The Tempering

Just now he wore an expression of countenance that was somewhat glum as he watched the lingering afterglow which edged the western crests of the "Kaintuck' Ridges" with pale amber.

"Set ye a cheer, Booney," he invited, with a brief nod. "I reckon ye didn't skeercely fare over hyar ter set an' talk with me, but ther gal hain't quite through holpin' her mammy with the dish-washin' yit – an' I wants ter put some questions ter ye afore she comes out."

The lad drew a hickory-withed chair forward and sat down, laying his hat on the floor at his feet.

"Ye've done been off ter college, son," began old Cyrus reflectively, as he bit on his pipe stem and judicially nodded his head.

"I've always countenanced book-lore myself, even when folks hes faulted me fer hit. I've contended thet ther times change an' what was good enough fer ther parents hain't, of needcessity, good enough fer ther young ones. 'Peared like, ter me, a body kinderly hes a better chanst ter be godly ef he hain't benighted."

"I reckon there ain't no two ways about that proposition," agreed the boy eagerly. "Hit just stands ter reason."

"An yit, hyar latterly," suggested the mountaineer dubiously, "I've done commenced ter misdoubt ef I've been right, atter all. Thet's what I wanted ter question ye about. My woman an' me, we sent Happy off ter thet new school in Leslie – an' since she's come home I misdoubts ef her name fits her es well es hit did afore she went over thar. She used ter sing like a bird all day – an' now she don't."

"I don't see how knowin' something can make a body unhappy," protested Boone.

Cyrus Spradling studied him with a keen, but not unkindly, fixedness of gaze.

"Ye don't, don't ye? Wa'al, let me norrate ye a leetle parable. Suppose you an' me hes done been pore folks livin' in a small dwellin'-house. We've done been plum content, because we hain't never knowed nothing better. But suppose one of us goes a'visitin' ter rich kin-folks – an' t'other one stays home." He paused there to rekindle his pipe, and the voice of his resumed "parable" was troubled.

"Ther one thet's been away hes done took up notions of wealth that he kain't nuver hope ter satisfy. The mean cabin seems a heap meaner when he comes back ter hit – but ther other pore damn fool – he's still happy an' contented because he don't know no better."

"I reckon," laughed the young visitor, "if the feller that had gone away was anything but the disablest body in the world, he'd set about improving the house he had to dwell in."

"I hope ter God ye're right, Booney. Hit's been a mighty sober thing fer me ter ponder over, though – whether I was helpin' my gal or hurtin' her."

Boone was smitten with a sense of guilt. He felt that he ought to make confession that he had come here tonight because he had already recognized a new flame in his heart, and a flame which the voice of sanity and wisdom told him he must quench: that he was here because discontent had driven him. But his voice was firm as he made some commonplace reply, and Cyrus nodded his satisfaction. "Mebby if thar's a few boys like thet, growin' up hyarabouts, ther few gals thet gits larnin' won't be foredoomed ter lead lonesome lives, atter all."

The moonlight was beginning to convert the dulness of twilight into a nocturne of soft and tempered beauty.

Boone felt suddenly appalled, as if the father had given him parental recognition and approval, and laid upon him an obligation. He wanted to rise and frame some excuse for immediate flight, but it was of course too late for that.

The evening star came up over the dark contours of the ridge. It shone soft and lustrous in the sky, where other stars would soon add their myriad points of light, but however many others might fill the heavens there would still be only one evening star – and Boone, as he waited for one girl, fell to thinking of the other with whom he had climbed Slag-face yesterday; the girl who had set fire to his young imagination.

Then Happy came out of the door and soon after the father went in. "Thar hain't no place fer an ign'rant old feller like me, out hyar amongst ther young an' wise," he chuckled as he left them. "I reckon ye aims ter talk algebry an' sich-like."

The mountains were great upward sweeps of velvet darkness. Down in the slopes, where the moonlight fell, was a bath of silver and shadows, not dead and inky but blue and living, but Happy Spradling, keyed to the emotional influences of that June evening, found herself labouring with a distrait and unresponsive visitor, who made an early excuse for departure.

CHAPTER XVII

Beyond the goal of getting through college in three years, Boone had planned his future but vaguely. He might seek election to the Legislature, when he came of qualifying age, and strive upwards from that beginning toward Congress and the larger rewards of a political life. For such a career the law was a necessary preparation, so while he was still in college he began its reading.

Whenever he went home from the university he saw Happy, and in the tacit fashion of simple souls their neighbourhood fell to speaking of "Boone and Happy," as though the linking of their names was natural and logical, and in local gossip it was almost as though they were betrothed.

Happy had other suitors, more than a few of them indeed, drawn to the Spradling house by her beauty. Along those neighbourhood creeks, from the trickles where they "headed up" to the mouths where they emptied, there were few girls who could hope to compete with her loveliness of sloe-eyes, dusky hair and slender grace of body. But the old wives shook their heads, saying, "Happy Spradling wouldn't hurt a fly – but jest ther same she's breakin' hearts right an' left because she's mortgaged ter Boone Wellver – an' she's jest a'waitin' fer him."

Old Cyrus already looked on him as a son – and Boone spoke as little of Anne Masters as he would have spoken of the things sealed in Masonic secrecy.

Happy's school was one which arranged its terms and vacations in accordance with local exigencies. Crop planting and gathering had the right of way over text-books, and so it happened that when Anne was at Marlin Town, Happy was usually at school – and their ways did not cross.

Yet each summer, too, as a man may go from the provinces to court and yet not delude himself with the hallucination that he is a courtier, Boone went over to Marlin Town. For every summer Anne Masters came for a few weeks to visit the father, who held his position there, remote from the things that, to his thinking, made up the values of life.

During these periods Boone found life a strange and paradoxical pattern, woven of a web of ecstasy and a woof of torture. Since that night when he had dragged suddenly at his bridle curb and had told himself, "I might as well fall in love with a star up there in heaven," he had never departed from his resolute conviction that it would be sheer insanity for him to entertain any thought of Anne, save that of the willing and faithful slave who would joyously have laid his life down for her.

She dominated his world of boyhood dreams, and since he was not deaf to the talk about himself and "Cyrus Spradling's gal," he wondered if he ought not to tell Happy the whole truth. But after long reflection he shook his head.

"It would only hurt Happy, like telling her about dreams that come at night – of some sort of heaven where I don't see her, herself." And so he did not tell her.

One day in the spring of the year when Anne was sixteen, Mrs. Larry Masters dropped into the office of her kinsman, Tom Wallifarro, to talk over some small matter of business. It was one of the regrets of the lady's life – a life somewhat touched and frost-bitten by bitterness – that all of her business was small. It was, however, one of her compensations that this gentleman gave to her petty affairs as much care and consideration as to the major features of his large practice.

"My dear," observed the Colonel irrelevantly as he looked at the weary eyes of the woman who had in her day been an almost famous beauty, "you seem worried. You are altogether too young to let lines creep into your face."

Mrs. Masters laughed mirthlessly.

"I have a daughter growing up. I am ambitious for her. She has charm, grace, breeding – and she's the poor member of a rich family. Such things bring wrinkles around maternal eyes, Cousin Tom."

"Happily she lives in Kentucky," the lawyer reminded his visitor. "We are yet provincial enough to think something of blood, even when it's not gilded with money."

"Yes, thank God – and thanks to you, she has had educational advantages. If Larry had only had business sense – but I can't talk patiently about Larry."

"No – I wish you could bring yourself to think of him more indulgently, but – " Colonel Tom knew the fruitlessness of that line of counsel, so he brushed lightly by to other topics. "But that isn't what I wanted to talk about. I think Morgan ought to travel abroad for several months, don't you?"

Mrs. Masters sighed. There was a thought in her mind which had long been there. If Morgan and Anne could be brought to a fancy for each other, her problem in life would be settled. The girl would no longer be a charity child. But what she said was an amendment to the original thought. "Isn't he a bit inexperienced – and headstrong yet, to be turned loose alone in Europe?"

The Colonel's eyes twinkled. "I mean to have a check-rein on him."

"What fashion of check-rein, Cousin Tom?"

"I thought," said the lawyer off-handedly, since he always surrounded his beneficences with a show of the casual, "that it would be a good thing for Anne too. Now if you and she and Morgan made a European trip together, the responsibility of two ladies on his hands would steady the young scapegrace."

Mrs. Masters almost gasped in her effort to control her delighted astonishment. Morgan had always thought of Anne as a "kid" to be teased and badgered, and of himself as a very finished and mature young gentleman. Now they would see each other in a new guise. Their eyes might be opened. In short, the possibilities were immense.

"Your goodness to us – " she began feelingly, but the Colonel cleared his throat and raised a hand in defence against the embarrassment of verbal gratitude.

A month later the three sat in the salle-a-manger of the Elysée Palace Hotel, by a window that commanded a view of the Arc de Triomphe, and many things had happened. Among them was the surprising discovery by the young man, that while few eyes seemed concerned with him, many turned toward Anne, and having turned, lingered.

Only last night they had been to a dance, and Anne had been so occupied with uniforms that she had found no time to waltz with him – though he was sure that he danced circles about these stiff-kneed gentry with petty titles.

Now over the petit déjeuner he took his young and inconsiderate cousin to task.

"Last night, Anne, I camped on your trail all evening, and you couldn't manage to slip me in one dance. Nothing would do but goggling Britishers and smirking frog-eaters. I'm getting jolly well fed up with these foreigners."

Anne lifted her brows, but her eyes sparkled mischief.

"Oh, Morgan, I can dance with you any time," she assured him. "You're just kin-folks. Is it because you're 'jolly well fed up' with foreigners that you like to ape English slang?"

The young man blushed hotly, but he chose to ignore the question with which she had capped her response. Inasmuch as it was a fair hit, he had need to ignore it, but his eyes snapped with furious indignation. "Anne, I don't understand you," he announced in a carefully schooled voice. "You can play with absurd little dignitaries, or with mountain illiterates – anything abnormal – but for your own blood – " He paused there a moment, searching his abundant and sophomoric vocabulary for the exact combination of withering words; and, while he hesitated, she interrupted in a tone which was both quiet and ominous:

"Let's take up one thing at a time, Morgan. Just who is the illiterate in the mountains?"

"You know as well as I do – Boone Wellver."

"Boone Wellver. I thought so. At all events, he's a man, even if he's not quite twenty-one yet."

"A man: that is to say, a specimen of the genus homo. So is the fellow that brought in the eggs just now. So is the chap that drives the taxi." The young aristocrat shrugged his shoulders and snapped his fingers in excellent imitation of Gallic expressiveness; then as Anne's twinkle reminded him of his being "jolly well fed up with foreigners," the change in his tone became as abrupt as the break in a boy's altering voice, and he added: "The point is that he's hardly a gentleman. I commend his ambition – but there's something in birth as well. Unless you attach some importance to the elegances and nuances of life, you are only a member of the mob."

"The elegances of life – as, for instance" – the dancing sparkle stole mischievously back into the blue eyes and the voice took on a purring softness – "as, for instance, the handling of the small sword – or fencing foil?"

Morgan rose petulantly from the table and pushed back his chair. "If you ladies will excuse me," he announced with superdignity, "I will leave you for a while to your own devices."

Anne's laughter pursued him in exit with an echo of musical mockery.

But that evening Mrs. Larry Masters posted a letter to Colonel Tom Wallifarro.

"Morgan has discovered Anne!" she said in part. "He has been too close to her until now to realize her attractiveness; but she has been noticed by other men, and at last Morgan is awake. They have quarrelled, and next to making love that's the most significant of developments. My dear kinsman and benefactor, you know what our mutual hope has been, and I think its fulfilment is not so far away! Tonight when I sipped my claret at dinner I drank a silent toast, 'To my girl and your boy.'"

While Mrs. Masters was writing that note, her daughter was sitting at another desk in the same room, and her letter was addressed to a post-office back of Cedar Mountain.

When Boone received that second missive, he turned the envelope over in his hand and gazed at it for a long while. Even then he did not open it until he sat alone in a place where the forests were silent, save for the call of a blue-jay and the diligent rapping of a "cock of the woods" who was sapping and mining for grubs.

The boy held between thumb and forefinger an envelope of a sort he had never seen before, of thin outer paper over a dark coloured lining. In one corner was a stamp of the French Republic, and there in writing that had crossed the sea was his name and address.

"She found time to write to me," he said rapturously to himself, and then dropping intentionally and whimsically into his old, childhood speech he added, nodding his head sagely to a pert squirrel that frisked its tail near by, "She's done writ me a letter cl'ar from t'other world."

It was that same summer, when Anne had gone to Europe, that Boone came back from college, very serious and taciturn, and McCalloway was prompt to guess the reason.

"You went down to Louisville, didn't you?" he inquired, as the two sat by the doorstep on the day of the boy's return, and Boone nodded.

The man did not nag him with questions. His seasoned wisdom contented itself with smoking on in silence, and after a little the lad jerked his head.

"I reckon you know what took me there – sir."

The final word came in afterthought. No mountaineer says "sir," by habit.

A part of that stubborn independence which is at once the virtue and the fault of the race balks at even such small measure of implied deference, but Boone had noticed that "down below," where courtesy flowers into graciousness, the form of address was general.

McCalloway responded slowly.

"Yes, I can guess your errand there. How is he?"

The boy's eyes gazed off across the slopes through contracted lids, and his voice came in deliberate but repressed tenseness.

"I hunted up Colonel Wallifarro's office and he went over there with me… I reckon, except for that, they wouldn't have let me see him."

He paused, and the man thoughtfully observed, "No, I fancy not."

"You go into that jail-house through a stone door, and there's a rough-lookin' feller settin' – I mean sitting – there in front of another door made of iron gratin's as thick as crowbars… The place don't smell good."

"Isn't it well kept?" inquired McCalloway in some surprise, and the boy hastily explained.

"I don't mean that it plum stinks. I reckon it's as clean as a jail can be, but the air is stale – even out on the street that lowland air is flat… It don't taste right in a man's throat… Asa was reared up here in these free hills. He's like a caged hawk down there."

The soldier nodded sympathetically.

"Did he – seem well?"

"He hasn't sickened none … but his face used to be right colourful… Now it's pale … and sort of gray-like… Of course a turnkey went along with us, and we didn't talk with him by himself… I reckon he didn't say none of the things he craved most to say… He was right silent-like."

The boy broke off, and for a while the two sat in silence. When Boone took up the thread of his narrative again, there was something like a catch in his throat.

"They were pretty polite to us there… They showed us all over the place … they even took us to the death row… There was a nigger in there that was goin' ter be hung next morning at daybreak… I reckon he's dead now… A feller kept walkin' back and forth in front of that cell … and an electric light was burnin' there full bright… That nigger, neither night ner day … could ever git away from that light… They were afraid he might seek ter kill hisself… He come ter the bars an' said, 'Howdy, white folks,' … an' then he went back an' sat down on the ledge that he sleeps on."

The recital, painfully punctuated with its frequent pauses, halted there. It was a matter of several minutes before it began again. Now the voice was laboured, as if the speaker were panting for breath, and the careful pronunciation relapsed wildly into the older and ruder forms of solecism.

"They tuck us out an' … showed us the cement yard … whar the gallows stood… It was painted a sort of brownish red… It put me in mind of dried blood. The nigger could hear the hammers whilest they set the thing up… Asa could hear 'em too… Asa hed done seed ther scaffold hisself … through the winder-bars when … he exercised … in the corrider… But when I looked at the nigger thet's dead by now … seemed like it was Asa I saw … with thet lamp glarin' in on him, daylight and night time alike…" The voice leaped into a soblike vehemence. "Thet's what Judas money dogged him to! Seemed like … I couldn't endure it!"

CHAPTER XVIII

So if the time ever came when Boone stood face to face with Saul Fulton, it would, for all the amendment of his new life, be a moment of desperate crisis. The pig iron of his half-savage beginning had been made malleable and held promise of tempered and flexible steel – but the metal was still feudist ore. McCalloway comforted himself with the reflection that Saul was not likely to return, but did not delude himself into forgetting that strange perversity which seems to draw the mountaineer inevitably back to his crags and woods, even in the face of innumerable perils. Some day Saul might attempt to slip back, and Boone would almost inevitably hear of his coming. Then for a day or an hour, the lad might relapse into his old self, even to the forgetting of his pledge. Such an inconsidered day or an hour would be enough to wreck his life.

Carefully and adroitly, therefore, McCalloway played upon the softer strings of life, and sometimes, to that end, he opened a hitherto closed door upon the events of his own life, and let his protégé look in on glimpses that were sacredly guarded from other eyes.

One summer night, for example, Boone laid down a book and said suddenly, "It tells here about a fellow winning the Star of India and the Victoria Cross. I'd love to see one of those medals."

Silently McCalloway rose and went over to the folding desk, to come back with his battered dispatch box. He unlocked it and laid out before the boy not one decoration, but several. The ribbons were somewhat faded now, and the metal tarnished; but Boone bent forward, and his face glowed with the exaltation of one admitted to precincts that are sacrosanct. For a long while he studied the maltese cross with its lion-surmounted crown and its supporting bar chased with rose leaves; the cross that bears the Queen's name, for which men brave death. Beside it lay the oval, showing Victoria's profile, and the gilt inscription on a blue enamelled margin: "Heaven's Light Our Guide." A star caught it to its white-edged blue riband – and that was the coveted Star of India.

Here before his eyes – eyes that burned eagerly – were the priceless trifles that he had never hoped to see. The modest gentleman who had, for his sake, relinquished fresh honours in China, had won them, and until now had never spoken of them, but Boone knew that they are not lightly gained – and that in no way can they be bought.

A sudden and unaccountable mistiness blurred his sight.

"I'm obliged to you, sir," he said seriously. "I know you don't often show them."

He had meant to say nothing more than that, but youth's questioning urge mastered his resolution, so that he put an interrogation very slowly, half fearing it might seem an impertinence.

"You told me once, sir, that I might ask whatever questions I liked – and that you would refuse to answer when you felt like it. I'm going to ask one now – but I reckon I oughtn't to." Again there was a diffident pause, but the sincere blue eyes were unwaveringly steady as they met the gray ones.

"Do you reckon, sir, the day will ever come – when I can know the real name – of the man I owe – pretty nigh everything to?"

McCalloway blinked his eyes, which this cub of a boy had a way of tricking into unsoldierly emotion, and resolutely set his features into immobility.

"No, sir; I'm afraid not," he answered with a gruffness that in no way deceived his questioner. "McCalloway is as good a name as any – I'm afraid, at all events, it will have to serve to the end."

Slowly and gravely the lad nodded his head. "All right, sir," he declared. "It was just curiosity, anyhow. The name I know you by is good enough for me."

But McCalloway was disquietingly moved. He rose and replaced the dispatch box on its shelf, and after that paced the room for a few moments with quick, restive strides. Then his voice came with an impulsive suddenness. "There's a paper in that dispatch box … that would answer your question, Boone," he said. "I tell you because I want you to realize how entirely I trust you. It's the secret chamber of my Bluebeard establishment. While I live it must remain locked."

After a moment he added, "If I should die … and you still want to know – then you may open the box … but even then what you learn is for yourself alone, and I want that you shall destroy all those documents and whisper no word whatever of their contents to any living soul."

"I promise, sir," declared the boy, "on my honour."

When August had brought the yellow masses of the golden-rod and the rusty purple of the ironweed; when the thistles were no longer a sting to the touch but down drifting along the lightest breeze, two horses stopped at McCalloway's fence, and a girl's voice called out, "Can we come in?"

Boone had not known that Anne Masters was back on this side of the Atlantic, nor had he ventured to hope that she would find time to come up here into the hills before the summer ended, but the voice had brought him out to the stile, as swiftly as a cry for help could have done. Now he stood, looking up at her as she sat in her saddle, with a blaze of worship in his blue eyes that went far to undo all the self-restraint with which he had so studiously hedged about his speech and manner. Surprise has undone many wary generals. So his eyes made love to her, even while his lips remained guarded of utterance.

"I didn't have any idea that you were on this side of the world," he declared. "It's just plum taken my breath away from me to see you sitting right there on that horse."

Larry Masters had dismounted and was hitching his mule. Now he turned to inquire, "Where's Mr. McCalloway?"