by John Buchan
CHAPTER 13. THE LAST STAGE
A small boy crept into the darkened hut. The unglazed windows wereroughly curtained with skins, but there was sufficient light from theopen doorway to show him what he wanted. He tiptoed to a corner wherean old travelling trunk lay under a pile of dirty clothes. He opened itvery carefully, and after a little searching found the thing he sought.Then he gently closed it, and, with a look towards the bed in the othercorner, he slipped out again into the warm October afternoon.
The woman on the bed stirred uneasily and suddenly became fully awake,after the way of those who are fluttering very near death. She was stillyoung, and the little face among the coarse homespun blankets lookedalmost childish. Heavy masses of black hair lay on the pillow, and thedepth of its darkness increased the pallor of her brow. But the cheekswere flushed, and the deep hazel eyes were burning with a slow fire....For a week the milk-sick fever had raged furiously, and in the few hoursfree from delirium she had been racked with omnipresent pain and deadlysickness. Now those had gone, and she was drifting out to sea on a tideof utter weakness. Her husband, Tom Linkhorn, thought she mending, andwas even now whistling--the first time for weeks--by the woodpile. Butthe woman knew that she was close to the great change, and so deep washer weariness that the knowledge remained an instinct rather than athought. She was as passive as a dying animal. The cabin was built oflogs, mortised into each other--triangular in shape, with a fireplace inone corner. Beside the fire stood a table made of a hewn log, on whichlay some pewter dishes containing the remains of the last family meal.One or two three-legged stools made up the rest of the furniture, exceptfor the trunk in the corner and the bed. This bed was Tom Linkhorn'spride, which he used to boast about to his friends, for he was atolerable carpenter. It was made of plank stuck between the logs of thewall, and supported at the other end by crotched sticks. By way of acurtain top a hickory post had been sunk in the floor and bent over thebed, the end being fixed in the log wall. Tom meant to have a fine skincurtain fastened to it when winter came. The floor was of beaten earth,but there was a rough ceiling of smaller logs, with a trap in it whichcould be reached by pegs stuck the centre post. In that garret thechildren slept. Tom's building zeal had come to an end with the bed.Some day he meant to fit in a door and windows, but these luxuries couldwait till he got his clearing in better order.
On a stool by the bed stood a wooden bowl containing gruel. The womanhad not eaten for days, and the stuff had a thick scum on it. The placewas very stuffy, for it was a hot and sickly autumn day and skins whichdarkened the window holes kept out the little freshness that was in theair. Beside the gruel was a tin pannikin of cold water which the boy Abefetched every hour from the spring. She saw the water, but was too weakto reach it.
The shining doorway was blocked by a man's entrance. Tom Linkhorn was alittle over middle height, with long muscular arms, and the corded necksinews which tell of great strength. He had a shock of coarse blackhair, grey eyes and a tired sallow face, as of one habitually overworkedand underfed. His jaw was heavy, but loosely put together, so that hepresented an air of weakness and irresolution. His lips were thick andpursed in a kind of weary good humour. He wore an old skin shirt anda pair of towlinen pants, which flapped about his bare brown ankles. Afine sawdust coated his hair and shoulders, for he had been working inthe shed where he eked out his farming by making spinning wheels for hisneighbours.
He came softly to the bedside and looked down at his wife. His face wasgentle and puzzled.
"Reckon you're better, dearie," he said in a curious harsh tonelessvoice.
The sick woman moved her head feebly in the direction of the stool andhe lifted the pannikin of water to her lips.
"Cold enough?" he asked, and his wife nodded. "Abe fetches it as reg'laras a clock."
"Where's Abe?" she asked, and her voice for all its feebleness had ayouthful music in it.
"I heerd him sayin' he was goin' down to the crick to cotch a fish. Hereckoned you'd fancy a fish when you could eat a piece. He's a mightythoughtful boy, our Abe. Then he was comin' to read to you. You'd likethat, dearie?"
The sick woman made no sign. Her eyes were vacantly regarding thedoorway.
"I've got to leave you now. I reckon I'll borrow the Dawneys' sorrelhorse and ride into Gentryville. I've got the young hogs to sell, andI'll fetch back the corn-meal from Hickson's. Sally Hickson was justlike you last fall, and I want to find out from Jim how she got herstrength up."
He put a hand on her brow, and felt it cool.
"Glory! You're mendin' fast, Nancy gal. You'll be well in time to canthe berries that the childern's picked." He fished from below the bed apair of skin brogues and slipped them on his feet. "I'll be back beforenight."
"I want Abe," she moaned.
"I'll send him to you," he said as he went out
Left alone the woman lay still for a little in a stupor of weariness.Waves of that terrible lassitude, which is a positive anguish and nota mere absence of strength, flowed over her. The square of the doorway,which was directly before her eyes, began to take strange forms. Itwas filled with yellow sunlight, and a red glow beyond told of thesugar-maples at the edge of the clearing. Now it seemed to her unquietsight to be a furnace. Outside the world was burning; she could feelthe heat of it in the close cabin. For a second acute fear startled herweakness. It passed, her eyes cleared, and she saw the homely doorway asit was, and heard the gobble of a turkey in the forest.
The fright had awakened her mind and senses. For the first time shefully realised her condition. Life no longer moved steadily in her body;it flickered and wavered and would soon gutter out.... Her eyes markedevery detail of the squalor around her--the unwashed dishes, the foulearthen floor, the rotting apple pile, the heap of rags which had beenher only clothes. She was leaving the world, and this was all she hadwon from it. Sheer misery forced a sigh which seemed to rend her frailbody, and her eyes filled with tears. She had been a dreamer, an adeptat make-believe, but the poor coverings she had wrought for a dingyreality were now too threadbare to hide it.
And once she had been so rich in hope. She would make her husband agreat man, and--when that was manifestly impossible without a rebirthof Tom Linkhorn--she would have a son who would wear a black coat likeLawyer Macneil and Colonel Hardin way back in Kentucky, and make finespeeches beginning "Fellow countrymen and gentlemen of this famousState." She had a passion for words, and sonorous phrases haunted hermemory. She herself would have a silk gown and a bonnet with roses init; once long ago she had been to Elizabethtown and seen just such agown and bonnet.... Or Tom would be successful in this wild Indianacountry and be, like Daniel Boone, the father of a new State, and haveplaces and towns called for him--a Nancyville perhaps or a LinkhornCounty. She knew about Daniel Boone, for her grandfather Hanks had beenwith him.... And there had been other dreams, older dreams, dating farback to the days when she was a little girl with eyes like a brown owl.Someone had told her fairy-tales about princesses and knights,strange beings which she never quite understood, but of which she mademarvellous pictures in her head She had learned to read in order tofollow up the doings of those queer bright folk, but she had nevertracked them down again. But one book she had got called ThePilgrim's Progress, printed by missionaries in a far-away city calledPhiladelphia, which told of things as marvellous, and had pictures,too--one especially of a young man covered with tin, which she supposedwas what they called armour. And there was another called The ArabianNights, a close-printed thing difficult to read by the winter fire,full of wilder doings than any she could imagine for herself; butbeautiful, too, and delicious to muse over, though Tom, when she read achapter to him, had condemned it as a pack of lies.... Clearly therewas a world somewhere, perhaps outside America altogether, far morewonderful than even the magnificence of Colonel Hardin. Once she hadhoped to find it herself; then that her children should find it. Andthe end was this shack in the wilderness, a few acres of rotting crops,bitter starving winters, summers of fever, the deeps of pov
erty, apenniless futureless family, and for herself a coffin of green lumberand a yard or two of stony soil.
She saw everything now with the clear unrelenting eyes of childhood.The films she had woven for selfprotection were blown aside. She wasdying--she had often wondered how she should feel when dying--humble andtrustful, she had hoped, for she was religious after a fashion, and haddreamed herself into an affection for a kind fatherly God. But now allthat had gone. She was bitter, like one defrauded. She had been promisedsomething, and had struggled on in the assurance of it. And the resultwas nothing--nothing. Tragic tears filled her eyes. She had been sohungry, and there was to be no satisfying that hunger this side thegrave or beyond it. She was going the same way as Betsy Sparrow, a deathlike a cow's, with nothing to show for life, nothing to leave. Betsy hadbeen a poor crushed creature, and had looked for no more. But she wasdifferent. She had been promised something, something fine--she couldn'tremember what, or who had promised it, but it had never been out of hermind.
There was the ring, too. No woman in Indiana had the like of that. Anugly thing, but very ancient and of pure gold. Once Tom had wanted tosell it when he was hard-pressed back at Nolin Creek, but she had foughtfor it like a tigress and scared the life out of Tom. Her grandfatherhad left it her because she was his favourite and it had been hergrandmothers, and long ago had come from Europe. It was lucky, andcould cure rheumatism if worn next the heart in a skin bag.... All herthoughts were suddenly set on the ring, her one poor shred of fortune.She wanted to feel it on her finger, and press its cool gold with thequeer markings on her eyelids.
But Tom had gone away and she couldn't reach the trunk in the corner.Tears trickled down her cheeks and through the mist of them she saw thatthe boy Abe stood at the foot of the bed.
"Feelin' comfortabler?" he asked. He had a harsh untunable voice,his father's, but harsher, and he spoke the drawling dialect of thebackwoods.
His figure stood in the light, so that the dying mother saw only itsoutline. He was a boy about nine years old, but growing too fast,so that he had lost the grace of childhood and was already lanky andungainly. As he turned his face crosswise to the light he revealed acuriously rugged profile--a big nose springing sharply from the brow,a thick underhung lower lip, and the beginning of a promising Adam'sapple. His stiff black hair fell round his great ears, which stoodout like the handles of a pitcher. He was barefoot, and wore a pair ofleather breeches and a ragged homespun shirt. Beyond doubt he was ugly.
He moved round to the right side of the bed where he was wholly inshadow.
"My lines is settin' nicely," he said. "I'll have a fish for yoursupper. And then I'm goin' to take dad's gun and fetch you a turkey. Youcould eat a slice of a fat turkey, I reckon."
The woman did not answer, for she was thinking. This uncouth boy was theson she had put her faith in. She loved him best of all things on earth,but for the moment she saw him in the hard light of disillusionment.A loutish backwoods child, like Dennis Hanks or Tom Sparrow or anybodyelse. He had been a comfort to her, for he had been quick to learn andhad a strange womanish tenderness in his ways. But she was leaving him,and he would grow up like his father before him to a life of ceaselesstoil with no daylight or honour in it.... She almost hated the sight ofhim, for he was the memorial of her failure.
The boy did not guess these thoughts. He pulled up a stool and sat veryclose to the bed, holding his mother's frail wrist in a sunburnt hand sobig that it might have been that of a lad half-way through his teens.He had learned in the woods to be neat and precise in his ways, and hismovements, for all his gawky look, were as soft as a panther's.
"Like me to tell you a story?" he asked. "What about Uncle Mord's taleof Dan'l Boone at the Blue Licks Battle?"
There was no response, so he tried again.
"Or read a piece? It was the Bible last time, but the words is mightydifficult. Besides you don't need it that much now. You're gettin'better.... Let's hear about the ol' Pilgrim."
He found a squat duodecimo in the trunk, and shifted the skin curtainfrom one of the window holes to get light to read by. His mother layvery still with her eyes shut, but he knew by her breathing that shewas not asleep. He ranged through the book, stopping to study thecrude pictures, and then started laboriously to read the adventures ofChristian and Hopeful after leaving Vanity Fair--the mine of Demas, theplain called Ease, Castle Doubting, and the Delectable Mountains. Heboggled over some of the words, but on the whole he read well, and hisharsh voice dropped into a pleasant sing-song.
By and by he noticed that his mother was asleep. He took the tinpannikin and filled it with fresh water from the spring. Then he kissedthe hand which lay on the blanket, looked about guiltily to see ifanyone had seen him, for kisses were rare in that household and tiptoedout again.
The woman slept, but not wholly. The doorway, which was now filled withthe deeper gold of the westering sun, was still in her vision. It hadgrown to a great square of light, and instead of being blocked in theforeground by the forest it seemed to give on an infinite distance. Shehad a sense not of looking out of a hut, but of looking from withoutinto a great chamber. Peace descended on her which she had never knownbefore in her feverish dreams, peace and a happy expectation.
She had not listened to Abe's reading, but some words of it had caughther ear. The phrase "delectable mountains" for one. She did not knowwhat "delectable" meant, but it sounded good; and mountains, though shehad never seen more of them than a far blue line, had always pleasedher fancy. Now she seemed to be looking at them through that magicaldoorway.... The country was not like anything she remembered in theKentucky bluegrass, still less like the shaggy woods of Indiana. Theturf was short and very green, and the hills fell into gracious foldsthat promised homesteads in every nook of them. It was a "delectable"country--yes, that was the meaning of the word that had puzzled her....She had seen the picture before in her head. She remembered one hotSunday afternoon when she was a child hearing a Baptist preacherdiscoursing on a Psalm, something about the "little hills rejoicing."She had liked the words and made a picture in her mind. These were thelittle hills and they were joyful.
There was a white road running straight through them till it disappearedover a crest. That was right, of course. The road which the Pilgrimstravelled.... And there, too, was a Pilgrim.
He was a long way off, but she could see him quite clearly. He was aboy, older than Abe, but about the same size--a somewhat forlorn figure,who seemed as if he had a great way to go and was oppressed by theknowledge of it. He had funny things on his legs and feet, which werenot proper moccasins. Once he looked back, and she had a glimpse of fairhair. He could not be any of the Hanks or Linkhorn kin, for theywere all dark.... But he had something on his left arm which sherecognised--a thick ring of gold. It was her own ring, the ring shekept in the trunk and she smiled comfortably. She had wanted it a littlewhile ago, and now there it was before her eyes. She had no anxietyabout its safety, for somehow it belonged to that little boy as well asto her.
His figure moved fast and was soon out of sight round a turn of thehill. And with that the landscape framed in the doorway began to waverand dislimn. The road was still there, white and purposeful, butthe environs were changing.... She was puzzled, but with a pleasantconfusion. Her mind was not on the landscape, but on the people, for shewas assured that others would soon appear on the enchanted stage.
He ran across the road, shouting with joy, a dog at his heels and a bowin his hand. Before he disappeared she marked the ring, this time on hisfinger.... He had scarcely gone ere another appeared on the road, a slimpale child, dressed in some stuff that gleamed like satin, and mountedon a pony.... The spectacle delighted her, for it brought her in mind ofthe princes she had been told of in fairytales. And there was the ring,worn over a saffron riding glove....
A sudden weakness made her swoon; and out of it she woke to aconsciousness of the hut where she lay. She had thought she was dead andin heaven among fair children, and the waking made her long for h
er ownchild. Surely that was Abe in the doorway.... No, it was a taller andolder lad, oddly dressed, but he had a look of Abe--something in hiseyes. He was on the road too, and marching purposefully--and he hadthe ring. Even in her mortal frailty she had a quickening of the heart.These strange people had something to do with her, something to tellher, and that something was about her son....
There was a new boy in the picture. A dejected child who rubbed the ringon his small breeches and played with it, looking up now and then with afrightened start. The woman's heart ached for him, for she knew her ownlife-long malady. He was hungry for something which he had small hopeof finding.... And then a wind seemed to blow out-of-doors and the worlddarkened down to evening. But her eyes pierced the gloaming easily, andshe saw very plain the figure of a man.
He was sitting hunched up, with his chin in his hands, gazing intovacancy. Without surprise she recognised something in his face that washer own. He wore the kind of hunter's clothes that old folk had worn inher childhood, and a long gun lay across his knees. His air was sombreand wistful, and yet with a kind of noble content in it. He had Abe'spuckered-up lips and Abe's steady sad eyes.... Into her memory came averse of the Scriptures which had always fascinated her. "These all diedin faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afaroff, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed thatthey were strangers and pilgrims upon the earth."
She saw it all in a flash of enlightenment. These seekers throughout theages had been looking for something and had not found it. But Abe, herson, was to find it. That was why she had been shown those pictures.
Once again she looked through the door into bright sunshine. It wasa place that she knew beside the Ohio she remembered the tall poplarclump. She did not see the Jacksons' farm which stood south of thetrees, but there was the Indian graveyard, which as a little girl shehad been afraid to pass. Now it seemed to be fresh made, for paintedvermilion wands stood about the mounds. On one of them was a goldtrinket, tied by a loop of hide, rattled in the wind. It was her ring.The seeker lay buried there with the talisman above him.
She was awake now, oblivious of the swift sinking of her vital energy.She must have the ring, for it was the pledge of a great glory....
A breathless little girl flung herself into the cabin. It was SophyHanks, one of the many nieces who squattered like ducks about thesettlement.
"Mammy!" she cried shrilly. "Mammy Linkorn!" She stammered with theexcitement of the bearer of ill news. "Abe's lost your ring in thecrick. He took it for a sinker to his lines, for Indian Jake telled hima piece of gold would cotch the grit fish. And a grit fish has cotchedit. Abe's bin divn' and divn' and can't find it nohow. He reckons it'splumb lost. Ain't he a bad 'un, Mammy Linkhorn?"
It was some time before the dying woman understood. Then she beganfeebly to cry. For the moment her ring loomed large in her eyes: it wasthe earnest of the promise, and without it the promise might fail. Shehad not strength to speak or even to sob, and the tears trickled overher cheeks in dumb impotent misery.
She was roused by the culprit Abe. He stood beside her with his wet hairstreaked into a fringe along his brow. The skin of his neck glistenedwet in the opening of his shirt. His cheeks too glistened, but not withthe water of the creek. He was crying bitterly.
He had no words of explanation or defence. His thick underlip stuck outand gave him the appeal of a penitent dog; the tears had furrowed palerchannels down grimy cheeks; he was the very incarnation of uncouthmisery.
But his mother saw none of these things.... On the instant he seemedto her transfigured. Something she saw in him of all the generationsof pleading boys that had passed before her, something of the sternconfidence of the man over whose grave the ring had fluttered. Butmore--far more. She was assured that the day of the seekers had passedand that the finder had come.... The young features were transformedinto the lines of a man's strength. The eyes dreamed but also commanded,the loose mouth had the gold of wisdom and the steel of resolution. Thepromise had not failed her.... She had won everything from life, forshe had given the world a master. Words seemed to speak themselvesin her ear... "Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like theMother of God and has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind."
She lay very still in her great joy. The boy in a fright sprang to herside, knocking over the stool with the pannikin of water. He knelt onthe floor and hid his face in the bed-clothes. Her hand found his shaggyhead.
Her voice was very faint now, but he heard it.
"Don't cry, little Abe," she said. "Don't you worry about the ring,dearie. It ain't needed no more."
Half an hour later, when the cabin door was dim with twilight, the handwhich the boy held grew cold.