CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH DAVID ACCOMPANIES CASSANDRA ON AN ERRAND OF MERCY
Filled with the enthusiasm of his thoughts, David climbed too rapidly, and now he found he must take the more gradual rise of the mule trail without haste. His cap thrust in his pocket, the breeze lifted his hair and dried the perspiration which would still come with any too eager exertion. But why should he care? Even to be alive these days was joy. This was continually the refrain of his heart, nor had he begun to exhaust his resources for entertainment in his solitary life.
Never were the days too long. Each was filled with such new and lively interest as to preclude the thought of ennui. To provide against it, he had sent for books – more than he had had time to read in all the busy days of the last three years. These and his microscope and his surgical instruments had been brought him on a mule team by Jerry Carew, who did his "toting" for him, fetching all he needed for work or comfort, in this way, from the nearest station where goods could be sent until the hotel opened in the early summer. Not that he needed them, but that, as an artist loves to keep a supply of paints and canvas, or a writer – even when idle – is happier to know that he has at hand plenty of pens and blank paper, he liked to have them.
Thus far he had felt no more need of his books than he had for his surgical instruments, but now he was glad he had them for the sake of the girl who was "that sot on all such." He would open the box the moment he had eaten, and look them over. The little brother should take them down to her one at a time – or better – he would take them himself and watch the smile which came so rarely and sweetly to play about her lips, and in her eyes, and vanish. Surely he had a right to that for his pains.
He heard the sound of rapid hoof beats approaching across the level space from the cabin above him, and looking up, as if conjured from his innermost thought, he saw her coming, allowing the colt to swing along as he would. Her bonnet hung by the strings from her arm, her hair blew in crinkling wisps across her face, and the rapid exercise had brought roses into the creamy whiteness of her skin. She kept to the brow of the ridge and would have passed him unseeing, her eyes fixed on the distant hills, had he not called to her in his clear Alpine jodel.
She reined in sharply and, slipping from the saddle, walked quickly to him, leading the colt, which was warm and panting as if he had carried her a good distance at that pace.
"Oh, Doctor Thryng, we need you right bad. That's why I took this way home. Have you been to the house?"
"Yes. I have just come from there."
"Is mother all right?"
"Doing splendidly." He waited, and she lifted her face to him anxiously.
"We need you bad, Doctor."
"Yes – but not you – you're not – " he began stupidly.
"It's Mr. Irwin. I went there to see could I help any, and seemed like I couldn't get here soon enough. When I found you were not at home, I was that troubled. Can – can you go up there and see why I can't rest for thinking he's a heap worse than he reckons? He thinks he's better, but – but – "
"Come in and rest and tell me about it."
"Mistress Irwin isn't quite well, and I must go back as soon as I can get everything done at home. I must get dinner for mother and Hoyle. You have been that kind to mother – I thought – I thought – if you could only see him – they can't spare him to die."
"Indeed, I'll go, gladly. But you must tell me more, so that I may know what to take with me. What is the matter with the man? Is he ill or hurt? Let me – oh, you are an independent young woman."
She had turned from him to mount, and he stepped forward with outstretched hand to aid her, but, in a breath, not seeing his offer, she placed her two hands on the horn of the saddle, and from the slight rise of ground whereon she stood, with one agile spring, landed easily in the saddle and wheeled about.
"He's been cutting trees to clear a patch for corn, and some way he hurt his foot, and he's been lying there nigh a week with the misery. Last evening she sent one of the children for mother, not knowing she was bad herself, so I went for Aunt Sally; but she was gone, so I rode on to the Irwins to see could I help. He said he wasn't suffering so much to-day, and it made my heart just stop to hear that, when he couldn't lift himself. You see, my stepfather – he – he was shot in the arm, and right soon when the misery left him, he died, so I didn't say much – but on the way home I thought of you, and I came here fast. We know so little here on the mountains," she added sadly, as she looked earnestly down at him.
"You have acted wisely. Just ride on, Miss Cassandra, and I will follow as soon as – "
"Come down with me now and have dinnah at our place. Then we can start togethah."
"Thank you, I will. You are more expert in the art of dinner getting than I am, so we will lose less time." He laughed and was rewarded with the flash of a grateful smile as she started on without another word.
It took David but a few minutes to select what articles he suspected, from her account, might be required. He hurried his preparations, and, being his own groom, stable boy, and man-of-all-work, he was very busy about it.
As a strain of music or a floating melody will linger in the background with insistent repetition, while the brain is at the same time busily occupied with surface affairs, so he found himself repeating some of her quaint phrases, and seeing her eyes – the wisps of wind-blown hair – and the smile on her lips, as she turned away, like an accompaniment to all he was thinking and doing.
Soon, equipped for whatever the emergency might demand, he was at the widow's door. His horse nickered and stretched out his nose toward Cassandra's colt as if glad to have once more a little horse companionship. Side by side they stood, with bridles slipped back and hung to their saddles, while they crunched contentedly at the corn on the ear, which Hoyle had brought them.
While at dinner, Cassandra showed David her books, pleased that he asked to see them. "I brought them to study, should I get time. It's right hard to give up hope – " she glanced at her mother and lowered her voice. "To stop – anyhow – I thought I might teach Hoyle a little."
"Ah, these are mostly school-books," he said, glancing them over.
"Yes, I was at school this time – near Farington it was. Once I stayed with Bishop Towahs and helped do housework. I could learn a heap there – between times. They let me have all the books I wanted to read." She looked lovingly at her few precious school-books. "I haven't touched these since I got back – we're that busy."
Then she resumed her work about the house, cooking at the fireplace, waiting upon David, and serving her mother, while directing Hoyle what to do, should she be detained that night. He demurred and hung about her, begging her not to stay.
"I won't, son, without I can't help it. You won't care so much now – mother's not bad like she was."
"Yas, I will," he mourned.
"I reckon I'll have to call you 'baby' again," said his mother. "You're gettin' that babyfied since Cass come back doin' all fer ye. You has a heap o' company. Thar's the cow to keer fer, 'n' ol' Pete hollerin' at ye, an' the chickens tellin' how many aigs they've laid fer ye. Run now. Thar's ol' Frizzle cacklin'. Get the aig, an' we'll send hit to the pore sick man. Thar, Cass," she added, as Hoyle ran out, half ashamed, to do her bidding – "hit's your own fault fer makin' such a baby of him. I 'low you betteh take 'long a few fresh aigs; likely they'll need 'em, so triflin' they be. I don't guess you'll find a thing in the house fer him to eat."
Cassandra packed one of her oddly shaped little baskets, as her mother suggested, for the sadly demoralized and distracted family to which they were going, and tucked in with the rest the warm, newly laid egg Hoyle brought her, smiling indulgently, and kissing his upturned face as she took it from him.
Toward David she was always entirely simple and natural, except when abashed by his speech, which seemed to her most elaborate and sometimes mystifying. She would pause and gaze on him an instant when he extended to her a courtesy, as if to give it its exact value. Not that she in the least distrusted him, quite the contrary, but that she was wholly unused to hearing phrased courtesies, or enthusiasms expressed in the form of words.
She had seen something of it in the bishop's pretty complimentary pleasantries with his wife, but David's manner of handing her a chair, offering her a suggestion – with a "May I be allowed?" was foreign to her, and she accepted such remarks with a moment's hesitation and a certain aloofness hardly understood by him.
He found himself treating her with a measure of freedom from the constraint which men often place upon themselves because of the recognition of the personal element which will obtrude between them and femininity in general. He recognized the reason for this in her absolute lack of coquetry toward him, but analyze the phenomenon, as yet, he could not.
To her he was a being from another world, strange and delightful, but set as far from her as if the sea divided them. She turned toward him sweet, expectant eyes. She listened attentively, gropingly sometimes. She would understand him if she could, – would learn from him and trust him implicitly, – but her femininity never obtruded itself. Her personality seemed to be enclosed within herself and never to lean toward him with the subtile flattery men feel and like to awaken, but which they often fear to arouse when they wish to remain themselves unstirred. Her dignified poise and perfect freedom from all arts to attract his favor and attention pleased him, but while it gave him the safe and unconstrained feeling when with her, it still piqued his man's nature a little to see her so capable of showing tenderness to her own, yet so unstirred by himself.
Cassandra had never been up to his cabin when he was there, until to-day, since the morning she came to consult him about Frale, nor had that young man's name been uttered between them. David had said nothing to her of the return of the valise, not wishing to touch on the subject unless she gave the opportunity for him to ask what she knew about it. Now, since his morning's talk with her mother had envisioned an ideal, and shown a glory beyond, he was glad to have this opportunity of being alone with her and of sounding her depths.
For a long time they rode in silence, and he remembered her mother's words, "He may have told Cass, but she is that still." She carried her basket carefully before her on the pommel of her saddle. Gradually the large sunbonnet which quite hid her face slipped back, and the sun lighted the bronze tints of her hair. As he rode at her side he studied her watchfully, so simply dressed in homespun material which had faded from its original color to a sort of turquoise green. The stuff was heavy and clung closely to her figure, and she rode easily, perched on her small, old-fashioned side-saddle, swaying with lithe movement to the motion of her horse. She wore no wrap, only a soft silk kerchief knotted about her neck, the fluttering ends of which caressed her chin.
Her cheeks became rosy with the exercise, and her gray eyes, under the green pines and among the dense laurel thickets, took on a warm, luminous green tint like the hue of her dress. David at last found it difficult to keep his eyes from her, – this veritable flower of the wilderness, – and all this time no word had been spoken between them. How impersonal and far away from him she seemed! While he was filled with interest in her and eager to learn the secret springs of her life, she was riding on and on, swaying to her horse as a flower on its slender stem sways in a breeze, as undisturbed by him as if she were not a human breathing girl, subject to man's dominating power.
Was she, then, so utterly untouched by his masculine presence? he wondered. If he did not speak first, would she keep silent forever? Should he wait and see? Should he will her to speak and of herself unfold to him?
Suddenly she turned and looked clearly and pleasantly in his eyes. "We'll be on a straight road for a piece after this hill; shall we hurry a little then?"
"Certainly, if you think best. You set the pace, and I'll follow." Again silence fell.
"Do you feel in a hurry?" he asked at length.
"I would like to get there soon. We can't tell what might be." She pressed her hand an instant to her throat and drew in her breath as if something hurt her.
"What is it?" he asked, drawing his horse nearer.
"Nothing. Only I wish we were there now."
"You are suffering in anticipation, and it isn't necessary. Better not, indeed. Think of something else."
"Yes, suh." The two little words sounded humbly submissive. He had never been so baffled in an endeavor to bring another soul into a mood responsive to his own. This gentle acquiescence was not what he wished, but that she should reveal herself and betray to him even a hint – a gleam – of the deep undercurrent of her life.
Suddenly they emerged on the crest of a narrow ridge from which they could see off over range after range of mountain peaks on one side, growing dimmer, bluer, and more evanescent until lost in a heavenly distance, and on the other side a valley dropping down and down into a deep and purple gloom richly wooded and dense, surrounded by precipices topped with scrubby, wind-blown pines and oaks – a wild and rocky descent into mystery and seclusion. Here and there a slender thread of smoke, intensely blue, rose circling and filtering through the purple density against a black-green background of hemlocks.
Contrasted with the view on the other side, so celestially fair, this seemed to present something sinister, yet weirdly beautiful – a baffling, untamed wilderness. Along this ridge the road ran straight before them for a distance, stony and bleak, and the air swept over it sweet and strong from the sea, far away.
"Wait – wait a moment," he called, as his panting horse rounded the last curve of the climb, and she had already put her own to a gallop. She reined in sharply and came back to him, a glowing vision. "Stand a moment near me. We'll let our horses rest a bit and ourselves, too. There is strength and vitality in this air; breathe it in deeply. What joy to be alive!"
She came near, and their horses held quiet communion, putting their noses together contentedly. Cassandra lifted her head high and turned her face toward the billowed mountains, and did what Thryng had not known her to do, what he had wondered if she ever did – She laughed – laughed aloud and joyously.
"Why do you laugh?" he asked, and laughed with her.
"I'm that glad all at once. I don't know why. If the mountains could feel and be glad, seems like they'd be laughing now away off there by the sea. I wonder will I ever see the ocean."
"Of course you will. You are not going to live always shut up in these mountains. Laugh again. Let me hear you."
But she turned on him startled eyes. "I clean forgot that poor man down below, so like to die I am 'most afraid to get back there. Look down. It must have been in a place like that where Christian slew Apollyon in the dark valley, like I was reading to Hoyle last night."
"Does he live down in there? I mean the man Irwin – not Apollyon. He's dead, for Christian slew him."
"Yes, the Irwins live there. See yonder that spot of cleared red ground? There's their place. The house is hid by the dark trees nigh the red spot. Can you make it out?"
"Yes, but I call that far."
"It's easy riding. Shall we go on? I'm that frightened – we'd better hurry."
"Is that your way when you are afraid to do a thing; you hurry to do it all the more?"
"Seems like we have to a heap of times. Seems like if I were only a man, I could be brave, but being a girl so, it is right hard."
She started her horse to a gallop, and side by side they hurried over the level top of the ridge – to Thryng an exhilarating moment, to her a speeding toward some terrible, unknown trial.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH CASSANDRA AND DAVID VISIT THE HOME OF DECATUR IRWIN
Soon the way became steep and difficult and the path so narrow they were forced to go single file. Then Cassandra led and David followed. They passed no dwellings, and even the little home to which they were going was lost to view. He wondered if she were not weary, remembering that she had been over the distance twice before that day, and begged her, as he had done when they set out, to allow him to carry the basket, but still she would not.
"I never think of it. I often carry things this way. – We have to here in the mountains." She glanced back at him and smiled. "I reckon you find it hard because you are not used to living like we do; we're soon there now, see yonder?"
A turn in the path brought them in sight of the cabin, set in its bare, desolate patch of red soil. About the door swarmed unkempt children of all sizes, as bees hang out of an over-filled hive, the largest not more than twelve years old, and the youngest carried on the mother's arm. It was David's first visit to one of the poorest of the mountain homes, and he surveyed the scene before him with dismay.
Below the house was a spring, and there, suspended from the long-reaching branch of a huge beech tree, now leafless and bare, a great, black iron pot swung by a chain over a fire built on the ground among a heap of stones. On a board at one side lay wet, gray garments, twisted in knots as they had been wrung out of the soapy water. The woman had been washing, and the vapor was rising from the black pot of boiling suds, but, seeing their approach, she had gone to her door, her babe on her arm and the other children trooping at her heels and clinging to her skirts. They peered up from under frowzy, overhanging locks of hair like a group of ragged, bedraggled Scotch terriers.
The mother herself seemed scarcely older than the oldest, and Thryng regarded her with amazement when he noticed her infantile, undeveloped face and learned that she had brought into the world all those who clustered about her. His amazement grew as he entered the dark little cabin and saw that they must all eat and sleep in its one small room, which they seemed to fill to overflowing as they crowded in after him, accompanied by three lean hounds, who sniffed suspiciously at his leggings.
Far in the darkest corner lay the father on a pallet of corn-husks covered with soiled bedclothing. The windows were mere holes in the walls, unglazed, unframed, and closed at night or in bad weather by wooden shutters, when the room was lighted only by the flames from the now black and empty fireplace. Here, while mother and children were out by "the branch" washing, the injured man lay alone, stoically patient, declaring that his "laig" was some better, that he did not feel "so much misery in hit as yesterday."
Thryng had seen much squalor and wretchedness, but never before in a home in the country where women and children were to be found. For a moment he looked helplessly at the silent, staring group, and at the man, who feebly tried to indicate to his wife the extending of some courtesy to the stranger.
"Set a cheer, Polly," he said weakly, offering his great hand. "You are right welcome, suh. Are you visitin' these parts?"
"This is the doctor I was telling you about, Cate, – Doctor Thryng. I begged him to come up and see could he do anything for you," said Cassandra. Then she urged the woman to go back to her work and take the children with her. "Doctor and I will look after your old man awhile." She succeeded in clearing the place of all but one lean hound, who continued to stand by his master and lick his hand, whining presciently, and one or two of the children, who lingered around the door to peer in curiously at the doctor.
A shutter near the bed was tightly closed and, in struggling to open it, Cassandra discovered it was broken at the hinges and had been nailed in place. David flew to her assistance and, wrenching out the nails, tore it free, letting in a flood of light upon the wretchedness around them. Then he turned his attention to the patient, a man of powerful frame, but lean almost to emaciation, who watched the young physician's face silently with widely opened blue eyes, their pale color intensified by the surrounding shock of matted, curling, vividly red hair and beard.
It required but a few moments to ascertain that the man's condition was indeed critical. Cassandra had gone out and now returned with her hands full of dry pine sticks. Bending on one knee before the empty fireplace, she arranged them and hung a kettle over them full of fresh water. David turned and watched her light the fire.
"Good. We shall need hot water immediately. How long since you have eaten?" he asked the man.
"He hain't eat nothing all day," said the wife, who had returned and again stood in the door with all her flock, gazing at him. Then the woman grew plaintively garrulous about the trouble she had had "doin' fer him," and begged David to tell her "could he he'p 'im." At last Thryng put a hurried end to her talk by saying he could do nothing – nothing at all for her old man, unless she took herself and the children all away. She looked terror-stricken, and her mouth drew together in a stubborn, resentful line as if in some way he had precipitated ill luck upon them by his coming. Cassandra at once took her basket and walked out toward the stream, and they all followed, leaving David and the father in sole possession of the place.
Then he turned to the bed and began a kindly explanation. He found the man more intelligent and much more tractable than the woman, but it was hard to make him believe that he must inevitably lose either his life or his foot, and that they had not an hour – not a half hour – to spare, but must decide at once. David's manner, gentle, but firmly urgent, at last succeeded. The big man broke down and wept weakly, but yielded; only he stipulated that his wife must not be told.
"No, no! She and the children must be kept away; but I need help. Is there no one – no man whom we can get to come here quickly?"
"They is nobody – naw – I reckon not."
David was distressed, but he searched about until he found an old battered pail in which to prepare his antiseptic, and busied himself in replenishing the fire and boiling the water; all the time his every move was watched by the hound and the pathetic blue eyes of his master.
Soon Cassandra returned, to David's great relief, alone. She smiled as she looked in his face, and spoke quietly: "I told her to take the children and gather dock and mullein leaves and such like to make tea for her old man, and if she'd stay awhile, I'd look after him and have supper for them when they got back. Is there anything I can do now?"
David was troubled indeed, but what could he do? He explained his need of her quickly, in low tones, outside the door. "I believe you are strong and brave and can do it as well as a man, but I hate to ask it of you. There is not time to wait. It must be done to-day, now."
"I'll help you," she said simply, and walked into the hut. She had become deadly pale, and he followed her and placed his fingers on her pulse, holding her hand and looking down in her eyes.
"You trust me?" he asked.
"Oh, yes. I must."
"Yes – you must – dear child. You are all right. Don't be troubled, but just think we are trying to save his life. Look at me now, and take in all I say."
Then he placed her with her back to his work, taught her how to count the man's pulse and to give the ether; but the patient demurred. He would not take it.
"Naw, I kin stand hit. Go ahead, Doctor."
"See here, Cate Irwin. You are bound to do as Doctor Thryng says or die," she said, bending over him. "Take this, and I'll sit by you every minute and never take my hand off yours. Stop tossing. There!" He obeyed her, and she sat rigidly still and waited.
The moments passed in absolute silence. Her heart pounded in her breast and she grew cold, but never took her eyes from the still, deathlike face before her. In her heart she was praying – praying to be strong enough to endure the horror of it – not to faint nor fall – until at last it seemed to her that she had turned to stone in her place; but all the time she could feel the faintly beating pulse beneath her fingers, and kept repeating David's words: "We are trying to save his life – we are trying to save his life."
David finished. Moving rapidly about, he washed, covered, and carried away, and set all in order so that nothing betrayed his grewsome task. Then he came to her and took both her cold hands in his warm ones and led her to the door. She swayed and walked weakly. He supported her with his arm and, once out in the sweet air, she quickly recovered. He praised her warmly, eagerly, taking her hands in his, and for the first time, as the faint rose crept into her cheeks, he felt her to be moved by his words; but she only smiled as she drew her hands away and turned toward the house.
"They'll be back directly, and I promised to have something for them to eat."
"Then I'll help you, for our man is coming out all right now, and I feel – if he can have any kind of care – he will live."
The sky had become overcast with heavy clouds and the wind had risen, blowing cold from the north. David replaced the shutter he had torn off and mended the fire with fuel he found scattered about the yard; while Cassandra swept and set the place in order and the resuscitated patient looked about a room neater and more homelike than he had ever slept in before. Cassandra searched out a few articles with which to prepare a meal – the usual food of the mountain poor – salt pork, and corn-meal mixed with water and salt and baked in the ashes. David watched her as she moved about the dark cabin, lighted only by the fitful flames of the fireplace, to perform those gracious, homely tasks, and would have helped her, but he could not.
At last the woman and her brood came streaming in, and Cassandra and the doctor were glad to escape into the outer air. He tried to make the mother understand his directions as to the care of her husband, but her passive "Yas, suh" did not reassure him that his wishes would be carried out, and his hopes for the man's recovery grew less as he realized the conditions of the home. After riding a short distance, he turned to Cassandra.
"Won't you go back and make her understand that he is to be left absolutely alone? Scare her into making the children keep away from his bed, and not climb into it. You made him do as I wished, with only a word, and maybe you can do something with her. I can't."
She turned back, and David watched her at the door talking with the woman, who came out to her and handed her a bundle of something tied in a meal sack. He wondered what it might be, and Cassandra explained.
"These are the yarbs I sent her and the children aftah. I didn't know how to rid the cabin of them without I sent for something, and now I don't know what to do with these. We – we're obliged to use them some way." She hesitated – "I reckon I didn't do right telling her that – do you guess? I had to make out like you needed them and had sent back for them; it – it wouldn't do to mad her – not one of her sort." Her head drooped with shame and she added pleadingly, "Mother has used these plants for making tea for sick folks – but – "
He rode to her side and lifted the unwieldy load to his own horse, "Be ye wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove," he said, laughing.
"How do you mean?"
"You were wise. You did right where I would only have done harm and been brutal. Can't you see these have already served their purpose?"
"I don't understand."
"You told her to get them because you wished to make her think she was doing something for her husband, didn't you? And you couldn't say to her that she would help most by taking herself out of the way, could you? She could not understand, and so they have served their purpose as a means of getting her quietly and harmlessly away so we could properly do our work."
"But I didn't say so – not rightly; I made her think – "
"Never mind what you said or made her think. You did right, God knows. We are all made to work out good – often when we think erroneously, just as you made her uncomprehendingly do what she ought. If ever she grows wise enough to understand, well and good; if not, no harm is done."
Cassandra listened, but doubtingly. At last she stopped her horse. "If you can't use them, I feel like I ought to go back and explain," she said. Her face gleamed whitely out of the gathering dusk, and he saw her shiver in the cold and bitter wind. He was more warmly dressed than she, and still he felt it cut through him icily.
"No. You shall not go back one step. It would be a useless waste of your time and strength. Later, if you still feel that you must, you can explain. Come."
She yielded, touched her horse lightly with her whip, and they hurried on. The night was rapidly closing in, the thick, dark shadows creeping up from the gorges below as they climbed the rugged steep they had descended three hours earlier. They picked their way in silence, she ahead, and he following closely. He wondered what might be her thoughts, and if she had inherited, along with much else that he could perceive, the Puritan conscience which had possibly driven some ancestor here to live undisturbed of his precious scruples.
When they emerged at last on the level ridge where she had so joyously laughed out, Thryng hurried forward and again rode at her side. She sat wearily now, holding the reins with chilled hands. Had she forgotten the happy moment? He had not. The wind blew more shrewdly past them, and a few drops of rain, large and icy cold, struck their faces.
"Put these on your hands, please," he begged, pulling off his thick gloves; but she would not.