by John Fox
XV
Hand in hand, Hale and June followed the footsteps of spring from thetime June met him at the school-house gate for their first walk into thewoods. Hale pointed to some boys playing marbles.
"That's the first sign," he said, and with quick understanding Junesmiled.
The birdlike piping of hylas came from a marshy strip of woodland thatran through the centre of the town and a toad was croaking at the footof Imboden Hill.
"And they come next."
They crossed the swinging foot-bridge, which was a miracle to June,and took the foot-path along the clear stream of South Fork, under thelaurel which June called "ivy," and the rhododendron which was "laurel"in her speech, and Hale pointed out catkins greening on alders in oneswampy place and willows just blushing into life along the banks of alittle creek. A few yards aside from the path he found, under a patchof snow and dead leaves, the pink-and-white blossoms and the waxy greenleaves of the trailing arbutus, that fragrant harbinger of the oldMother's awakening, and June breathed in from it the very breath ofspring. Near by were turkey peas, which she had hunted and eaten manytimes.
"You can't put that arbutus in a garden," said Hale, "it's as wild as ahawk."
Presently he had the little girl listen to a pewee twittering in athorn-bush and the lusty call of a robin from an apple-tree. A bluebirdflew over-head with a merry chirp--its wistful note of autumn long sinceforgotten. These were the first birds and flowers, he said, and June,knowing them only by sight, must know the name of each and the reasonfor that name. So that Hale found himself walking the woods with aninterrogation point, and that he might not be confounded he had, later,to dip up much forgotten lore. For every walk became a lesson in botanyfor June, such a passion did she betray at once for flowers, and herarely had to tell her the same thing twice, since her memory was like avise--for everything, as he learned in time.
Her eyes were quicker than his, too, and now she pointed to a snowyblossom with a deeply lobed leaf.
"Whut's that?"
"Bloodroot," said Hale, and he scratched the stem and forth issuedscarlet drops. "The Indians used to put it on their faces andtomahawks"--she knew that word and nodded--"and I used to make red inkof it when I was a little boy."
"No!" said June. With the next look she found a tiny bunch of fuzzyhepaticas.
"Liver-leaf."
"Whut's liver?"
Hale, looking at her glowing face and eyes and her perfect little body,imagined that she would never know unless told that she had one, and sohe waved one hand vaguely at his chest:
"It's an organ--and that herb is supposed to be good for it."
"Organ? Whut's that?"
"Oh, something inside of you."
June made the same gesture that Hale had.
"Me?"
"Yes," and then helplessly, "but not there exactly."
June's eyes had caught something else now and she ran for it:
"Oh! Oh!" It was a bunch of delicate anemones of intermediate shadesbetween white and red-yellow, pink and purple-blue.
"Those are anemones."
"A-nem-o-nes," repeated June.
"Wind-flowers--because the wind is supposed to open them." And, almostunconsciously, Hale lapsed into a quotation:
"'And where a tear has dropped, a wind-flower blows.'"
"Whut's that?" said June quickly.
"That's poetry."
"Whut's po-e-try?" Hale threw up both hands.
"I don't know, but I'll read you some--some day."
By that time she was gurgling with delight over a bunch of springbeauties that came up, root, stalk and all, when she reached for them.
"Well, ain't they purty?" While they lay in her hand and she looked, therose-veined petals began to close, the leaves to droop and the stem gotlimp.
"Ah-h!" crooned June. "I won't pull up no more o' THEM."
'"These little dream-flowers found in the spring.' More poetry, June."
A little later he heard her repeating that line to herself. It was aneasy step to poetry from flowers, and evidently June was groping for it.
A few days later the service-berry swung out white stars on the lowhill-sides, but Hale could tell her nothing that she did not know aboutthe "sarvice-berry." Soon, the dogwood swept in snowy gusts along themountains, and from a bank of it one morning a red-bird flamed and sang:"What cheer! What cheer! What cheer!" And like its scarlet coat thered-bud had burst into bloom. June knew the red-bud, but she had neverheard it called the Judas tree.
"You see, the red-bud was supposed to be poisonous. It shakes in thewind and says to the bees, 'Come on, little fellows--here's your nicefresh honey, and when they come, it betrays and poisons them."
"Well, what do you think o' that!" said June indignantly, and Hale hadto hedge a bit.
"Well, I don't know whether it REALLY does, but that's what they SAY."A little farther on the white stars of the trillium gleamed at themfrom the border of the woods and near by June stooped over some lovelysky-blue blossoms with yellow eyes.
"Forget-me-nots," said Hale. June stooped to gather them with a radiantface.
"Oh," she said, "is that what you call 'em?"
"They aren't the real ones--they're false forget-me-nots."
"Then I don't want 'em," said June. But they were beautiful and fragrantand she added gently:
"'Tain't their fault. I'm agoin' to call 'em jus' forget-me-nots, an'I'm givin' 'em to you," she said--"so that you won't."
"Thank you," said Hale gravely. "I won't."
They found larkspur, too--
"'Blue as the heaven it gazes at,'" quoted Hale.
"Whut's 'gazes'?"
"Looks." June looked up at the sky and down at the flower.
"Tain't," she said, "hit's bluer."
When they discovered something Hale did not know he would say that itwas one of those--
"'Wan flowers without a name.'"
"My!" said June at last, "seems like them wan flowers is a mighty bigfambly."
"They are," laughed Hale, "for a bachelor like me."
"Huh!" said June.
Later, they ran upon yellow adder's tongues in a hollow, each blossomguarded by a pair of ear-like leaves, Dutchman's breeches and wildbleeding hearts--a name that appealed greatly to the fancy of theromantic little lady, and thus together they followed the footsteps ofthat spring. And while she studied the flowers Hale was studying theloveliest flower of them all--little June. About ferns, plants and treesas well, he told her all he knew, and there seemed nothing in the skies,the green world of the leaves or the under world at her feet to whichshe was not magically responsive. Indeed, Hale had never seen a man,woman or child so eager to learn, and one day, when she had apparentlyreached the limit of inquiry, she grew very thoughtful and he watchedher in silence a long while.
"What's the matter, June?" he asked finally.
"I'm just wonderin' why I'm always axin' why," said little June.
She was learning in school, too, and she was happier there now, forthere had been no more open teasing of the new pupil. Bob's championshipsaved her from that, and, thereafter, school changed straightway forJune. Before that day she had kept apart from her school-fellows atrecess-times as well as in the school-room. Two or three of the girlshad made friendly advances to her, but she had shyly repelled them--whyshe hardly knew--and it was her lonely custom at recess-times to builda play-house at the foot of a great beech with moss, broken bits ofbottles and stones. Once she found it torn to pieces and from the lookon the face of the tall mountain boy, Cal Heaton, who had grinned at herwhen she went up for her first lesson, and who was now Bob's arch-enemy,she knew that he was the guilty one. Again a day or two later it wasdestroyed, and when she came down from the woods almost in tears, Bobhappened to meet her in the road and made her tell the trouble she wasin. Straightway he charged the trespasser with the deed and was lied tofor his pains. So after school that day he slipped up on the hill withthe little girl and helped her rebuild again.
"Now I'll lay for him," said Bob, "and catch him at it."
"All right," said June, and she looked both her worry and her gratitudeso that Bob understood both; and he answered both with a nonchalant waveof one hand.
"Never you mind--and don't you tell Mr. Hale," and June in dumbacquiescence crossed heart and body. But the mountain boy was wary, andfor two or three days the play-house was undisturbed and so Bob himselflaid a trap. He mounted his horse immediately after school, rode pastthe mountain lad, who was on his way home, crossed the river, made awide detour at a gallop and, hitching his horse in the woods, came tothe play-house from the other side of the hill. And half an hour later,when the pale little teacher came out of the school-house, he heardgrunts and blows and scuffling up in the woods, and when he ran towardthe sounds, the bodies of two of his pupils rolled into sight clenchedfiercely, with torn clothes and bleeding faces--Bob on top with themountain boy's thumb in his mouth and his own fingers gripped about hisantagonist's throat. Neither paid any attention to the school-master,who pulled at Bob's coat unavailingly and with horror at his ferocity.Bob turned his head, shook it as well as the thumb in his mouth wouldlet him, and went on gripping the throat under him and pushing the headthat belonged to it into the ground. The mountain boy's tongue showedand his eyes bulged.
"'Nough!" he yelled. Bob rose then and told his story and theschool-master from New England gave them a short lecture on gentlenessand Christian charity and fixed on each the awful penalty of "stayingin" after school for an hour every day for a week. Bob grinned:
"All right, professor--it was worth it," he said, but the mountain ladshuffled silently away.
An hour later Hale saw the boy with a swollen lip, one eye black andthe other as merry as ever--but after that there was no more troublefor June. Bob had made his promise good and gradually she came intothe games with her fellows there-after, while Bob stood or sat aside,encouraging but taking no part--for was he not a member of the PoliceForce? Indeed he was already known far and wide as the Infant ofthe Guard, and always he carried a whistle and usually, outside theschool-house, a pistol bumped his hip, while a Winchester stood in onecorner of his room and a billy dangled by his mantel-piece.
The games were new to June, and often Hale would stroll up to theschool-house to watch them--Prisoner's Base, Skipping the Rope, AntnyOver, Cracking the Whip and Lifting the Gate; and it pleased him to seehow lithe and active his little protege was and more than a match instrength even for the boys who were near her size. June had to take thepenalty of her greenness, too, when she was "introduced to the King andQueen" and bumped the ground between the make-believe sovereigns, or gota cup of water in her face when she was trying to see stars through apipe. And the boys pinned her dress to the bench through a crack andonce she walked into school with a placard on her back which read:
"June-Bug." But she was so good-natured that she fast became afavourite. Indeed it was noticeable to Hale as well as Bob that CalHeaton, the mountain boy, seemed always to get next to June in the Tugsof War, and one morning June found an apple on her desk. She swept theroom with a glance and met Cal's guilty flush, and though she ate theapple, she gave him no thanks--in word, look or manner. It was curiousto Hale, moreover, to observe how June's instinct deftly led her toavoid the mistakes in dress that characterized the gropings of othergirls who, like her, were in a stage of transition. They wore gaudycombs and green skirts with red waists, their clothes bunched at thehips, and to their shoes and hands they paid no attention at all. Noneof these things for June--and Hale did not know that the little girl hadleaped her fellows with one bound, had taken Miss Anne Saunders as hermodel and was climbing upon the pedestal where that lady justly stood.The two had not become friends as Hale hoped. June was always silent andreserved when the older girl was around, but there was never a move ofthe latter's hand or foot or lip or eye that the new pupil failedto see. Miss Anne rallied Hale no little about her, but he laughedgood-naturedly, and asked why SHE could not make friends with June.
"She's jealous," said Miss Saunders, and Hale ridiculed the idea, fornot one sign since she came to the Gap had she shown him. It was thejealousy of a child she had once betrayed and that she had outgrown,he thought; but he never knew how June stood behind the curtains of herwindow, with a hungry suffering in her face and eyes, to watch Hale andMiss Anne ride by and he never guessed that concealment was but a signof the dawn of womanhood that was breaking within her. And she gave nohint of that breaking dawn until one day early in May, when she heard awoodthrush for the first time with Hale: for it was the bird she lovedbest, and always its silver fluting would stop her in her tracks andsend her into dreamland. Hale had just broken a crimson flower from itsstem and held it out to her.
"Here's another of the 'wan ones,' June. Do you know what that is?"
"Hit's"--she paused for correction with her lips drawn severely in forprecision--"IT'S a mountain poppy. Pap says it kills goslings"--her eyesdanced, for she was in a merry mood that day, and she put both handsbehind her--"if you air any kin to a goose, you better drap it."
"That's a good one," laughed Hale, "but it's so lovely I'll take therisk. I won't drop it."
"Drop it," caught June with a quick upward look, and then to fix theword in her memory she repeated--"drop it, drop it, DROP it!"
"Got it now, June?"
"Uh-huh."
It was then that a woodthrush voiced the crowning joy of spring, andwith slowly filling eyes she asked its name.
"That bird," she said slowly and with a breaking voice, "sung justthat-a-way the mornin' my sister died."
She turned to him with a wondering smile.
"Somehow it don't make me so miserable, like it useter." Her smilepassed while she looked, she caught both hands to her heaving breast anda wild intensity burned suddenly in her eyes.
"Why, June!"
"'Tain't nothin'," she choked out, and she turned hurriedly ahead ofhim down the path. Startled, Hale had dropped the crimson flower to hisfeet. He saw it and he let it lie.
Meanwhile, rumours were brought in that the Falins were coming over fromKentucky to wipe out the Guard, and so straight were they sometimes thatthe Guard was kept perpetually on watch. Once while the members were attarget practice, the shout arose:
"The Kentuckians are coming! The Kentuckians are coming!" And, at doublequick, the Guard rushed back to find it a false alarm and to see menlaughing at them in the street. The truth was that, while the Falinshad a general hostility against the Guard, their particular enmity wasconcentrated on John Hale, as he discovered when June was to take herfirst trip home one Friday afternoon. Hale meant to carry her over,but the morning they were to leave, old Judd Tolliver came to the Gaphimself. He did not want June to come home at that time, and he didn'tthink it was safe over there for Hale just then. Some of the Falins hadbeen seen hanging around Lonesome Cove for the purpose, Judd believed,of getting a shot at the man who had kept young Dave from falling intotheir hands, and Hale saw that by that act he had, as Budd said,arrayed himself with the Tollivers in the feud. In other words, he wasa Tolliver himself now, and as such the Falins meant to treat him.Hale rebelled against the restriction, for he had started some work inLonesome Cove and was preparing a surprise over there for June, but oldJudd said:
"Just wait a while," and he said it so seriously that Hale for a whiletook his advice.
So June stayed on at the Gap--with little disappointment, apparently,that she could not visit home. And as spring passed and the summercame on, the little girl budded and opened like a rose. To the prettyschool-teacher she was a source of endless interest and wonder, forwhile the little girl was reticent and aloof, Miss Saunders felt herselfwatched and studied in and out of school, and Hale often had to smileat June's unconscious imitation of her teacher in speech, manners anddress. And all the time her hero-worship of Hale went on, fed bythe talk of the boardinghouse, her fellow pupils and of the town atlarge--and it fairly thrilled her to know that to the Falins he was nowa Tolliver himse
lf.
Sometimes Hale would get her a saddle, and then June would usurp MissAnne's place on a horseback-ride up through the gap to see the firstblooms of the purple rhododendron on Bee Rock, or up to Morris's farm onPowell's mountain, from which, with a glass, they could see the LonesomePine. And all the time she worked at her studies tirelessly--and whenshe was done with her lessons, she read the fairy books that Hale gotfor her--read them until "Paul and Virginia" fell into her hands, andthen there were no more fairy stories for little June. Often, late atnight, Hale, from the porch of his cottage, could see the light ofher lamp sending its beam across the dark water of the mill-pond, andfinally he got worried by the paleness of her face and sent her tothe doctor. She went unwillingly, and when she came back she reportedplacidly that "organatically she was all right, the doctor said," butHale was glad that vacation would soon come. At the beginning of thelast week of school he brought a little present for her from New York--aslender necklace of gold with a little reddish stone-pendant that wasthe shape of a cross. Hale pulled the trinket from his pocket as theywere walking down the river-bank at sunset and the little girl quiveredlike an aspen-leaf in a sudden puff of wind.
"Hit's a fairy-stone," she cried excitedly.
"Why, where on earth did you--"
"Why, sister Sally told me about 'em. She said folks found 'em somewhereover here in Virginny, an' all her life she was a-wishin' fer one an'she never could git it"--her eyes filled--"seems like ever'thing shewanted is a-comin' to me."
"Do you know the story of it, too?" asked Hale.
June shook her head. "Sister Sally said it was a luck-piece. Nothin'could happen to ye when ye was carryin' it, but it was awful bad luckif you lost it." Hale put it around her neck and fastened the clasp andJune kept hold of the little cross with one hand.
"Well, you mustn't lose it," he said.
"No--no--no," she repeated breathlessly, and Hale told her the prettystory of the stone as they strolled back to supper. The little crosseswere to be found only in a certain valley in Virginia, so perfect inshape that they seemed to have been chiselled by hand, and they were agreat mystery to the men who knew all about rocks--the geologists.
"The ge-ol-o-gists," repeated June.
These men said there was no crystallization--nothing like them, amendedHale--elsewhere in the world, and that just as crosses were of differentshapes--Roman, Maltese and St. Andrew's--so, too, these crosses werefound in all these different shapes. And the myth--the story--was thatthis little valley was once inhabited by fairies--June's eyes lighted,for it was a fairy story after all--and that when a strange messengerbrought them the news of Christ's crucifixion, they wept, and theirtears, as they fell to the ground, were turned into tiny crosses ofstone. Even the Indians had some queer feeling about them, and for along, long time people who found them had used them as charms to bringgood luck and ward off harm.
"And that's for you," he said, "because you've been such a good littlegirl and have studied so hard. School's most over now and I reckonyou'll be right glad to get home again."
June made no answer, but at the gate she looked suddenly up at him.
"Have you got one, too?" she asked, and she seemed much disturbed whenHale shook his head.
"Well, I'LL git--GET--you one--some day."
"All right," laughed Hale.
There was again something strange in her manner as she turned suddenlyfrom him, and what it meant he was soon to learn. It was the lastweek of school and Hale had just come down from the woods behind theschool-house at "little recess-time" in the afternoon. The children wereplaying games outside the gate, and Bob and Miss Anne and the littleProfessor were leaning on the fence watching them. The little man raisedhis hand to halt Hale on the plank sidewalk.
"I've been wanting to see you," he said in his dreamy, abstracted way."You prophesied, you know, that I should be proud of your little protegesome day, and I am indeed. She is the most remarkable pupil I've yetseen here, and I have about come to the conclusion that there is noquicker native intelligence in our country than you shall find in thechildren of these mountaineers and--"
Miss Anne was gazing at the children with an expression that turnedHale's eyes that way, and the Professor checked his harangue. Somethinghad happened. They had been playing "Ring Around the Rosy" and June hadbeen caught. She stood scarlet and tense and the cry was:
"Who's your beau--who's your beau?"
And still she stood with tight lips--flushing.
"You got to tell--you got to tell!"
The mountain boy, Cal Heaton, was grinning with fatuous consciousness,and even Bob put his hands in his pockets and took on an uneasy smile.
"Who's your beau?" came the chorus again.
The lips opened almost in a whisper, but all could hear:
"Jack!"
"Jack who?" But June looked around and saw the four at the gate. Almoststaggering, she broke from the crowd and, with one forearm across herscarlet face, rushed past them into the school-house. Miss Anne lookedat Hale's amazed face and she did not smile. Bob turned respectfullyaway, ignoring it all, and the little Professor, whose life-purpose waspsychology, murmured in his ignorance:
"Very remarkable--very remarkable!"
Through that afternoon June kept her hot face close to her books. Bobnever so much as glanced her way--little gentleman that he was--butthe one time she lifted her eyes, she met the mountain lad's bent ina stupor-like gaze upon her. In spite of her apparent studiousness,however, she missed her lesson and, automatically, the little Professortold her to stay in after school and recite to Miss Saunders. And soJune and Miss Anne sat in the school-room alone--the teacher reading abook, and the pupil--her tears unshed--with her sullen face bent overher lesson. In a few moments the door opened and the little Professorthrust in his head. The girl had looked so hurt and tired when he spoketo her that some strange sympathy moved him, mystified though he was, tosay gently now and with a smile that was rare with him:
"You might excuse June, I think, Miss Saunders, and let her recite sometime to-morrow," and gently he closed the door. Miss Anne rose:
"Very well, June," she said quietly.
June rose, too, gathering up her books, and as she passed the teacher'splatform she stopped and looked her full in the face. She said nota word, and the tragedy between the woman and the girl was played insilence, for the woman knew from the searching gaze of the girl and theblack defiance in her eyes, as she stalked out of the room, that her ownflush had betrayed her secret as plainly as the girl's words had toldhers.
Through his office window, a few minutes later, Hale saw June passswiftly into the house. In a few minutes she came swiftly out againand went back swiftly toward the school-house. He was so worried by thetense look in her face that he could work no more, and in a few minuteshe threw his papers down and followed her. When he turned the corner,Bob was coming down the street with his cap on the back of his head andswinging his books by a strap, and the boy looked a little consciouswhen he saw Hale coming.
"Have you seen June?" Hale asked.
"No, sir," said Bob, immensely relieved.
"Did she come up this way?"
"I don't know, but--" Bob turned and pointed to the green dome of a bigbeech.
"I think you'll find her at the foot of that tree," he said. "That'swhere her play-house is and that's where she goes when she's--that'swhere she usually goes."
"Oh, yes," said Hale--"her play-house. Thank you."
"Not at all, sir."
Hale went on, turned from the path and climbed noiselessly. When hecaught sight of the beech he stopped still. June stood against it likea wood-nymph just emerged from its sun-dappled trunk--stood stretched toher full height, her hands behind her, her hair tossed, her throat tenseunder the dangling little cross, her face uplifted. At her feet,the play-house was scattered to pieces. She seemed listening to thelove-calls of a woodthrush that came faintly through the still woods,and then he saw that she heard nothing, saw nothing--that she was in
adream as deep as sleep. Hale's heart throbbed as he looked.
"June!" he called softly. She did not hear him, and when he calledagain, she turned her face--unstartled--and moving her posture not atall. Hale pointed to the scattered play-house.
"I done it!" she said fiercely--"I done it myself." Her eyes burnedsteadily into his, even while she lifted her hands to her hair as thoughshe were only vaguely conscious that it was all undone.
"YOU heerd me?" she cried, and before he could answer--"SHE heerdme," and again, not waiting for a word from him, she cried still morefiercely:
"I don't keer! I don't keer WHO knows."
Her hands were trembling, she was biting her quivering lip to keep backthe starting tears, and Hale rushed toward her and took her in his arms.
"June! June!" he said brokenly. "You mustn't, little girl. I'mproud--proud--why little sweetheart--" She was clinging to him andlooking up into his eyes and he bent his head slowly. Their lips met andthe man was startled. He knew now it was no child that answered him.
Hale walked long that night in the moonlit woods up and aroundImboden Hill, along a shadow-haunted path, between silvery beech-trunks,past the big hole in the earth from which dead trees tossed out theircrooked arms as if in torment, and to the top of the ridge under whichthe valley slept and above which the dark bulk of Powell's Mountainrose. It was absurd, but he found himself strangely stirred. She was achild, he kept repeating to himself, in spite of the fact that he knewshe was no child among her own people, and that mountain girls were evenwives who were younger still. Still, she did not know what she felt--howcould she?--and she would get over it, and then came the sharp stab ofa doubt--would he want her to get over it? Frankly and with wonder heconfessed to himself that he did not know--he did not know. But again,why bother? He had meant to educate her, anyhow. That was the firststep--no matter what happened. June must go out into the world toschool. He would have plenty of money. Her father would not object, andJune need never know. He could include for her an interest in her ownfather's coal lands that he meant to buy, and she could think that itwas her own money that she was using. So, with a sudden rush of gladnessfrom his brain to his heart, he recklessly yoked himself, then andthere, under all responsibility for that young life and the eager,sensitive soul that already lighted it so radiantly.
And June? Her nature had opened precisely as had bud and flower thatspring. The Mother of Magicians had touched her as impartially as shehad touched them with fairy wand, and as unconsciously the little girlhad answered as a young dove to any cooing mate. With this Hale did notreckon, and this June could not know. For a while, that night, she layin a delicious tremor, listening to the bird-like chorus of the littlefrogs in the marsh, the booming of the big ones in the mill-pond, thewater pouring over the dam with the sound of a low wind, and, as hadall the sleeping things of the earth about her, she, too, sank to happysleep.