The Jucklins Part 3

"Never mind that," the old man spoke up. "Leave all cuttin' and slashin'

to folks that ain't no kin to each other. You've been to dinner, have you, Alf? Well, hitch the mare to the buckboard and go with this gentleman over to old Perdue's."

CHAPTER IV.

At the end of the pa.s.sage, facing the ravine, I stood and talked to Guinea, while Alf was. .h.i.tching the mare to the buck-board. The sun was well over to the west, pouring upon us, and in the strong light I noted the clear, health-hue of her complexion. A guinea chicken, swift and graceful, ran round the corner of the house, and, nodding toward the fowl, I said: "I am talking to her namesake and she is jealous."

I thought that the shadow of a pout crossed her lips, but she smiled and replied: "If my real name were not so ugly I'd insist upon people calling me by it. I hate nicknames."

"But sometimes they are appropriate," I rejoined.

"But when they are," she said, laughing, "they never stick. It's the disagreeable nickname that remains with us."

"Is that the philosophy you learned at Raleigh?" I asked.

She shrugged her shapely shoulders, laughed low in her throat and answered: "I haven't learned philosophy at all. It doesn't take much of a stock of learning for a girl who lives away out here."

"But she might strive to learn in order to be fitted for a better life, believing that it will surely come."

"How encouraging you are, Mr. Hawes. After a while you may persuade me that I am really glad that you came."

"You have already made me glad," I replied.

"Have I? Then mind that I don't make you sorry. Alf's waiting for you."

As we drove toward Perdue's I wondered what could have caused old man Jucklin's change of manner at the time he had spoken of sending his daughter away to be educated. Surely, he could not deplore the grace and refinement which this schooling had given her. Would it be well to ask Alf? No; he could but regard such a question as a direct impertinence.

The mare trotted briskly and the rush of cool air was delicious. The road was crooked, holding in its elbows bits of scenery unsuspected until we were upon them, moss growing under great rocks, weeping in eternal shade, a bit of water blazing in the sun, a hickory bottom, where squirrels were barking; and from everywhere came the thrilling incense of spring.

Alf, though a farmer, had not the stoop of overwork, nor that sullenness that often comes from a life-long and close a.s.sociation with the soil; he was chatty, talked to his mare, talked to me and whistled to himself.

He pointed out a cave wherein British soldiers had been forced to take refuge to save themselves from the pursuit of victorious patriots, but what they had supposed was a refuge was, indeed, a trap, for the patriots smoked them out and took them to General Green's camp. We drove upon a hill top, and, looking across a valley, I saw a large brick house on a hill not far beyond. And I recognized it as a place that I had seen earlier in the day. "It's where General Lundsford lives," said Alf, following my eyes with his own. "We go by there. He used to own a good many negroes and some of them still hang about him. Most of his land is poor, but enough of it is rich to make him well off. And proud! He's proud as a blooded horse. Most of the very few old-timers that are left in this part of the country. We are getting somewhat Yankeefied, especially away over to the east where so many northern people come of a winter. But he doesn't take much to it--still cuts his wheat with a cradle."

We drove down into the valley, crossed a rude stone bridge, and slowly went up the other side. The mare, brisk from having been pent up, showed a disposition to quicken her pace, but Alf held her back, searching with his strong eyes the yard, the summer house in the garden hard by and the orchard off to the left. I looked at him and his face was eager and hard set, but his eyes, though strained, were soft and glowing. I spoke to him, but he heeded me not, but just at that moment he drew himself straighter and gazed toward the house. And I saw a woman crossing the yard. The road ran close to the low, rough stone wall, and when we had come opposite the gate Alf stopped the mare and got out to buckle a strap. But I noticed that he was looking more at the house than at the strap. A broad porch, or gallery, as we term it, ran nearly half way round the house, and out upon this a girl stepped and stood looking over us at the hills far away. I saw Alf blush, and the next moment he had sprung upon the buck-board and was driving off almost furiously. I wondered why he should be afraid of her. He was not overgrown, not awkward, but lithe, and I knew that he loved her and that his own emotion had frightened him.

Perdue lived but a short distance beyond the General's place, and soon we were there, talking to the old fellow out at the fence. When I told him my business he looked sharply at me, appearing to measure me from head to foot; and he said I was, no doubt, the man he had been longing to see. "And now," said he, after we had talked for a time, "if you are willing to take this school and go ahead with it, all right. I am determined that the boys and girls of this community shall get an education even if they choke the creek with teachers. If I had full swing I'd raise a lot of men and go around and club the big boys. Oh, it hasn't been this way very long. We've had first-rate schools here, but those devilish Aimes boys are so full of the old Harry--but we'll fix 'em. The ground will be all right for plowin' to-morrow, and the big boys will have to work until the corn is laid by, but I reckon you'll get a pretty fair turn-out. There's enough money appropriated to have a rattlin' good school, and if you'll stick by me we'll have it."

I told him that I would stick by him. "All right," said he, "see that you do. Let me see. This is Friday. You hold yourself in readiness to begin Monday mornin', and to-morrow I will ride around the neighborhood and spread the news."

So that was settled. Briskly we drove away, and again upon nearing the house of the old General, Alf pulled the mare back into a walk. This time, though, he did not stop, but as we slowly pa.s.sed he swept the house and the yard with his eager glance. The sun was down when we reached home. How long the day had been, what a stretch of time lay between the going down of the sun now and its rising, when I had shouldered my trunk at the railway station!

As I was getting down in front of the door I heard Mr. Jucklin calling me, and when I answered he came forward out of the pa.s.sage and said that he wanted to see me a moment. He led the way and I followed him into the dark shadow of a tree. "I forgot to tell you not to say anything about that," said he.

"About what?" I asked.

"About wallowin' him--the old General. He requested me not to mention it, bein' so proud, and I told him that I wouldn't, and I don't know what made me speak of it to-day, but I did."

"Oh, I won't mention it," I spoke up rather sharply, for I was disappointed that he had not told me something of importance.

"All right. And I am much obleeged to you. He is one of the proudest men in the world and he don't want anybody to suspect that any feller ever wallowed him; but I want to tell you right now that I have wallowed a good many of 'em in my time. Are you goin' to teach the school?"

"Yes, the arrangements have been made, and I am to begin work Monday morning."

"Good enough. Well, we'll go on in now and eat a snack, for I reckon the women folks have got it about ready."

We went early to bed. The house was but a story and a half high, and I was to room with Alf, up close to the clap-board roof. I could not stand straight, except in the middle of the apartment, but I was comfortable, for I had a good bed, and there was plenty of air coming in through two large windows, one on each side of the chimney at the end, toward the south. While the dawn was drowsiest, just at the time when it seems that one moment of dreamy dozing is worth a whole night of soundest sleep, Alf got up to go afield to his plow, and as the joints of the stairway were creaking under him as he went down I turned over for another nap, thankful that after all the teaching of a school was not the hardest lot in life. And I was deliciously dreaming when Guinea called me to breakfast.

I spent the most of the day in my room, getting ready for my coming work. Against the chimney I built a shelf and put my books upon it; I turned a large box into a writing table, and of a barrel I fashioned an easy-chair. My surroundings were rude, but I was pleased with them; indeed, I had never found myself so pleasantly placed. And when Alf came up at night he looked about him and with a smile remarked: "You must own that lamp that we read about. Wish you would rub it again and get my corn out of the gra.s.s." He looked tired and I wondered why he did not go to bed, but he strode up and down the room, smoking his pipe. He was silent and thoughtful, refilling his pipe as soon as the tobacco was burned out; but sometimes he would talk, though what he said I felt was aimless.

"I've some heavier tobacco than that," I said.

"This will do, though it is pretty light. Raised on an old hill."

He sat down and continued to pull at his pipe, though the fire was out.

He leaned with his elbow on the table; he moved as if his position were uncomfortable; he got up, went to the window, looked out, came back, resumed his seat and after looking at the floor for a few moments said that he thought that it must be going to rain.

"Perhaps so," I replied, "but that's not what you wanted to say."

He gave me a sharp glance, looked down and then asked: "How do you know?"

"I know because I can see and because I'm not a fool."

"Anybody ever call you a fool?" he asked, with a sad laugh. He leaned far back and looked up at the clapboards.

"That has nothing to do with it, Alf. Pardon me. Mr. Jucklin, I should have said. The truth is, it seems that I have known you a long time."

"And when you feel that way about a man," he quickly spoke up, "you make no mistake in accepting him as a friend. Call me Alf. What's your first name?" I told him, and he added: "And I'll call you Bill. No; the truth is I didn't care to say that I thought it was going to rain; I don't give a snap for rain, except the rain that is pouring on my heart. You remember that girl that came out upon the gallery. I know you do, for no man could forget her. You know that Guinea asked me if Millie was at home. Well, that was Millie Lundsford, the old General's daughter. We have lived close together all our lives, but I have never known her very well, and even now I wouldn't go there on a dead-set visit. She and Guinea went off to school together and are good friends. Guinea tries to plague me about her at times, not knowing that I really love her. I couldn't go off to school, didn't care any too much for education, but since that girl came home and I got better acquainted with her I have felt that I would give half my life to know books, so that I could talk to her; and since then I have been studying, with Guinea to help me.

And you don't know how glad I was when I heard that you had come here to teach school, for I want to study under you. But secretly," he added. "I can't go to the school-house; I don't want her to know that I am so ignorant."

I reached over and took hold of his hand. "Alf, to teach you shall be one of my duties. But don't put yourself down as ignorant, for you are not."

He grasped my hand, and, looking straight into my eyes, said: "I wish I knew as much and was as good-looking as you. Then I wouldn't be afraid to go to her and ask her to let me win her love, if I could. To-morrow you go over to the General's, pretending that you want to get his advice about the school, and I will go with you. Hang it, Bill, you may be in love one of these days."

"Why, Alf, I don't see why either of us should be afraid to go to the General's house. Go? Of course, we will. But you make me laugh when you say that if you were only as good-looking as I am. Let me tell you something." I briefly told him the uneventful story of my life, that ridicule had found me while yet I was a toddler and had held me up as its target. "You might have grown too fast," he remarked when I had concluded, "but you have caught up with yourself. To tell you the truth, you would be picked out from among a thousand men. Where did you get all those books? I don't see how you brought them with you in that trunk, and with your other things."

"The other things didn't take up much room," I answered, and, turning to the books, I began to tell him something about them, but I soon saw that his mind was far away. "Yes, we will go over there to-morrow," said I, and his mind flew back.

"And walk right in as if we owned half the earth," said he, but I knew that he felt not this lordly courage, knew that already he was quaking.

"Oh, I'll go right in with you," he said. "You lead the way and I'll be with you."

When I had gone to bed a remark that he had made was sweeping like a wind through my mind: "Hang it, Bill, you may be in love one of these days." I was already in love--in love with Guinea.

CHAPTER V.