The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories Part 5

"Ain't ye sorter lonesome over hyar?" he ventured.

"You bet your sweet life I am," his host replied unequivocally. A shade crossed his face, and vanished in an instant. "But then," he argued, "I didn't have such a soft thing where I was. I was a clerk--that is, a bookkeeper--on a salary, and I had to work all day, and sometimes nearly all night!"

He belittled his former vocation with airy contempt, as if he did not yearn for it with every fibre of his being,--its utility, its competence, its future. The recollection of the very feel of the fair smooth paper under his hand, the delicate hair-line chirography trailing off so fast from the swift pen, could wring a pang from him.

He might even have esteemed an oath more binding sworn on a ledger than on the New Testament.

"And we were a small house, anyway, and the salary was no great shakes," he continued jauntily, to show how little he had to regret.

"An' now ye ain't got nuthin' ter do but ter read yer book," said the mountaineer acquiescently, realizing, in spite of his clumsy mental processes, how the thorn pierced the bosom pressed against it.

Selwyn followed his guest's glance to the shelf of volumes with an unaffected indifference.

"Yes, but I don't care for it. I wish I did, since I have the time.

But the liking for books has to be cultivated, like a taste for beer; they are both a deal too sedative for me!" The laugh that ensued was choked with a cough, and the tactless Hanway was moved to expostulate.

"I wonder ye ain't 'feared ter be hyar all by yerse'f hevin' the lung complaint."

"Why, man alive, I'm well, or so near it there's no use talking. I could go home to-morrow, except, as I have had the house built, I think I'd better stay the winter in it. But before the cold weather comes on they are going to send up a darky to look after me. I only hope _I_ won't have to wait on _him_,--awful lazy n.i.g.g.e.r! He used to be a porter of ours. Loafing around these woods with a gun on his shoulder, pretending to hunt, will be just about his size. He's out of a job now, and comes cheap. I couldn't afford to pay him wages all the time, but winter is winter."

He was silent a moment, gazing into the fire; then Hanway, gloomily brooding and disturbed, for the conversation had impressed him much as if it had been post-mortem, so immediate seemed his companion's doom, felt Selwyn's eye upon him, as if his sentiment were so obvious that the sense of sight had detected it.

"You think I'm going to die up here all by myself. Now I tell you, my good fellow, dying is the very last thing that I expect to do."

He broke out laughing anew, and this time he did not cough.

Hanway could not at once cover his confusion. He looked frowningly down at the steam rising from his great cowhide boots, outstretched as they dried in the heat of the fire, and slowly shifted them one above the other. The flush on his sunburned cheek rose to the roots of his dark hair, and overspread his clumsy features. His appearance did not give token of any very great delicacy of feeling, but he regretted his transparency, and sought to nullify it.

"Not that," he said disingenuously; "but bein' all by yerse'f, I wonder ye ain't willin' fur the county road ter be put through. 'T would run right by yer gate, an' ye could h'ist the winder an' talk to the folks pa.s.sin'. Ye wouldn't be lonely never."

For the first time Selwyn looked like a man of business. His eyes grew steady. His face was firm and serious and non-committal. He said nothing. Hanway cleared his throat and crossed his legs anew. The thought of his true intention in coming hither, not his ostensible errand, had recurred more than once to his mind,--to lay bare the secret touching the visitor to Selwyn's remote dwelling, whom he could not or would not identify; and if there were aught amiss, as the mountaineer suspected, to take such action thereupon as in the fullness of his own good judgment seemed fit. But since the man was evidently so sharp, Hanway had hitherto feared even indirectly to trench upon it; here, however, the opening was so natural, so propitious, that he was fain to take advantage of it.

"An' see," he resumed, "what dangers kem o' hevin' no road. That thar man what war killed las' month, ef we hed hed a reg'lar county road, worked on an' kep' open, stiddier this hyar herder's trail, this-a-way an' that, he could hev rid along ez free an' favored, an'"--

"Why," Selwyn broke in, "the testimony was to the effect that he was riding a young, skittish horse, which was startled by stray hogs breaking at a dead run through the bushes, and that the horse bolted and ran away. And the man died from concussion of the brain. That would have happened if we had had a road of the first cla.s.s, twenty feet wide, instead of this little seven-foot freak you all are so mashed on."

His face had not lost a tinge of its brilliant color. His animated eyes were still fired by that inward flame that was consuming his years, his days, even his minutes, it might seem. His hands, fine, white, and delicate, were thrust jauntily into the pockets of his red jacket, and Hanway felt himself no nearer the heart of the mystery than before. The subject, evidently, was not avoided, held naught of menace. He went at it directly.

"Seems strange he war a-comin' ter visit you-uns, an' hed yer mail in his pocket, an' ye never seen him afore," he hazarded, "nor knowed who he war."

"But I have found out since," Selwyn said, his clear eyes resting on his visitor without the vestige of an affrighted thought. "He was Mr.

Keith, a chemist from Glaston; he was quite a notable authority on matters of physical science generally. I had written to him about--about some points of interest in the mountains, and as he was at leisure he concluded to come and investigate--and--take a holiday.

He didn't let me know, and as I had never seen him I didn't at first even imagine it was he."

There was a silence. Selwyn's blue eyes dwelt on the fast-descending lines of rain that now blurred all view of the mountains; the globular drops here and there adhering to the pane, ever dissolving and ever renewed, obscured even the small privilege of a glimpse of the dooryard. The continual beat on the roof had the regularity and the tireless suggestion of machinery.

"How did ye find out?" demanded Hanway, his theory evaporating into thin air.

"Why, as he didn't reply to my letter about a matter of such importance"--he checked himself suddenly, then went on more slowly--"it occurred to me that he might have decided to come, and might have been the man who was killed. So I wrote to his brother. He had not been expected at home earlier. His brother doesn't incline to the foul-play theory. The horse he rode is a wild young animal that has run away two or three times. He had been warned repeatedly against riding that horse, but he thought him safe enough. The horse has returned home,--got there the day my letter was received. So the brother and an officer came and exhumed the body: he was buried, you know, after the inquest, over in the little graveyard yonder on the slope of the mountain."

Selwyn shivered slightly, and the fine white hands came out of the gaudy red pockets, and fastened the frogs beneath the lapels across his chest, to draw the smoking-jacket closer.

"Great Scott! what a fate,--to be left in that desolate burying-ground! Death is death, there."

"Death is death anywhar," said the mountaineer gloomily.

"No. Get you a mile or two of iron fence, and stone gates, and lots of sculptured marble angels around, and death is peace, or rest, or heaven, or paradise, according to your creed and the taste of the subject; but here you are done for and dead."

Hanway, in the limited experience of the mountaineer, could not follow the theory, and he forbore to press it further.

"Well," Selwyn resumed, "they took him home, and I was glad to see him go. I was glad to see them filling that hole up. I took a pious interest in that. I should have felt it was waiting for me. I shoveled some of the earth back myself."

The wind surged around the house, and shook the outer doors. The rain trampled on the roof like a squadron of cavalry. With his fate standing ever behind him, almost visibly looking over his shoulder, although he saw it not, the valley man was a pathetic object to the mountaineer. Hanway's eyes were hot and burned as he looked at him; if he had been but a little younger, they might have held tears. But Hanway had pa.s.sed by several years his majority, and esteemed himself exempt from boyish softness.

Selwyn shook off the impression with a shiver, and bent forward to mend the fire.

"Where were you yesterday?" he asked, seeking a change of subject.

"At home sowin' turnip seed, mos'ly. I never hearn nuthin' 'bout'n it all."

Selwyn threw himself back in his chair, his brow corrugated impatiently at this renewal of the theme, and in the emergency he even resorted to the much-mooted point of the thoroughfare.

"I suppose all the family there are dead gone on that road?" he sought to make talk.

"Dad an' aunt M'nervy don't keer one way nor another, but my sister air plumb beset fur the jury of view to put it through."

"Why?" Selwyn had a mental vision of some elderly, thrifty mountain dame with a long head turned toward the enhancement of the values of a league or so of mountain land.

Hanway, slow and tenacious of impressions, could not so readily rouse a vital interest in another subject. He still gazed with melancholy eyes at the fire, and his heart felt heavy and sore.

"Waal," he answered mechanically, "she 'lows she wants ter see the folks go up an' down, an' up an' down."

Selwyn's blue eyes opened. "Folks?" he asked wonderingly. The rarest of apparitions on Witch-Face Mountain were "folks."

Hanway roused himself slightly, and raucously cleared his throat to explain.

"She 'lows thar'll be cornsider'ble pa.s.sin'. Folks, in the fall o' the year, mought be a-wagonin' of chestnuts over the mounting an' down ter Colb'ry; an' thar's the Quarterly Court days; some attends, leastwise the jestices; an' whenst they hev preachin' in the Cove; an' wunst in a while thar _mought_ be a camp-meetin'. She sets cornsider'ble store on lookin' at the folks ez will go up an' down."

There was a swift movement in the pupils of the valley man's eyes. It was an expression closely correlated to laughter, but the muscles of his face were still, and he remained decorously grave.

There was some thought in his mind that held him doubtful for a moment. His craft was cautious of its kind, and his manner was quite incidental as he said, "And the others of the family?"

"Thar ain't no others," returned Hanway, stolidly unmarking.

"Oh, so you are the eldest?"

"By five year. Narcissa ain't more 'n jes' turned eighteen."

The valley man's face was flushed more deeply still; his brilliant eyes were elated.