The Call of the Cumberlands Part 30

"I reckon," said Samson, ruefully, when Horton joined him, "we'd better look around, and see how bad those fellows are hurt in there.

They may need a doctor." And the two went back to find several startled servants a.s.sisting to their beds the disabled combatants, and the next morning their inquiries elicited the information that the gentlemen were all "able to be about, but were breakfasting in their rooms."

Such as looked from their windows that morning saw an unexpected climax, when the car of Mr. Wilfred Horton drove away from the club carrying the man whom they had hoped to see killed, and the man they had hoped to see kill him. The two appeared to be in excellent spirits and thoroughly congenial, as the car rolled out of sight, and the gentlemen who were left behind decided that, in view of the circ.u.mstances, the "extraordinary spree" of last night had best go unadvertised into ancient history.

CHAPTER XXII

The second year of a new order brings fewer radical changes than the first. Samson's work began to forge out of the ranks of the ordinary, and to show symptoms of a quality which would some day give it distinction. Heretofore, his instructors had held him rigidly to the limitations of black and white, but now they took off the bonds, and permitted him the colorful delight of attempting to express himself from the palette. It was like permitting a natural poet to leave prose, and play with prosody.

Sometimes, when his thoughts went back to the life he had left, it seemed immensely far away, as though it were really the life of another incarnation, and old ideas that had seemed axiomatic to his boyhood stood before him in the guise of strangers: strangers tattered and vagabond. He wondered if, after all, the new G.o.ds were sapping his loyalty. At such times, he would for days keep morosely to himself, picturing the death-bed of his father, and seeming to hear a small boy's voice making a promise. Sometimes, that promise seemed monstrous, in the light of his later experience. But it was a promise--and no man can rise in his own esteem by treading on his vows. In these somber moods, there would appear at the edges of his drawing-paper terrible, vividly graphic little heads, not drawn from any present model. They were sketched in a few ferociously powerful strokes, and always showed the same malevolent visage--a face black with murder and hate-endowed, the countenance of Jim Asberry. Sometimes would come a wild, heart- tearing longing for the old places. He wanted to hear the frogs boom, and to see the moon spill a shower of silver over the ragged shoulder of the mountain. He wanted to cross a certain stile, and set out for a certain cabin where a certain girl would be. He told himself that he was still loyal, that above all else he loved his people. When he saw these women, whose youth and beauty lasted long into life, whose manners and clothes spoke of ease and wealth and refinement, he saw Sally again as he had left her, hugging his "rifle-gun" to her breast, and he felt that the only thing he wanted utterly was to take her in his arms. Yes, he would return to Sally, and to his people--some day.

The some day he did not fix. He told himself that the hills were only thirty hours away, and therefore he could go any time--which is the other name for no time. He had promised Lescott to remain here for eighteen months, and, when that interval ended, he seemed just on the verge of grasping his work properly. He a.s.sured himself often and solemnly that his creed was unchanged; his loyalty untainted; and the fact that it was necessary to tell himself proved that he was being weaned from his traditions. And so, though he often longed for home, he did not return. And then reason would rise up and confound him. Could he paint pictures in the mountains? If he did, what would he do with them? If he went back to that hermit life, would he not vindicate his uncle's prophecy that he had merely unplaced himself? And, if he went back and discharged his promise, and then returned again to the new fascination, could he bring Sally with him into this life--Sally, whom he had scornfully told that a "gal didn't need no l'arnin'?" And the answer to all these questions was only that there was no answer.

One day, Adrienne looked up from a sheaf of his very creditable landscape studies to inquire suddenly:

"Samson, are you a rich man, or a poor one?"

He laughed. "So rich," he told her, "that unless I can turn some of this stuff into money within a year or two, I shall have to go back to hoeing corn."

She nodded gravely.

"Hasn't it occurred to you," she demanded, "that in a way you are wasting your gifts? They were talking about you the other evening --several painters. They all said that you should be doing portraits."

The Kentuckian smiled. His masters had been telling him the same thing. He had fallen in love with art through the appeal of the skies and hills. He had followed its call at the proselyting of George Lescott, who painted only landscape. Portraiture seemed a less-artistic form of expression. He said so.

"That may all be very true," she conceded, "but you can go on with your landscapes, and let your portraits pay the way. With your entree, you could soon have a very enviable _clientele_."

"'So she showed me the way, to promotion and pay, And I learned about women from her,'"

quoted Samson with a laugh.

"And," she added, "since I am very vain and moderately rich, I hereby commission you to paint me, just as soon as you learn how."

Farbish had simply dropped out. Bit by bit, the truth of the conspiracy had leaked, and he knew that his usefulness was ended, and that well-lined pocketbooks would no longer open to his profligate demands. The bravo and plotter whose measure has been taken is a broken reed. Farbish made no farewells. He had come from nowhere and his going was like his coming.

Sally had started to school. She had not announced that she meant to do so, but each day the people of Misery saw her old sorrel mare making its way to and from the general direction of Stagbone College, and they smiled. No one knew how Sally's cheeks flamed as she sat alone on Sat.u.r.days and Sundays on the rock at the backbone's rift. She was taking her place, morbidly sensitive and a woman of eighteen, among little spindle-shanked girls in short skirts, and the little girls were more advanced than she. But she, too, meant to have "l'arnin'"--as much of it as was necessary to satisfy the lover who might never come. It must be admitted that learning for its own sake did not make a clarion- tongued appeal to the girl's soul. Had Samson been satisfied with her untutored, she would have been content to remain untutored. He had said that these things were of no importance in her, but that was before he had gone forth into the world. If, she navely told herself, he should come back of that same opinion, she would never "let on" that she had learned things. She would toss overboard her acquirements as ruthlessly as useless ballast from an over-enc.u.mbered boat. But, if Samson came demanding these attainments, he must find her possessed of them. So far, her idea of "l'arnin'" embraced the three R's only. And, yet, the "fotched-on" teachers at the "college" thought her the most voraciously ambitious pupil they had ever had, so unflaggingly did she toil, and the most remarkably acquisitive, so fast did she learn. But her studies had again been interrupted, and Miss Grover, her teacher, riding over one day to find out why her prize scholar had deserted, met in the road an empty "jolt-wagon," followed by a ragged cortege of mounted men and women, whose faces were still lugubrious with the effort of recent mourning. Her questions elicited the information that they were returning from the "buryin'" of the Widow Miller.

Sally was not in the procession, and the teacher, riding on, found her lying face down among the briars of the desolate meeting-house yard, her small body convulsively heaving with her weeping, and her slim fingers grasping the th.o.r.n.y briar shoots as though she would still hold to the earth that lay in freshly broken clods over her mother's grave.

Miss Grover lifted her gently, and at first the girl only stared at her out of wide, unseeing eyes.

"You've nothing to keep you here now," said the older woman, gently.

"You can come to us, and live at the college." She had learned from Sally's lips that she lived alone with her mother and younger brother.

"You can't go on living there now."

But the girl drew away, and shook her head with a wild torrent of childish dissent.

"No, I kain't, neither!" she declared, violently. "I kain't!"

"Why, dear?" The teacher took the palpitating little figure in her arms and kissed the wet face. She had learned something of this sweet wood-thrush girl, and had seen both sides of life's coin enough to be able to close her eyes and ears, and visualize the woman that this might be.

"'Cause I kain't!" was the obstinate reply.

Being wise, Miss Grover desisted from urging, and went with Sally to the desolated cabin, which she straightway began to overhaul and put to rights. The widow had been dying for a week. It was when she lifted Samson's gun with the purpose of sweeping the corner that the girl swooped down on her, and rescued the weapon from her grasp.

"n.o.body but me mustn't tech thet rifle-gun," she exclaimed, and then, little by little, it came out that the reason Sally could not leave this cabin, was because some time there might be a whippoorwill call out by the stile, and, when it came, she must be there to answer. And, when at the next vacation Miss Grover rode over, and announced that she meant to visit Sally for a month or two, and when under her deft hands the cabin began to transform itself, and the girl to transform herself, she discovered that Sally found in the graveyard another magnet. There, she seemed to share something with Samson where their dead lay buried.

While the "fotched-on" lady taught the girl, the girl taught the "fotched-on" lady, for the birds were her brothers, and the flowers her cousins, and in the poetry that existed before forms of meter came into being she was deeply versed.

Toward the end of that year, Samson undertook his portrait of Adrienne Lescott. The work was nearing completion, but it had been agreed that the girl herself was not to have a peep at the canvas until the painter was ready to unveil it in a finished condition. Often as she posed, Wilfred Horton idled in the studio with them, and often George Lescott came to criticize, and left without criticizing. The girl was impatient for the day when she, too, was to see the picture, concerning which the three men maintained so profound a secrecy. She knew that Samson was a painter who a.n.a.lyzed with his brush, and that his picture would show her not only features and expression, but the man's estimate of herself.

"Do you know," he said one day, coming out from behind his easel and studying her, through half-closed eyes, "I never really began to know you until now? a.n.a.lyzing you--studying you in this fas.h.i.+on, not by your words, but by your expression, your pose, the very unconscious essence of your personality--these things are illuminating."

"Can I smile," she queried obediently, "or do I have to keep my face straight?"

"You may smile for two minutes," he generously conceded, "and I'm going to come over and sit on the floor at your feet, and watch you do it."

"And under the X-ray scrutiny of this profound a.n.a.lysis," she laughed, "do you like me?"

"Wait and see," was his non-committal rejoinder.

For a few moments, neither of them spoke. He sat there gazing up, and she gazing down. Though neither of them said it, both were thinking of the changes that had taken place since, in this same room, they had first met. The man knew that many of the changes in himself were due to her, and she began to wonder vaguely if he had not also been responsible for certain differences in her.

He felt for her, besides a deep friends.h.i.+p--such a deep friends.h.i.+p that it might perhaps be even more--a measureless grat.i.tude. She had been loyal, and had turned and shaped with her deft hand and brain the rough clay of his crude personality into something that was beginning to show finish and design. Perhaps, she liked him the better because of certain obstinate qualities which, even to her persuasive influence, remained unaltered. But, if she liked him the better for these things, she yet felt that her dominion over him was not complete.

Now, as they sat there alone in the studio, a shaft of sunlight from the skylight fell on his squarely blocked chin, and he tossed his head, throwing back the long lock from his forehead. It was as though he was emphasizing with that characteristic gesture one of the things in which he had not yielded to her modeling. The long hair still fell low around his head. Just now, he was roughly dressed and paint-stained, but usually he presented the inconspicuous appearance of the well-groomed man--except for that long hair. It was not so much as a matter of personal appearance but as a reminder of the old roughness that she resented this. She had often suggested a visit to the barber, but to no avail.

"Although I am not painting you," she said with a smile, "I have been studying you, too. As you stand there before your canvas, your own personality is revealed--and I have not been entirely un.o.bservant myself."

"'And under the X-ray scrutiny of this profound a.n.a.lysis,'" he quoted with a laugh, "do you like me?"

"Wait and see," she retorted.

"At all events"--he spoke gravely--"you must try to like me a little, because I am not what I was. The person that I am is largely the creature of your own fas.h.i.+oning. Of course, you had very raw material to work with, and you can't make a silk purse of"--he broke off and smiled--"well, of me, but in time you may at least get me mercerized a little."

For no visible reason, she flushed, and her next question came a trifle eagerly:

"Do you mean that I have influenced you?"

"Influenced me, Drennie?" he repeated. "You have done more than that.

You have painted me out, and painted me over."

She shook her head, and in her eyes danced a light of subtle coquetry.

"There are things I have tried to do, and failed," she told him.