The Power and the Glory Part 13

"My time!" echoed Stoddard. "Never mind that feature. I'm immensely interested. It's fascinating to watch the development of so fine a mind which has lain almost entirely fallow to the culture of schools. I quite enjoy looking out a bunch of books for her, and watching to see which one will most appeal to her. Her instinct has proved wholly trustworthy so far. Indeed, if it didn't seem exaggerated, I should say her taste was faultless."

Miss Sessions flushed and set her lips together.

"Faultless," she repeated, with an attempt at a smile. "I fancy Johnnie finds out what you admire most, and makes favourites of your favourites."

Stoddard looked a bit blank for an instant. Then,

"Well--perhaps--she does," he allowed, hesitatingly. His usual tolerant smile held a hint of indulgent tenderness, and there was a vibration in his voice which struck to Lydia Sessions's heart like a knife.

"No, you are mistaken," he added after a moment's reflection. "You don't realize how little I've talked to the child about books--or anything else, for that matter. It does chance that her taste is mine in very many cases; but you underrate our protege when you speak of her as ignorant and uncultured. She knows a good deal more about some things than either of us. It is her fund of nature lore that makes Th.o.r.eau and White of Selborne appeal to her. Now I love them because I know so little about what they write of."

Lydia Sessions instantly fastened upon the one point. She protested almost anxiously.

"But surely you would not call her cultured--a factory girl who has lived in a hut in the mountains all her life? She is trying hard, I admit; but her speech is--well, it certainly is rather uncivilized."

Stoddard looked as though he might debate that matter a bit. Then he questioned, instead:

"Did you ever get a letter from her? She doesn't carry her quaint little archaisms of p.r.o.nunciation and wording into her writing. Her letters are delicious."

Miss Sessions turned hastily to the window and looked out, apparently to observe whether her brother was ready to leave or not. Johnnie Consadine's letters--her letters. What--when--? Of course she could not baldly question him in such a matter; and the simple explanation of a little note of thanks with a returned book, or the leaf which reported impressions from its reading tucked in between the pages occurred to her perturbed mind.

"You quite astonish me," she said finally. "Well--that _is_ good hearing. Mr. Stoddard," with sudden decision, "don't you believe that it would be well worth while, in view of all this, to raise the money and send John Consadine away to a good school? There are several fine ones in New England where she might partially work her way; and really, from what you say, it seems to me she's worthy of such a chance."

Stoddard glanced at her in surprise.

"Why, Miss Sessions, doesn't this look like going squarely back on your most cherished theories? If it's only to bestow a little money, and send her away to some half-charity school, what becomes of your argument that people who have had advantages should give of themselves and their comradeship to those they wish to help?" There was a boyish eagerness in his manner; his changeful gray-brown eyes were alight; he came close and laid a hand on her arm--quite an unusual demonstration with Gray Stoddard. "You mustn't discourage me," he said winningly. "I'm such a hopeful disciple. I've never enjoyed anything more in my life than this enterprise you and I have undertaken together, providing the right food for so bright and so responsive a mind."

Miss Lydia looked at him in a sort of despair.

"Yes--oh, yes. I quite understand that," she agreed almost mechanically.

"I don't mean to go back on my principles. But what John needs is a good, sound education from the beginning. Don't you think so?"

"No," said Stoddard promptly. "Indeed I do not. Development must come from within. To give it a chance--to lend it stimulus--that's all a friend can do. A ready-made education plastered on the outside cultivates n.o.body. Moreover, Johnnie is in no crying need of mere schooling. You don't seem to know how well provided she has been in that respect. But the thing that settles the matter is that she would not accept any such charitable arrangement. Unless you're tired of our present method, I vote to continue it."

Lydia Sessions had been for some moments watching Johnnie Consadine who sat on her box at the door of the little garage. She had refrained from mentioning this fact to her companion; but now Shade Buckheath stepped out to join Johnnie, and instantly Lydia turned and motioned Stoddard to her.

"Look there," she whispered. "Don't they make a perfect couple? You and I may do what we choose about cultivating the girl's mind--she'll marry a man of her own cla.s.s, and there it will end."

"Why should you say that?" asked Stoddard abruptly. "Those two do not belong to the same cla.s.s. They--"

"Oh, Mr. Stoddard! They grew up side by side; they went to school together, and I imagine were sweethearts long before they came to Cottonville."

"Do you think that makes them of the same cla.s.s?" asked Stoddard impatiently. "I should say the presumption was still greater the other way. I was not alluding to social cla.s.ses."

"You're so odd," murmured Lydia Sessions. "These mountaineers are all alike."

The village road was a smother of white dust; the weeds beside it drooped powdered heads; evil odours reeked through the little place; but when Shade and Johnnie had pa.s.sed its confines, the air from the mountains greeted them sweetly; the dusty white road gave place to springy leaf-mould, mixed with tiny, sharp stones. A young moon rode low in the west. The tank-a-tank of cowbells sounded from homing animals. Up in the dusky Gap, whip-poor-wills were beginning to call.

"I'm glad I came," said Johnnie, pushing the hair off her hot forehead.

She was speaking to herself, aware that Buckheath paid little attention, but walked in silence a step ahead, twisting a little branch of sa.s.safras in his fingers. The spicy odour of the bark was afterward a.s.sociated in Johnnie's mind with what he had then to say.

"Johnnie," he began, facing around and barring her way, when they were finally alone together between the trees, "do you remember the last time you and me was on this piece of road here--do you?"

He had intended to remind her of the evening she came to Cottonville: but instead, recollection built for her once more the picture of that slope bathed in Sabbath sunshine. There was the fork where the Hardwick carriage had turned off; to this side went Shade and his fellows, with Mandy and the girls following; and down the middle of the road she herself came, seated in the car beside Stoddard.

For a moment memory choked and blinded Johnnie. She could neither see the path before them, nor find the voice to answer her questioner. The bleak pathos of her situation came home to her, and tears of rare self-pity filled her eyes. Why was it a disgrace that Stoddard should treat her kindly? Why must she be ashamed of her feeling for him?

Shade's voice broke in harshly.

"Do you remember? You ain't forgot, have you? Ever since that time I've intended to speak to you--to tell you--"

"Well, you needn't do it," she interrupted him pa.s.sionately.

"I won't hear a word against Mr. Stoddard, if that's what you're aiming at."

Buckheath fell back a pace and stared with angry eyes.

"Stoddard--Gray Stoddard?" he repeated. "What's a swell like that got to do with you and me, Johnnie Consadine? You want to let Gray Stoddard and his kind alone--yes, and make them let you alone, if you and me are going to marry."

It was Johnnie's turn to stare.

"If we're going to marry!" she echoed blankly--"going to marry!" The girl had had her lovers. Despite hard work and the stigma of belonging to the borrowing Pa.s.smore family, Johnnie had commanded the homage of more than one heart. She was not without a healthy young woman's relish for this sort of admiration; but Shade Buckheath's proposal came with so little grace, in such almost sinister form, that she scarcely recognized it.

"Yes, if we're going to wed," reiterated Buckheath sullenly. "I'm willin' to have you."

Johnnie's tense, almost tragic manner relaxed. She laughed suddenly.

"I didn't know you was joking, Shade," she said good-humouredly. "I took you to be in earnest. You'll have to excuse me."

"I am in earnest," Buckheath told her, almost fiercely. "I reckon I'm a fool; but I want you. Any day"--he spoke with a curious, half-savage reluctance--"any day you'll say the word, I'll take you."

His eyes, like his voice, were resentful, yet eager. He took off his hat and wiped the perspiration from his brow, looking away from her now, toward the road by which they had climbed.

Johnnie regarded him through her thick eyelashes, the smile still lingering bright in her eyes. After all, it was only a rather unusual kind of sweethearting, and not a case of it to touch her feelings.

"I'm mighty sorry," she said soberly, "but I ain't aimin' to wed any man, fixed like I am. Mother and the children have to be looked after, and I can't ask a man to do for 'em, so I have it to do myself."

"Of course I can't take your mother and the children," Buckheath objected querulously, as though she had asked him to do so. "But you I'll take; and you'd do well to think it over. You won't get such a chance soon again, and I'm apt to change my mind if you put on airs with me this way."

Johnnie shook her head.

"I know it's a fine chance, Shade," she said in the kindest tone, "but I'm hoping you will change your mind, and that soon; for it's just like I tell you."

She turned with evident intention of going back and terminating their interview. Buckheath stepped beside her in helpless fury. He knew she would have other, opportunities, and better. He was aware how futile was this threat of withdrawing his proposition. Hot, tired, angry, the dust of the way p.r.i.c.kling on his face and neck, he was persistently conscious of a letter in the pocket of his striped shirt, over his heavily beating heart, warm and moist like the shirt itself, with the sweat of his body.

Good Lord! That letter which had come from Washington this morning informing him that the device this girl had invented was patentable, filled her hands with gold. It was necessary that he should have control of her, and at once. He put from him the knowledge of how her charm wrought upon him--bound him the faster every time he spoke to her. Cold, calculating, sluggishly selfish, he had not reckoned with her radiant personality, nor had the instinct to know that, approached closely, it must inevitably light in him unwelcome and inextinguishable fires.

"Johnnie," he said finally, "you ain't saying no to me, are you? You take time to think it over--but not so very long--I'll name it to you again."