Judith of the Cumberlands. MacGowan Alice

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СКАЧАТЬ brookside arbutus blushed. Above their heads the tracery of branches was a lace-work overlaid with fanlike budding green leaves, except where the maples showed scarlet tassels, or the Judas tree flaunted its bold, lying, purple-pink promise of fruitage never to be fulfilled.

      Could two young creatures be wiser than nature’s self? It was the new time; all the gauzy-winged ephemeræ in the moist March woods were throbbing with it, buzzing or flashing about seeking mates and nectar. The earth had wakened from her winter sleep and set her face toward her ancient, ardent lover, the sun. In the soul of Judith Barrier—Judith the nature woman—all this surged strongly. As for the man, he had sent forth his spirit in so general a fashion, he conceived himself to have a mission so impersonal, that he scarce remembered what should or should not please or attract Creed Bonbright.

      Judith dreaded lest he make his farewells before she had from him some earnest of a future meeting. He could not say good-bye and let her leave him so! It seemed to her that if he did she should die before she reached the mountain-top. Dark, rich, earth-born, earth-fast, material, she looked down at Creed where he stood beside her, his hand on the sorrel’s neck, his calm blue eyes raised to hers. Her gaze lingered on the fair hair flying in the March breeze, above a face selfless as that of some young prophet. Her eager, undisciplined nature found here what it craved. Coquetry had not availed her; it had fallen off him unrecognised—this man who answered it absently, and thought his own thoughts. And with the divine pertinacity of life itself she delved in the ancient wisdom of her sex for a lure to make him rise and follow her. It was not bright eyes nor red lips that could move or please him? But she had seen him moved, aroused. The hint was plain. Instantly abandoning her personal siege, she espoused the cause of her bodiless rival.

      “I—I heard you a-speakin’ back there,” she said with a little catch in her breath.

      Bonbright’s eyes returned from the far distances to which they had travelled after giving her—Judith Barrier, so worthy of a blue-eyed youth’s respectful attention—a passing glance. She replied to his gaze with one full of a meaning to him at that time indecipherable; nevertheless it was an ardent, compelling look which he must needs answer with some confession of himself.

      “You wouldn’t understand what I was trying to tell about,” he began gently. “Since I’ve been living in the valley, where folks get rich and see a heap of what they call pleasure, I’ve had many a hard thought about the lives of our people up yonder in the mountains. I want to go back to my people with—I want to tell them—”

      The girl leaned forward in her saddle, burning eyes fixed on his intent face, red lips apart.

      “Yes—what?” she breathed. “What is it you want to say to the folks back home? You ort to come and say it. We need it bad.”

      “Do you think so?” asked Bonbright doubtfully. “Do you reckon they would listen to me? I don’t know. Sometimes I allow maybe I’d better stay here where the Judge wants me to till I’m an older man and more experienced.”

      He studied the beautiful, down-bent face greedily now, but it was not the eye of a man looking at a maid. His thoughts were with the work he hoped to do. Judith’s heart contracted with fear, and then set off beating heavily. Wait till he was an old man? Would love wait? Somebody else would claim him—some town girl would find the way to charm him. In sheer terror she put down her hand and laid it upon his.

      “Don’t you never think it,” she protested. “You’re needed right now. After a while will be too late. Why, I come a-past your old home in the rain last Wednesday, and I could ’a’ cried to see the winders dark, and the grass all grown up to the front door. You come back whar you belong—” she had almost said “honey”—“and you’ll find there is need a-plenty for folks like you.”

      “Well, they all allow that I’ll be elected next Thursday,” Creed assented, busying himself over the lengthening of Beck’s bridle, that she might lead the mule the more handily. “And if I am I’ll be in the Turkey Tracks along in April and find me a place to set up an office. If I’m elected——”

      “Elected! An’ ef yo’r not?” she cried, filled with scorn of such a paltry condition. What difference could it make whether or not he were elected? Wouldn’t his hair be just as yellow, his eyes as blue? Would his voice be any less the call to love?

      He smiled at her tolerantly, handing up the lengthened strap.

      “Well, I don’t just rightly know what I will do, then,” he debated.

      “But you’re a-comin’ up to the Turkey Tracks anyhow, to—to see yo’ folks,” persisted Judith with a rising triumph in her tone.

      “Yes,” acquiesced Bonbright, “I’ll come up in April anyhow.”

      And with this assurance the girl rode slowly away, leading Beck, the now resigned Pete following behind. All the sounds from the valley were gathered as in a vast bowl and flung upward, refined by distance. A moment she halted listening, then breasted the first rise and entered that deep silence which waits the mountain dweller. The great forest closed about her.

      Creed Bonbright stood for a moment in the open road looking after her. Something she had conveyed to him, some call sent forth, which had not quite reached the ear of his spirit, and yet which troubled his calm. He lifted his gaze toward the bulk of the big mountain looming above him. He passed his hand absently through his fair hair, then tossed his head back with a characteristic motion. It was good to know he was needed up there. It was good to know he would be welcomed. So far the girl had made her point. After this the mountains and Judith Barrier would mean one thing in the young man’s mind. As the shortest way to them both, he turned and walked swiftly down toward the settlement and to the undertaking which there awaited him.

Chapter II

       Table of Contents

At “The Edge”

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      The girl on the sorrel nag and the two riderless animals toiled patiently up the broad, timbered flank of Big Turkey Track, following the raw red gash in the greenery that was the road.

      She gazed with wondering eyes at the familiar landmarks of the trail. All was just as it had been when she rode down it at dawn that morning, Andy and Jeff ahead on their mules whistling, singing, skylarking like two playful bear cubs. It was herself that was changed. She pushed the cheap hat off her hot forehead and tried to win to some coherence of thought and—so far had she already come on a new, strange path—looked back with wondering uncomprehension, as upon the beliefs and preferences of a crude primitive ancestress, to the girl who had cared that this hat cost a dollar and a half instead of a dollar and a quarter—only a few hours since when she bought it at the store. She went over the bits of talk that had been between her and Creed Bonbright. What had he said his favourite colour was? Memory brought back his rapt young face when she put the question to him. She trembled with delight at the recollection. His eyes were fixed upon the sky, and he had answered her absently, “blue.”

      Blue! What a fool—what a common thickheaded fool she had been all her days! She let the sorrel take his own gait, hooked his bridle-rein and Beck’s upon the saddle-horn, and lifting her arms withdrew the hatpins and took off the unworthy headgear. For a moment she regarded savagely the cheap red ribbon which had appeared so beautiful to her; then СКАЧАТЬ