The Call of the Cumberlands Part 34

One evening, Adrienne left the dancers for the pergola, where she took refuge under a ma.s.s of honeysuckle.

Samson South followed her. She saw him coming, and smiled. She was contrasting this Samson, loosely clad in flannels, with the Samson she had first seen rising awkwardly to greet her in the studio.

"You should have stayed inside and made yourself agreeable to the girls," Adrienne reproved him, as he came up. "What's the use of making a lion of you, if you won't roar for the visitors?"

"I've been roaring," laughed the man. "I've just been explaining to Miss Willoughby that we only eat the people we kill in Kentucky on certain days of solemn observance and sacrifice. I wanted to be agreeable to you, Drennie, for a while."

The girl shook her head sternly, but she smiled and made a place for him at her side. She wondered what form his being agreeable to her would take.

"I wonder if the man or woman lives," mused Samson, "to whom the fragrance of honeysuckle doesn't bring back some old memory that is as strong--and sweet--as itself."

The girl did not at once answer him. The breeze was stirring the hair on her temples and neck. The moon was weaving a lace pattern on the ground, and filtering its silver light through the vines. At last, she asked:

"Do you ever find yourself homesick, Samson, these days?"

The man answered with a short laugh. Then, his words came softly, and not his own words, but those of one more eloquent:

"'Who hath desired the Sea? Her excellent loneliness rather "'Than the forecourts of kings, and her uttermost pits than the streets where men gather....

"'His Sea that his being fulfills?

"'So and no otherwise--"so and no otherwise hillmen desire their hills.'"

"And yet," she said, and a trace of the argumentative stole into her voice, "you haven't gone back."

"No." There was a note of self-reproach in his voice. "But soon I shall go. At least, for a time. I've been thinking a great deal lately about 'my fluttered folk and wild.' I'm just beginning to understand my relation to them, and my duty."

"Your duty is no more to go back there and throw away your life," she found herself instantly contending, "than it is the duty of the young eagle, who has learned to fly, to go back to the nest where he was hatched."

"But, Drennie," he said, gently, "suppose the young eagle is the only one that knows how to fly--and suppose he could teach the others? Don't you see? I've only seen it myself for a little while."

"What is it that--that you see now?"

"I must go back, not to relapse, but to come to be a constructive force. I must carry some of the outside world to Misery. I must take to them, because I am one of them, gifts that they would reject from other hands."

"Will they accept them even from you?"

"Drennie, you once said that, if I grew ashamed of my people, ashamed even of their boorish manners, their ignorance, their crudity, you would have no use for me."

"I still say that," she answered.

"Well, I'm not ashamed of them. I went through that, but it's over."

She sat silent for a while, then cried suddenly:

"I don't want you to go!" The moment she had said it, she caught herself with a nervous little laugh, and added a postscript of whimsical nonsense to disarm her utterance of its telltale feeling.

"Why, I'm just getting you civilized, yourself. It took years to get your hair cut."

He ran his palm over his smoothly trimmed head, and laughed.

"Delilah, Oh, Delilah!" he said. "I was resolute, but you have shorn me."

"Don't!" she exclaimed. "Don't call me that!"

"Then, Drennie, dear," he answered, lightly, "don't dissuade me from the most decent resolve I have lately made."

From the house came the strains of an alluring waltz. For a little time, they listened without speech, then the girl said very gravely:

"You won't--you won't still feel bound to kill your enemies, will you, Samson?"

The man's face hardened.

"I believe I'd rather not talk about that. I shall have to win back the confidence I have lost. I shall have to take a place at the head of my clan by proving myself a man--and a man by their own standards. It is only at their head that I can lead them. If the lives of a few a.s.sa.s.sins have to be forfeited, I sha'n't hesitate at that. I shall stake my own against them fairly. The end is worth it."

The girl breathed deeply, then she heard Samson's voice again:

"Drennie, I want you to understand, that if I succeed it is your success. You took me raw and unfashioned, and you have made me. There is no way of thanking you."

"There is a way," she contradicted. "You can thank me by feeling just that way about it."

"Then, I do thank you."

She sat looking up at him, her eyes wide and questioning.

"Exactly what do you feel, Samson," she asked. "I mean about me?"

He leaned a little toward her, and the fragrance and subtle beauty of her stole into his veins and brain, in a sudden intoxication. His hand went out to seize hers. This beauty which would last and not wither into a hag's ugliness with the first breath of age--as mountain beauty does--was hypnotizing him. Then, he straightened and stood looking down.

"Don't ask me that, please," he said, in a carefully controlled voice.

"I don't even want to ask myself. My G.o.d, Drennie, don't you see that I'm afraid to answer that?"

She rose from her seat, and stood for just an instant rather unsteadily before him, then she laughed.

"Samson, Samson!" she challenged. "The moon is making us as foolish as children. Old friend, we are growing silly. Let's go in, and be perfectly good hostesses and social lions."

Slowly, Samson South came to his feet. His voice was in the dead-level pitch which Wilfred had once before heard. His eyes were as clear and hard as transparent flint.

"I'm sorry to be of trouble, George," he said, quietly. "But you must get me to New York at once--by motor. I must take a train South to- night."

"No bad news, I hope," suggested Lescott.

For an instant, Samson forgot his four years of veneer. The century of prenatal barbarism broke out fiercely. He was seeing things far away-- and forgetting things near by. His eyes blazed and his fingers twitched.

"h.e.l.l, no!" he exclaimed. "The war's on, and my hands are freed!"

For an instant, as no one spoke, he stood breathing heavily, then, wheeling, rushed toward the house as though just across its threshold lay the fight into which lie was aching to hurl himself.

The next afternoon, Adrienne and Samson were sitting with a gaily chattering group at the side lines of the tennis courts.

"When you go back to the mountains, Samson," Wilfred was suggesting, "we might form a partnership. 'South, Horton and Co., development of coal and timber.' There are millions in it."