Ann Boyd Part 11

"No, Aunt Ann; I have learned that nothing exists on earth except to produce ultimate good. The vilest crime, indirectly, is productive of good. I confidently expect to see the day that you will simply rise one step higher in your remarkable life and learn to love your enemies. Then you'll be understood by them all as I understand you, for they will then look into your heart, your _real_ heart, as I've looked into it ever since you took pity on the friendless, barefoot boy that I was and lifted me out of my degradation and breathed the breath of hope into my despondent body. And when that day comes-mark it as my prediction-you will slay the ill-will of your enemies with a glance from your eye, and they will fall conquered at your feet."

"Huh!" Ann muttered, "you say that because you are just looking at the surface of things. You see, I know a lots that you don't. Things have gone on here and are still going on that nothing earthly could stop."

"That's it, Aunt Ann," Luke King said, seriously-"it won't be anything earthly. It will be _heavenly_, and when the bolt falls you will acknowledge I am right. Now, I must go. It will be about dark when I get to my step-father's."

Ann walked with him to the gate, and as she closed it after him she held out her hand. It was quivering. "You are a good boy, Luke," she said, "but you don't know one hundredth part of what they've said and done since you left. I never wrote you."

"I don't care what they've done or said out of their shallow heads and cramped lives," King laughed-"they won't be able to affect your greater existence. You'll slay it all, Aunt Ann, with forgiveness-yes, and pity.

You'll see the day you'll pity them rather than hate them."

"I don't believe it, Luke," Ann said, her lips set firmly, and she turned back into the house. Standing in the doorway, she watched him trudge along the road, carrying his valise easily in his hand and swinging it lightly to and fro.

"What a funny idea!" she mused. "Me forgive Jane Hemingway! The boy talks that way because he's young and full of dreams, and don't know any better. If he was going through what I am he'd hate the whole world and every living thing in it."

She saw him pause, turn, and put his valise down on the side of the road. He was coming back, and she went to meet him at the gate. He came up with a smile.

"The thought's just struck me," he said, "that you'd be the best adviser in the world as to what I ought to invest my ten thousand in. You never have made a mistake in money matters that I ever heard of, Aunt Ann; but maybe you'd rather not talk about my affairs."

"I don't know why," she said, as she leaned over the gate. "I'll bet that money of yours will worry me some, for young folks these days have no caution in such matters. Ten thousand dollars-why, that is exactly the price-" She paused, her face full of sudden excitement.

"The price of what, Aunt Ann?" he asked, wonderingly.

"Why, the price of the d.i.c.kerson farm. It's up for sale. Jerry d.i.c.kerson has been wanting to leave here for the last three years, and every year he's been putting a lower and lower price on his big farm and comfortable house and every improvement. His brother's gone in the wholesale grocery business in Chattanooga, and he wants to join him. The property is worth double the money. I wouldn't like to advise you, Luke, but I'd rather see your money in that place than anything else. It would be a guarantee of an income to you as long as you lived."

"I know the place, and it's a beauty," King said, "and I'll run over there and look at it to-morrow, and if it's still to be had I may rake it in. Think of me owning one of the best plantations in the valley-_me_, Aunt Ann, your barefoot, adopted son."

Ann's head was hanging low as she walked back to the cottage door.

"'Adopted son,'" she repeated, tenderly. "As G.o.d is my Judge, I-I believe he's the only creature alive on this broad earth that I love.

Yes, I love that boy. What strange, sweet ideas he has picked up! Well, I hope he'll always be able to keep them. I had plenty of them away back at his age. My unsullied faith in mankind was the tool that dug the grave of my happiness. Poor, blind boy! he may be on the same road. He may see the day that all he believes in now will crumble into bitter powder at his touch. I wonder if G.o.d can really be _all_-powerful. It seems strange that what is said to be the highest good in this life is doing exactly what He, Himself, has failed to do-to keep His own creatures from suffering. That really _is_ odd."

XIV

Luke King was hot, damp with perspiration, and covered with the red dust of the mountain road when he reached the four-roomed cabin of his step-father among the stunted pines and gnarled wild cedars.

Old Mark Bruce sat out in front of the door. He wore no shoes nor coat, and his hickory s.h.i.+rt and trousers had been patched many times. His gray hair was long, sunburned, and dyed with the soil, and the corrugated skin of his cheeks and neck was covered with long hairs. As his step-son came into view from behind the pine-pole pig-pen, the old man uttered a grunt of surprise that brought to the doorway two young women in unadorned home-spun dresses, and a tall, lank young man in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves. It was growing dark, and they all failed to recognize the new-comer.

"I suppose you have forgotten me," King said, as he put his valise on a wash-bench by a tub of suds and a piggin of lye-soap.

"By Jacks, it's Luke King!" After that e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of the old man he and the others stared speechlessly.

"Yes, that's who I am," continued King. "How do you do, Jake?" (to the tall young man in the doorway). "We might as well shake hands for the sake of old times. You girls have grown into women since I left. I've stayed away a long time and seen a lot of the world, but I've always wanted to get back. Where is mother?"

Neither of the girls could summon up the courage to answer, and, as they gave him their stiff hands, they seemed under stress of great embarra.s.sment.

"She's poorly," said the old man, inhospitably keeping his seat. "She's had a hurtin' in 'er side from usin' that thar battlin' stick too much on dirty clothes, hoein' corn an' one thing an' another, an' a cold settled on her chest. Mary, go tell yore ma her son's turned up at last.

Huh, all of us, except her, thought you was dead an' under ground! She's always contended you was alive an' had a job somers that was payin'

enough to feed an' clothe you. How's times been a-servin' you?"

"Pretty well." King removed his valise from the bench and took its place wearily.

"Is that so? Things is worse than ever here. Whar have you been hangin'

out?"

"Seattle was the last place," King answered. "I've worked in several towns since I left here."

"Huh, about as I expected! An' I reckon you hain't got much to show fer it except what you got on yore back an' in that carpet-bag."

"That's about all."

"What you been followin'?"

"Doing newspaper work," replied the young man, coloring.

"I 'lowed you might keep at that. You used to git a dollar a day at Canton, I remember. Married?"

"No."

"Hain't able to support a woman, I reckon. Well, you've showed a great lot o' good sense thar; a feller of the wishy-washy, drift-about sort, like you, can sorter manage to s.h.i.+ft fer hisself ef he hain't hampered by a pack o' children an' a sick woman."

At this juncture Mary returned. She flushed as she caught King's expectant glance. She spoke to her father.

"She said tell 'im to come in thar."

Luke went into the front room and turned thence into a small chamber adjoining. It was windowless and dark, the only light filtering indirectly through the front room. On a low, narrow bed, beneath a ladder leading to a trap-door above, lay a woman.

"Here I am, Luke," she cried out, warningly. "Don't stumble over that pan o' water. I've been takin' a hot mustard foot-bath to try and get my blood warm. I have chilly spells every day about this time. La me! How you take me by surprise! I've prayed for little else in many a year, an'

was just about to give up. I took a little hope from some'n' old Ann Boyd said one day about you bein' well an' employed somers out West, but then I met Jane Hemingway, an' she give me the blues. She 'lowed that old Ann just pretended you was doin' well to convince folks she'd made no mistake in sendin' you to school. But, thank G.o.d, here you are alive, anyway."

"Yes, I'm as sound as a new dollar, mother." His foot came in contact with a three-legged stool in the darkness, and he recognized it as an old friend and drew it to the head of her bed and sat down. He took one of her hard, thin hands and bent over her. Should he kiss her? She had not taught him to do so as a child, and he had never done it later in his youth, not even when he had left home, but he had been out in the world and grown wiser. He had seen other men kiss their mothers, and his heart had ached. With his hand on her hard, withered cheek he turned her face towards him and pressed his lips to hers. She was much surprised, and drew herself from him instinctively, and wiped her mouth with a corner of the coverlet, but he knew she was pleased.

"Why, Luke!" she said, quickly, "what on earth do you mean? Have you gone plumb crazy?"

"I wanted to kiss you, that's all," he said, awkwardly. They were both silent for a moment, then she spoke, tremblingly: "You always was womanish and tender-like; it don't harm anybody, though; none o' the rest in this family are that way. But, my stars! I can't tell a bit how you look in this pitch-dark. Mary! oh, Mary!"

"What you want, ma?" The nearness of the speaker in the adjoining room betrayed the fact that she had been listening.

"I can't see my hand before me," answered the old woman. "I wish you'd fetch a light here. You'll find a stub of a candle in the clock under the turpentine-bottle. I hid it thar so as to have some'n' to read the Book with Sunday night if any preacher happened to drop in to hold family wors.h.i.+p."

The girl lighted the bit of tallow-dip and braced it upright in a cracked teacup with some bits of stone. She brought it in, placed it on a dry-goods box filled with cotton-seed and ears of corn, and shambled out. King's heart sank as he looked around him in the dim light. The room was only a lean-to shed walled with slabs driven into the ground and floored with puncheons. The bedstead was a crude, wooden frame supported by perpendicular saplings fastened to floor and rafters. The irregular cracks in the wall were filled with mud, rags, and newspapers.

Bunches of dried herbs, roots, and red peppers hung above his head, and piles of clothing, earth-dyed and worn to shreds, and agricultural implements lay about indiscriminately. Disturbed by the light, a hen flew from her nest behind a dismantled cloth-loom, and with a loud cackling ran out at the door. There was a square cat-hole in the wall, and through it a lank, half-starved cat crawled and came purring and rubbing against the young man's ankle.

The old woman shaded her eyes and gazed at him eagerly. "You hain't altered so overly much," she observed, "'cept your skin looks mighty fair fer a man, and yore hands feel soft."

Then she lowered her voice into a cautious whisper, and glanced furtively towards the door. "You favor your father-I don't mean Mark, but your own daddy. You are as like him as can be. He helt his head that away, an' had yore habit o' being gentle with women-folks. You've got his high temper, too. La me! that last night you was at home, an' Mark cussed you an' kicked yore writin'-paper in the fire, I didn't sleep a wink. I thought you'd gone off to borrow a gun. It was almost a relief to know you'd left, kase I seed you an' him couldn't git along. Your father was a different sort of a man, Luke, and sometimes I miss 'im sharp. He loved books an' study like you do. He had good blood in 'im; his father was a teacher an' circuit-rider. I don't know why I married Mark, unless it was kase I was afraid of bein' sent to the poor-farm, but, la me! this is about as bad."