The Mountain Girl Part 24

"Yes, yes. So it is." And what more could the bishop say? After a little, he added, "But still we must not forget that he, too, is a human soul and has a value as great as hers."

"According to your viewpoint, but not to mine--not to mine. If a man is enslaved to his own appet.i.tes, he has no right to enslave another to them."

The following day David took himself back to his hermitage, setting aside all persuasions to remain.

"Don't make a recluse of yourself," begged the bishop's wife. "The amenities of life can't always be dispensed with, and we need you, James and I, you and your music."

David laughed. "I'm too fatally human to become a recluse, and as for the amenities, they are not all of one order, you know. I find plenty of scope for exercising them on others, and I often submit to having them exercised on me,--after their own ideas." He laughed again. "I wish you could look into my larder. You'd find me provided with all the hills afford. They have loaded me with gifts."

"No wonder! I know what your life up there means to them, taking care of their mothers and babies, and sitting up with them nights, going to them when they are in trouble, rain or shine, and visiting them in their bare, wretched, crowded homes."

"It wouldn't be so bad often, if it weren't that when a family is in serious trouble or has a case needing quiet and care, the sympathies of all their relatives are roused, and they come crowding in. In one case, the father was ill with pneumonia. I did all I could for him, and next day--would you believe it?--I found his sister and her 'old man' and their three youngsters, his old mother and a brother and a widowed sister, all camped down on them, all in one room. The sister sat by the fire nursing her three-months-old baby, his mother was smoking at her side, and the sick man's six little children and their three cousins were raising Ned, in and out, with three or four hounds. Not one of the visitors was helping, or, as they say up there, 'doing a lick,' but the wife was cooking for the whole raft when her husband needed all her care. Marvellous ideas they have, some of them."

"You ought to write out some of your experiences."

"Oh, I can't. It would seem like a sort of betrayal of friendship. They have adopted me, so to speak, and are so nave and kind, and have trusted me--I think they are my friends. I may be very odd--you know."

"I know how you feel," said Betty.

The bishop's little daughter had a.s.sumed the proprietorship of the doctor. She even preferred his companionship to that of her puppy. She clung to his hand as he walked away, pulling and swinging upon his arm to coax him back. He took her in his arms and carried her out upon the walk, the small dog barking and snapping at his heels, as David threatened to bear his tyrannical young mistress away to the station.

"Doggie wants you to leave me here," she cried, pounding him vigorously with her two little fists.

He brought her back and placed her on the broad, flat top of the high gate-post. "Very well, doggie may have you. I will leave you here."

"Doggie wants you to stay, too." She held him with her small arms about his neck.

"Well, doggie can't have me." He unclinched her chubby hands, crossed them in her lap, and held them fast while he kissed her tanned and rosy cheek. "Good-by, you young rogue," he said, and strode away.

"Come and lift me down," she wailed. But he knew well she could scramble down by herself when she chose, and walked on. She continued to call after him; then, spying Frale in the wood yard, she imperatively summoned him to her aid, and trotted at his side back to the woodpile, where they sat comfortably upon a log and visited together.

They were the best of friends and chattered with each other as if both were children. In the slender shadow of a juniper tree that stood like a sentinel in the corner of the wood yard they sat, where a high board fence separated them from the back street.

The bishop's place was well planted, and this corner had been the quarters of the house servants in slave times. It was one of Frale's duties to pile here, for winter use, the firewood which he cut in short lengths for the kitchen fire, and long lengths for the open fireplaces.

He hated the hampered village life, and round of small duties--the weeding in the garden, cleaning of piazzas and windows, and the sweeping of the paths. The woodcutting was not so bad, but the rest he held in contempt as women's work. He longed to throw his gun in the hollow of his arm and tramp off over his own mountains. At night he often wept, for homesickness, and wished he might spend a day tending still, or lying on a ridge watching the trail below for intruders on his privacy.

The joy of life had gone out for him. He thought continually of Ca.s.sandra and desired her; and his soul wearied for her, until he was tempted to go back to the mountains at all risks, merely for a sight of her. Painfully he had tried to learn to write, working at the copies Betty Towers had set for him,--and certainly she had done all her conscientious heart prompted to interest him and keep him away from the village loungers. He had even progressed far enough to send two horribly spelled missives to Ca.s.sandra, feeling great pride in them. And now he had begun to weary of learning. To be able to write those badly scrawled notes was in his eyes surely enough to distinguish him from his companions at home; of what use was more?

"What's that you are tossing up in the air? Let me see it," demanded the child, as Frale tossed and caught again a small, bright object. He kept on tossing it and catching it away from the two little hands stretched out to receive it. "Give it to me. Give it to me, Frale. Let me see it."

He dropped it lightly in her palm. "Don't you lose hit. That thar's somethin' 'at's got a charm to hit."

"What's a 'charm to hit'? I don't see any charm."

Then Frale laughed aloud. He took it with his thumb and forefinger and held it between his eye and the sun. "Is that the way you see the 'charm to hit'? Let me try."

But he slipped it in his pocket, first placing it in a small bag which he drew up tightly with a string. "Hit hain't nothing you kin see. Hit's only a charm 'at makes. .h.i.t plumb sure to kill anybody 'at hit hits.

Hit's plumb sure to hit an' plumb sure to kill, too."

"Oh, Frale! What if it had hit me when you threw it up that way--and--killed me? Then you'd be sorry, wouldn't you, Frale?"

"Hit nevah wouldn't kill a girl--a nice little girl--like you be. Hit's charmed that-a-way, 'at hit won't kill n.o.body what I don't want hit to."

"Then what do you keep it in your pocket for? You don't want to kill anybody, do you, Frale?"

"Naw--I reckon not; not 'thout I have to."

"But you don't have to, do you, Frale?" piped the child.

He rose, and selecting an armful of stove wood carried it into the shed and began packing it away. Dorothy sat still on the log, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, meditating. A tall man slouched by and peered over the high board fence at her. His eyes roved all about the place eagerly, keen and black. His matted hair hung long beneath his soft felt hat. The child looked up at him with fearless, questioning glance, then trotted in to her friend.

"Frale, did you see that man lookin' over the fence? You think he was lookin' for you, Frale? Come see who 'tis. P'r'aps he's a friend of yours."

"Dorothy, Dorothy," called her mother from the piazza, and the child bounded away, her puppy yelping and leaping at her side. The tall man turned at the corner and looked back at the child.

The bishop's place occupied one corner of the block, and the fence with a hedge beneath it ran the whole length of two sides. Slowly sauntering along the second side, the gaunt, hungry-eyed man continued his way, searching every part of the yard and garden, even endeavoring, with backward, furtive glances, to see into the woodhouse, where in the darkness Frale crouched, once more pallid with abject fear, peering through the crack where on its hinges the door swung half open.

As the man disappeared down the straggling village street, Frale dropped down on the wheelbarrow and buried his haggard face in his hands. A long time he sat thus, until the dinner-hour was past, and black Carrie had to send Dorothy to call him. Then he rose, but in the place of the white and haunted look was one of stubborn recklessness. He strolled to the house with the nonchalant air of one who fears no foes, but rather glories in meeting them, and sat himself down at his place by the kitchen table, where he bantered and badgered Carrie, who waited on him reluctantly, with contemptuous tosses of her woolly head. From the day of his first appearance there had been war between them, and now Frale knew that if the stranger asked her, she would gladly and slyly inform against him.

The afternoon wore on. Again Frale sat on the wheelbarrow, thinking, thinking. He took the small bag from his pocket and felt of the bullet through the thin covering, then replaced it, and, drawing forth another bag, began counting his money over and over. There it was, all he had saved, five dollars in bills, and a few quarters and dimes.

He did not like to leave the shelter of the shed, and his eyes showed only the narrow glint of blue as, with half-closed lids, he still peered out and watched the street where his enemy had disappeared. Suddenly he rose and climbed with swift, catlike movements up the ladder stairs behind him, which led to his sleeping loft. There he rapidly donned his best suit of dyed homespun, tied his few remaining articles of clothing in a large red kerchief, and before a bit of mirror arranged his tie and hair to look as like as possible to the village youth of Farington. The distinguishing silken lock that would fall over his brow had grown again, since he had shorn it away in Doctor Thryng's cabin. Now he thrust it well up under his soft felt hat, and, taking his bundle, descended. Again his eyes searched up and down the street and all about the house and yard before he ventured out in the daylight.

Dorothy and her dog came bounding down the kitchen steps. She carried two great fried cakes in her little hands, warm from the hot fat, and she laughed with glee as she danced toward him.

"Frale, Frale. I stole these, I did, for you. I told Carrie I wanted two for you, an' she said 'G'long, chile.'" She thrust them in his hands.

"What's the matter, Frale? What you all dressed up for? This isn't Sunday, Frale. Is they going to be a circus, Frale, is they?" She poured forth her questions rapidly, as she hopped from one foot to the other.

"Will you take me, Frale, if it's a circus? I'll ask mamma. I want to see the el'phant."

"'Tain't no circus," he replied grimly.

"What's the matter, Frale? Don't you like your fried cakes? Then why don't you eat them? What you wrapping them up for? You ought to say thank you, when I bring you nice cakes 'at I went an' stole for you,"

she remonstrated severely.

His throat worked convulsively as he stood, now looking at the child, now watching the street. Suddenly he lifted her in his arms and buried his face in her gingham ap.r.o.n.

"I had a little sister oncet, only she's growed up now, an' she hain't my little sister any more." He kissed her brown cheek tenderly, even as David had done, and set her gently down on her two stubby feet. "You run in an' tell yer maw thank you, fer me, will ye? Mind, now. Listen at me whilst I tell you what to tell yer paw an' maw fer me. Say, 'Frale seen a houn' dog on his scent, an' he's gone home to git shet of him.'"

"Where's the 'houn' dog,' Frale?" She gazed fearfully about.

"He's gone now. He won't bite--not you, he won't."

"Oh, Frale! I wish it was a circus."

"Yas," drawled the young man, with a sullen smile curling his lips, "may be hit be a sort of a circus. Kin ye remember what I tol' you to tell yer paw?"