Kildares of Storm Part 34

"What a man!" thought Channing. "I'll bet he doesn't know what a headache is, nor a furry tongue, nor a case of morning blues.--Heigho for the simple life!"

It was not Philip's last visit to Holiday Hill; and more than once on returning from his pastoral rounds, he found Channing in possession of the rectory, deep in one of his father's French books, practising rather futilely with the punching bag that decorated one corner of the living-room, or prowling about with an appreciative eye for old bindings and portraits, and what egg-sh.e.l.l china was left to remind Philip vaguely of the vague, fragile lady who had been his mother.

Farwell, too, came to the rectory; an adaptable, friendly soul, accustomed to fit himself comfortably into whatever surroundings offered themselves, but underneath his casual exterior extremely observant and critical of such things as seemed to him important. Philip, having dined in some elegance at Holiday Hill, had the courage to invite the two to one of his own simple suppers. And as his ancient negress selected that occasion, out of sheer excitement, to revert to her unfortunate habits, Philip himself cooked the meal, serving it without apology or explanation upon a cloth of fine yellowed damask, with his mother's egg-sh.e.l.l china, and certain spoons and forks that bore upon their attenuated tips the worn outlines of a crest. The table was drawn into a window, through which the scent of Philip's little garden floated in.

There were flowers upon the table, too; garden roses in a low pewter bowl, and wax tapers in very beautiful bronze candelabra, at sight of which Farwell's eyes widened enviously.

The actor, an aesthete to his finger-tips, looked with satisfaction about the long, low room, wainscoted in vari-colored books, its great old-fashioned fireplace filled with fragrant pine-boughs, and overhung by a portrait in an oval frame of a dim gentleman in a stock; the mantel crowded with pipes, a punching-bag and dumb-bells in one end of the room, in the other an old square piano, open and inviting, showing evidence of constant use; shabby, comfortable chairs; a large desk with many pigeon-holes, very neat and business-like. Indeed, the whole room, despite its odd agglomeration of furnishings, was neat, meticulously neat, even to the spotless curtains, darned in many places by Jemima and the ladies of the Altar Guild.

Farwell spoke his thought aloud, "There's more character in this room of yours, Benoix, than in all that fine, self-conscious, art-y house of mine," he declared. "It could give pointers to any studio I know. It's the real thing!"

Philip flushed with surprise and pleasure. His unpretentious household G.o.ds were very dear to him, dear as they are sometimes to women. They meant more than furniture to the lonely young man; they meant home, and kindred, and all the gentler things that life had denied him.

Channing became lyrical over the salad, and was moved to propose a toast. He lifted his gla.s.s of beer--the best Philip's cellar afforded.

"Here's to the greatest nation on earth, one drop of whose blood is worth more to Art than all the stolid corpuscles that clog the veins of lesser races. Without it what man can hope to write great prose, or paint great pictures, or mix a great salad? _Vive la France!_--Benoix, who taught you how to cook?"

"My father," said Philip, in a low voice. He had not often occasion to speak of his father, except to Mrs. Kildare.

"I knew it! There's nothing Anglo-Saxon or negroid about this cooking.

Again I say, _Vive la France!_"

After they had gone, Philip did not go immediately to bed. He was too excited--as excited, he thought, smiling, as little Jemima had been with the success of her first party. He put out the lights, and sat by his window in the dark for a long time, going over in his mind the talk of that night. Good man-talk it had been, touching on all the big things that occupy the world's thought to-day, which hitherto Philip had got for himself only out of books and periodicals. He had listened eagerly to these young men, who were interested in larger matters than crops and stock-breeding and local politics. And they had listened to him--he knew that. More than once a remark of Channing recurred to him: "You're too big for this place, you know. Before long you'll be moving on."

It was a thought that he had often put deliberately out of his mind. His bishop had been the first to suggest it, some years before.

He looked now through the darkness toward Storm. "Moving on"? with his lady there, alone, deserted? He tried to picture Kate Kildare away from her environment of field and wood and open s.p.a.ces, sharing with him that crowded intense life of cities toward which his mind yearned. But it was impossible. Once more he put ambition from him--if it was ambition that called. What right has a priest with ambition?

No!--exile he might be, but exile he would remain, and gladly. What were they all but exiles--her daughters, his father in prison and out of prison, James Thorpe, who stayed because she might miss his friendship--all exiles from the world that called them, because of Kate Kildare?

"It's enough to be near her," he said to himself with a little sigh, looking once more through the darkness toward Storm.

With Farwell and Channing, too, on their way home, some glow of that good talk lingered.

"There's something about the chap--I don't know what it is," murmured Farwell, vaguely.

Channing nodded comprehension. "It's that you want him to like you, somehow. You want him to--respect you, I think."

Farwell looked around at him mockingly. "What a novel and virtuous sentiment! You'll be getting religion next." He added after a moment, "Can't say you're going about it exactly the right way, if you really want the dominie's respect, you know."

Channing flushed. "You mean the girl? It's not his girl, Morty--it's the mother he's after. If it were the girl--d.a.m.ned if I wouldn't get out of the way and give him a clear field!"

Farwell jeered. "Yes, you would! With the quarry in full view?"

"In full pursuit, you mean," said Channing, ruefully. "I wish I could make you understand that this affair isn't entirely of my own seeking, Farwell!"

His companion yawned. "Awkward to be so d.a.m.ned fascinating, isn't it?

Look out--one of these days some of your fair friends are going to band themselves together, and catch you unawares, and marry you, my boy."

"One isn't a Mormon, worse luck," grunted the other.

CHAPTER XXV

It was a part of Channing's new policy of caution with regard to Jacqueline that took him occasionally to Storm in the role of casual caller, especially now that the older girl was not there to disconcert him with her oddly observant gaze. Here he frequently found other callers, young men who since Professor Thorpe's entertainment had discovered that the distance between Storm and their homes, by automobile and even by train, was a negligible trifle.

These young men Jacqueline referred to, with innocent triumph and evident justice, as "victims."

"I _told_ Jemmy there was no need of going away from home to get beaux,"

she said complacently to Channing. "Here I've sat, just like a spider in a web, and--look at them all! To say nothing of you," she added, with a little gasp at her own daring.

Channing frowned slightly. He was not altogether pleased with the numbers and the frequency of the victims; a fact which added distinctly to Jacqueline's pride in them. But she never allowed her duties as hostess nor her instincts as coquette to interfere with any engagements at the Ruin.

It was Channing's custom, when he called at Storm, to bid her a nonchalant, not to say indifferent, farewell, and repair by devious ways to the ravine; where some moments later he welcomed a very different Jacqueline from the demure young person he had left--ardent, glowing, very eager to atone to him for the enforced restraint of the previous encounter. The coquette in Jacqueline was only skin deep.

One day, arriving at Storm at a belated lunch hour, the hospitable negress who opened to him led him back at once into the dining-room; and there he found a guest quite different from Jacqueline's victims. He was a singular-looking old man, clad in worn b.u.t.ternut jeans; an uncouth, uncombed, manifestly unwashed person at whose side on the floor rested a peddler's pack. He was doing some alarming trencher-work with his knife, and kept a supply of food convenient in his cheek while he greeted Channing with a courteous, "Howdy, stranger!"

"No, no, darter"--he continued without interruption his conversation with Jacqueline. "'Tain't a mite of use puttin' that little washtub in my room no more, bekase you ain't a-goin' to toll me into it. I takes my bath when I gits home to Sally. She kinder expects it of me. Hit's a wife's privilege to cut her man's hair and pare his nails and scrub his ears an' all them little things, 'specially ef she ain't got no chillun to do hit fur, an' I'd feel mighty mean ef I disapp'inted her. I don't do much fer Sally, noways. No, darter, oncet or twicet a year's often enough fer a human critter to git wet all over, 'cep'n in a nateral way, by swimmin' in the crick. These here baths and perfumery-soaps an' all ain't nature. They're sinful snares to the flesh, that's what they be, not fitten' fer us workers in the Lord's vineyard."

"You think the Lord prefers you dirty?" murmured Jacqueline, with a side glance at the astonished Channing.

"I dunno, darter, but some of His chillun does, an' that's a fack. Ef I was too clean, I wouldn't seem to 'em like home-folks." He added, in all reverence, "I 'lows the Lord went dirty Hisself sometimes when He was among pore folks, jes' to show 'em He wa'n't no finer than what they be."

"I haven't a doubt of it," said Philip Benoix, beside him.

Channing suddenly realized who this peddler was. Jacqueline had spoken of him often--a protege of her mother's whom she called the Apostle, half fanatic and half saint, who appeared at Storm occasionally on his way between the mountains of his birth and the city where he had taken unto himself a wife; bringing down to the "Settlements," for sale, certain crude handiwork of the mountain women, carrying back with him various products of civilization, such as needles, and shoe-strings, and stick-candy, and Bibles. It was his zeal in spreading what he called "the Word of G.o.d" along his route that had won the old peddler his t.i.tle of "the Apostle."

Channing looked at him with new interest, the literary eye lighting even while he frowned at the sight of so uncouth a creature seated at lunch with ladies.

The Apostle suddenly turned to him with a gentle, quizzical smile, and Channing had the startled sensation of having spoken his thoughts unwittingly aloud.

"Stranger, I reckon you ain't never been up in them barren mountings, whar men has to wrastle with the yearth and the Devil fer every mouthful of food they puts into their bellies? When I comes down from thar, I always aims a bee line fer Sister Kildare's house, bekase I'm hongry.

She don't never turn no hongry man away. 'Tain't safe to turn a hongry man away. You cain't never tell," he added slowly and significantly, "who He might be."

There was a little pause, uncomfortable on Channing's part. Mysticism did not often come his way. He decided that the peddler was a trifle mad.

Then Mrs. Kildare said, "Tell this gentleman something about your own mountain, Brother Bates. He'd like to hear."

"I'm mighty discouraged about 'em up thar, an' that's a fack." He shook his head gloomily. "Folks on Misty is hongrier, and drunker, and meaner than ever--most as mean as they be in the cities. They're pison ign'rant. That's the trouble. The Word of G.o.d comes to 'em, but they're too ign'rant to onderstand. 'Tain't wrote in no language they knows, and ef it was, they couldn't read it. Take this here, now--'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' What does that mean to 'em? They ain't got no neighbors to speak of, and them they has, ef they ain't kin-folks, is enemies. Ef the Book was to say 'Git the drop on thy neighbor before he gits the drop on thee,' they'd understand. That's their language--but it ain't G.o.d's. I goes on totin' 'em the Word of G.o.d in my pack, and them that won't buy I gives it to. But there ain't n.o.body to explain it to 'em."

"What about you? Why can't you explain it to them?" asked Kate Kildare.

He shook his head again. "None of 'em wants to listen to old Brother Bates. They know I'm as ign'rant as what they be. I used to think ef I could manage someway to git book-l'arnin', I might be a preacher some day. But I dunno. Reckon I never could 'a' yelled and hollered loud enough, nor scared 'em up proper about h.e.l.l-fire. I ain't so sure I got convictions about h.e.l.l-fire," he admitted, apologetically. "Seems to me it ain't nateral. Seems to me ef there ever was such a thing, the Lord in His loving-kindness would 'a' put it out long ago.--And I couldn't ever have started the hymn for 'em--never could remember a tune in my born days. No, no! The best I can do for 'em is just to keep on totin'

the Word of G.o.d around in my pack, hopin' they'll kind of absorb it in at the skin, like I done."

Philip said, "What about the Circuit Riders? Do none of them come to Misty?" He referred to a cla.s.s of itinerant preachers who are ent.i.tled to as much honor for the work they have done among c.u.mberland mountaineers as any missionaries to the heathen of savage lands.

"Not no more, they don't. The last Circuit Rider that come was a young fellow who looked upon a woman to l.u.s.t after her," explained the peddler with Biblical simplicity, "and her man shot him up, and I reckon he was too skeert to come back again. Hit's mighty nigh a year sence there's bin a proper baptizin' or buryin' or marryin' on Misty, with young folks pairin' off and babies comin' along as fast as ever. They git tired of waitin' to be tied proper, you see. They've done backslid even from whar they was at."