Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the Elephant Part 1

Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the Elephant.

by Matt J. Holt.

VOICES

Knowest thou only the language of man?

Hast never heard the plaintive flute of Pan, Or those gladsome carols that greet the light?

Or the wild, strange voices of darkest night?

Each of earth's creatures when at work or play, Each of nature's force in some strange way, Has a manner of attaining to G.o.d's ear, And a voice which those attuned may hear.

Voices of spring are love songs of the birds, Fragrant poems of lilacs, lacking words; Summer voices are of riper, mellower strain; Autumn's, sing of harvest and life not vain; Winter tells the story of what has been, Season of reflection, of the voice within, Promise of tomorrow, freedom from sin.

Big Creek bisects the narrow valley and the road to Hyden follows the bank, crossing from side to side as the sheerness of the mountain side makes necessary. Here and there the valley broadens until there is almost enough level land for a farm; and always where there is a little width of valley you find a mountain home. The mountain tops and sides are great wildernesses, though sometimes in a cove or on the plateau a hermit or outcast family makes its home.

At old man Litman's place the valley is quite narrow, except below the "Rock House," where there is an old field cleared by his grandfather, who came from Virginia in 1795. A sprawling rail fence, hedged about by thrifty bush growth, encircles the old field; pawpaw bushes growing in the fence corners encroach to the ruts of the road; and each year new growth of sumac and persimmon appropriate yet more of the old field; which having been cultivated for near a century and grown unproductive, is given over to a volunteer crop of broom sedge, which furnishes meager pasturage for an old mule and two cows.

On the edge of the road at the fence corner nearest the cabin, Litman's granddaughter has a doll house; if mere tracings of pebbles and sh.e.l.ls gathered from the creek shallows can be called part.i.tions and the bushes and vines, walls and a roof. The white room is traced in white pebbles the red room in red pebbles and the kitchen in the commoner blue ones.

The furnishings are bits of broken crockery, gla.s.s and sh.e.l.l. The dolls are small bleached bones or bits of peeled pawpaw sticks, dressed in blouses made from a worn out sleeve of grandpa's red undershirt and skirts from sc.r.a.ps of worn and faded calico. She has never seen a doll house, never a real doll, only pictures. This, her creation, was suggested by instinctive motherhood and love for home.

A pa.s.sing traveler would have thought several children were playing at the fence corner. The little make-believe mother was talking to her babies and answering for them in even thinner and more subdued voice than her own; though she had the low voice of a child accustomed to play alone.

"Now Jeanne, let's make grandpa some nice pone bread; the meal is fresh and sweet. When it is ready you run to the spring and bring him a cup of cold milk."

"Granny, while you are mixing the bread maybe I can find an egg in the loft. I heard Old Speck cackling."

"There is grandpa calling, I will go and see what he wants."

"He says, would you mind moving him a wee bit? His bones sh.o.r.e do ache."

Here the dialogue ended, the girl's attention having been caught by the voice of an old friend; except for which the valley had the quietude not alone of a warm mid-afternoon but of a great solitude, so profound that you might even fancy hearing the smoke curling up from the chimney of the cabin, a hundred yards away. Yet, if you listen you may hear the chirping of the gra.s.s creatures and the rippling water washing along the pebbly bed of the creek.

A lone tree, long dead, and bleached to bony whiteness, stands in the center of the old field and from its topmost snag a lark gives voice to a series of pensive, dreamy, flute-like notes. The girl, after listening for some time, resumes the dialogue.

"Children, we will climb on the fence and hear what Yellow Vest has to say. I think he is whistling to his wife, who hunts crickets in the broom sedge."

"Maw, tell us what he says?"

"'Love, thou art safe! art safe! I watch for thee! for thee! and babies.' It is not so much what he says as the way in which he says it."

The feeble voice of the old grandmother calls: "Jeanne, come help your granny;" and placing her dolls in their little beds of sticks, moss and bird feathers, and the little baby in its cradle, the half of a mussel sh.e.l.l, she goes to the house.

John Morgan Allen lived in Lexington, Kentucky. His father was a lawyer of considerable prominence; his mother, a Morgan, granddaughter of a distinguished soldier; his grandmother was the daughter of John Calvin Campbell, an eloquent pioneer preacher; her husband, a lawyer when she married him, afterwards became a professional gambler and, an exception to the rule, acc.u.mulated a considerable fortune.

It was young Allen's mother's desire that he should be a soldier; his father's that he should be a lawyer, and his grandmother's that he should be a preacher. When he finished high school, his mother insisting, he was sent to Culver Military Inst.i.tute, where he remained a year. Then his grandmother, having promised to give him $25,000.00 the day he should graduate at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary; he was sent to that inst.i.tution. In the beginning of his senior year she died intestate, leaving an estate of only $60,000.00 to be divided between three living children and the heirs of three dead children. As there was no chance of the fulfillment of her promise when he should graduate at the seminary; and his conduct had been such that his professors had suggested a reformation in conformity with his prospective calling, he wrote asking his father's consent to leave the seminary and take the law course at the University of Virginia; and he cheerfully consented. In spite of the fact that he gave much of his time to a local military company and enjoyed the reputation of being the best poker player at the university, he graduated with cla.s.s honors in 1912.

Several weeks after his return home, on his twenty-second birthday, his father took him to the office and with great gladness in his heart, pointed to the name, Allen & Allen, which had been painted on the office door the day before; showed him the new embossed stationery on which his name appeared as a member of the firm; and his own room, newly painted, carpeted and furnished, with the name John Morgan Allen (Private) on the door. Though John's face wore a smile of appreciation, it was merely reflective of his father's love and enjoyment; disposition and temperament suggested rebellion, but were overcome by a sense of grat.i.tude and duty.

In the early summer of 1913 the firm were employed by the Lockard heirs to clear the t.i.tle to a large boundary of land in Leslie county; and it became necessary for John and the executor to go to Hyden for that purpose.

Just at sundown as they were riding by Litman's old field, John's horse shied and backed through the pawpaw bushes into Jeanne's doll house. He dismounted and patched the part.i.tion walls into shape; then parting the bushes, showed it to Mr. Lockard.

To John, the little bone and stick dolls, dressed in rags and resting in their beds of moss and feathers were pathetic. He picked several up, and was examining them when a slender girl of twelve, in an outgrown, worn and faded dress, which did not reach to her knees, ran up crying: "Do not hurt my babies." John rose hastily, somewhat disconcerted by the accusation, and lifting his hat and gravely bowing, a.s.sured her he had no such intention; whereupon without uttering another word, she turned and ran into the Litman cabin.

The cabin, built in the days when the family was relatively prosperous, had a spare room for visitors. As it was now sundown the men asked and were given shelter for the night.

Jeanne showed them where their horses were to be stabled; and then went into the house to help with supper. Her grandmother noted that she was very exact in setting the table; getting out the only white cloth they had and doing her best with their meager stock of china to make it attractive. This special attention was due to the lifted hat and formal bow with which John had greeted the child. It was the first time a man had ever tipped his hat to her.

After supper John and Mr. Lockard seated themselves for a smoke on a great rock that jutted into the creek and enjoyed not only the profound repose but the mystic beauty of the scene, which was accentuated by the light of a full moon and the deep shadows made by the trees and mountain.

John, a person of moods and imagination-possibly due to his complex ancestry-gave expression to his thoughts: "How soothing, how delightfully peaceful, how homelike, is this humble home. There is no place here for sorrow and tears, no room for envy, no cause for covetousness or discontent. Some people, and I believe I am one, might be happy here, happier than in a city, just getting his part of the sunlight, just breathing his part of this untainted air."

While he was talking in this strain, Jeanne, coming up, stood listening; and when he had finished said:

"We have our troubles. You have not seen grandpa. He's sick in bed. He can't move except his hands and head and they shake all the time. He says he is a corpse with a chill and lies in his bed with nothing to do but wait. When I ask 'Wait for what?' He answers, 'Tomorrow.' To me tomorrow is like today. The cows will go to pasture, the creek will run over the same pebbles, the mail man will come at noon and stop for dinner, the lark will sing the same song; but if I stump my toe it will be well tomorrow. Go in and talk to grandpa. He likes to hear things. He lies on his bed until his bones ache. He looks out at the same trees and rocks and the same reach of the creek. I hope when he sleeps there is a change and he has dreams like mine and hears voices sweeter than those of the day; though I love the voice of the lark and the red bird and the wren; the murmur of the water on the rocks and most of all the little creatures we do not see and will not hear, unless we are very still.

They are hidden in the gra.s.s and in the rocks. Alone not one of them can be heard, but together they make soft music, a chorus of glad hearts.

One little blackbird makes a noise, but when a thousand speak at once it makes a song. So it seems to me, if I should live here always, with just grandpa and granny, what I said would be as the chirp of one little bug or the call of a lost blackbird; but if I chirp or call out with a thousand, my voice is the thousandth part of a song."

"Jeanne, we will go in and talk with your grandpa. Can he read, or do you read to him?"

"He used to read before he broke his specks. I am trying hard to learn to read good, so I can read to him. The teacher sometimes boards with us; she says I will soon know how. It will be nice then. I try to read his Bible to him but the words are too big. Teacher says I need a book to tell me the meaning of big words. I know just the part of the Bible he loves and I am learning it by heart. I stand and say it to him, looking in the book and he thinks I read it."

"What do you say to him, Jeanne?"

"'And G.o.d shall wipe all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death; neither sorrow nor dying; neither shall there be any more pain.' And I know all of the fourteenth chapter of John, which tells us not to let our troubles worry us, because in the Father's house there is a home of many rooms and one is for me. And when I say, 'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you;' he makes me read it again. * *"

They went in and spent an hour with the old man. Seeing them was a break in his bedridden monotony, shifting scene and introducing new characters.

His had been a calm, relatively happy life until he was seventy years of age; then misfortune overwhelmed him. He lost his savings; his son, Sylvester, Jeanne's father, died; a few weeks later he had a stroke of apoplexy and now a shivering palsy possessed his limbs. For more than five years he had lain in his bed, nursed by wife and granddaughter.

His wife by most rigid economy had managed to feed the family of three; though they were poorly clad and were frequently denied many things deemed essential to life.

Simeon Blair for ten years had been carrying the mail from the mouth of Big Creek to Hyden, going up one day and returning the next. He usually ate his noon-day meal at Litman's, which he called the "Half-way House."

About ten days after Mr. Allen and his client had spent the night at the Litman cabin, Blair rode up on his old gray mare and seeing Jeanne coming from the spring, took from a gunny sack a parcel post package about a foot square; and holding it above his head called out: "Guess whose this is?"

"Grandpa's."

He shook his head, saying: "Guess again."

"Granny's."

"Wrong, guess again."