you’ll make a murderer of yourself—which will be worse! Don’t be a fool! Don’t be a lunatic! Your duty’s here! Look at that dear little girl. Think what she—”
“They all hev killed my ole dad,” muttered Shehen. The vernacular had tangled his tongue again.
“But I say you’ve no right to leave,” protested Berenson, shaking him by the shoulder. “You belong here with that girl. Your honour is involved here, not in that death’s hole back in the mountains.”
Bill’s face did not soften in the least. His eyes were as cruel as bayonets; his face settled in battle lines. He looked taller and his boyhood was gone from him.
“They-all have got Loren, too!” It was as if Berenson’s words had not penetrated to his understanding.
“You hear him!” sobbed the girl. “Oh Bill! Bill, dear! I can’t give you up. Oh, all our happiness together, Bill—that we planned! And the home, Bill, and all we were going to do for mother and—”
“Great God, man,” cried Berenson. “I can’t stand the torture of this, if you can! You don’t mean to stand there and break that girl’s heart, do you?”
“I stand by my kin,” said Bill. But he seemed hardly to know what he was saying. He had decided to take the ten o’clock train. He was in a daze; but the one idea persisted. He was going to give the Babbs something to do. If they wanted a target, they should have one. In spirit he was climbing Tulula by those secret paths which he and his clan knew. He saw nothing save the motherly old mountain, with hidden and treacherous foemen in her fastnesses; he heard nothing but the howl of the Shehen “houn’ dogs” lamenting the slain.
He would take nothing with him—none of the possessions he had accumulated with frank pride.
“I shan’t be needin’ much!” he said, a whimsical smile breaking his face for the first time. “I’ll fit myself out at Hahdin.” He was thinking of his armament.
Summer had given up. After he had unclasped her arms from his neck, she made no further protest. Her pride was wounded to the death. Her world was taken from her—her East, her West, her moon, her sun—as the Gaelic rune has it.
She sank upon a divan, and the tears had dried in her eyes. Berenson went to her.
“There’s nothing to be done,” he whispered. “I’ll call a cab for you. Go home to your mother—to her arms. That’s the best place, after all.”
She stood up bravely, and he helped her from the room. At the door she turned and gave one backward look. Bill was standing as if turned to stone, but at that glance he threw his long, quivering hands over his face.
“Take her away,” he groaned.“Take her away.”
So Berenson put her behind the curtained windows of a cab and stood while the vehicle drove down the sunlit street and out of sight.
Then he went back to the mountaineer. He got him to break bread with him. Bill would take little more—but he drained cup after cup of the black coffee. Then they went together to the station. They barely spoke. There was nothing to say. Berenson had not, for years, felt pain so dragging at the throat, the heart, the head, the feet of him. He was clogged and burdened with it, and at the last had only an impatient desire to have the parting over and be through with the sharper misery.
Bill strode before him, unconsciously taking the long, springing lope of other days. His blue eyes were repulsive, Berenson thought. All the sweetness had gone out of his face. Though for a glimpse it returned, when Berenson, in a swift, uncontrollable emotion, embraced him—this consecrated, medieval boy, with doom written large upon him. So they parted. Bill stood on the rear platform of the train, tall, grim, uplifted by his hate even more than he had ever been by love. But after all, as Berenson reflected, love lay fiercely at the core even of his hate. The long train swung around the curve with a mournful wail, and Berenson shuddered. It sounded, for all the world, like “Shehens’ houn’ dogs” with their prophetic howl.
A Word With the Women
Weekly Column Omaha World-Herald, May 15th, 1896
It seems to be a first draft for the future short story of Child of the Rain.
Tuesday night was just the night for a ghost. You remember how it rained! All night long the rain fell on the sodden ground. Gusts of desolation seemed to blow about; the darkness was as a palpable melancholy. One shuddered and drew one’s baby closer into one’s arms for company! The room seemed full of presences, and flutterings of invisible garments moved about, or passing blots of white that might be faces, showed ghastly against the pane for a moment and were gone.
While comfortably housed folk were shivering in their beds, a conductor on one of the Omaha street cars, standing on his drenched platform, saw a little figure sitting at the far end of the car. For a moment he thought the mist of the glass had deceived him, for he had no recollection of having stopped to let any one on, but there was really no mistaking the fact. A little figure sat the end of the car wrapped in an old cloak. Was it boy or girl? The hair hung to the shoulders in unkempt stringiness, and the little cap gave no indication of sex. The ragged overcoat, much too large for the shrunken frame, might have belonged to either a boy or a girl.
The feet were covered with old arctics, from which the soles hung loose. Beside the little figure was a chest of dark wood, with curiously wrought iron hasps. From this depended a stout leathern strap by which it could be carried over the shoulders. The conductor was strangely fascinated by the tiny shape. The head drooped sadly upon the breast. The thin blue hands lay relaxed upon the lap. The whole attitude was suggestive of hunger, loneliness and fatigue.
“I don’t believe I’ll collect fare from the poor little thing,” he thought to himself.“The kid must need the fare a great deal more than the railway company. It looks starved. If it has a nickel it ought to buy some grub w
ith it.”
Then he stood and stared again, for a long time, while the car plunged on in the wet blackness and the rain swished in his face.
“I wonder whether it is a boy or a girl,” he said.“It might be either. I’ll go in and find out. Perhaps I can help the poor kid along some way.”
He was so wrapped in his reverie that he had not noticed where he was and as he opened the door to enter the car turned a corner swiftly and threw the trolley from the wire. For a moment the car was plunged in murk. When the trolley was connected again, the conductor hastened through the open door and toward the further end of the car. Then suddenly, he became aware that the car was empty! There was no sad little figure in the place, no curious box, not even moisture on the seat where the dripping child had been.
The conductor actually looked under the seat before he confessed himself wrong. Then he went to the driver.
“John,” he asked, with a little tremble in his voice, “did you let a little kid on with a queer box on his shoulder?”
“Nop,” said the driver, wiping his dripping face on his sleeve. “What you talking ’bout? Nobody’s got on this trip.”
The conductor went back to his own platform and shut the door. The rain grew worse. It fairly deluged him. It was most unlikely that any one would be out on such an hour and so late at night. So he entered the car and stood there, leaning against the door. He was very tired with the long day’s work and the wetting, and he nodded for a moment, there on his feet, but as a gust of wind shook the car which almost threw it from the track, he opened his eyes suddenly and caught at a strap to keep himself from falling.
The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Elia W. Peattie Page 16
