Part 6 (1/2)
She shook her head as though giving up the argument, since it was after all a matter of sentiment. Her dark, rich-coloured beauty glowed its contrast to his cool, northern type.
At present neither spoke more than a few syllables of the spiritual language of the other, yet so powerful was the attraction between them that even Creed began to feel it, while Judith, the primitive woman, all given over to instinct, promptly laid about her for something to hold and interest him.
”The young folks is a-goin' to get up a play-party at our house sometime soon,” she hazarded. ”I reckon you wouldn't come to any such as that, would you?”
”I'd be proud to come,” returned Creed at once. But he spoiled it by adding, ”I've got to get acquainted with people all over again, it's so long since I lived here; and looks like I'm not a very good mixer.”
”Will you sure come?” inquired Judith insistently, as she saw him preparing to depart.
”I sure will.”
”You could stay over night in your own house then--ain't you comin' back, ever, to live there?”
”Why, yes, I reckon I might stay there over night, but it's too far from the main road for a justice's office.”
”Well, if you're going to try to sleep in the house, it ort to be opened up and sunned a little; you better let me have the key now,” observed Judith, a.s.suming airs of proprietors.h.i.+p over his inept masculinity.
Smiling, he got the key from his pocket and handed it to her. ”Help yourself to anything you want for the party, or any other time,” he said in mountain fas.h.i.+on.
She looked down at that key with the pride of one to whom had been given the freedom of a city. Its possession enabled her to bear it with a fair degree of equanimity when Huldah Spiller, having ”jest slung her clothes anyway onto that line,” as Judith phrased it to herself, came panting and laughing across the slope between the two houses and called a gay ”Howdy!” to the visitor. The lively little red haired flirt professed greatly to desire news of certain persons in Hepzibah, and as Creed was departing sauntered unconcernedly beside him as far as the draw-bars, detaining him in conversation there as long as possible. She had an instinctive knowledge that Judith, looking on, was deeply disturbed.
Creed set his justice's office about a hundred yards from Nancy Card's cabin, on the main road that led through the two Turkey Track neighbourhoods out to Rainy Gap and the Far Cove settlement. The little shack was built of the raw yellow boards which the new saw-mill was ripping out of pine trees over on the shoulder of Big Turkey Track above Garyville. Most of the mountain dwellers still preferred log houses, and the lumber was sent down the mountain by means of a little gravity railway, whose car was warped up after each trip by a patient old mule working in a circular treadmill.
G.o.d knows with what high hopes the planks of that humble shanty were put in place, with what visions sill and window-frame were shaped and joined, Aunt Nancy going out and in at her household tasks calling good counsel over to him; Beezy, the irrepressible, adding shaving curls to her red frazzle; Little Buck, furnished with hammer and tacks, gravely a.s.sisting, pounding his fingers only part of the time. Hens were coming off. Old Nancy had a great time with notionate mothers hatching out broods under the floor or in the stable loft, and the plaintive cheep-cheep! of the ”weedies” added its note to the chorus of sounds as the children followed them about, now and then catching up a ball of fluff to pet it, undeterred by indignant clucks from the parent.
As Creed whistled over his work, he saw a shadowy train coming down the road, the people whom he should help, his people, to whose darkness he should bring light and counsel. They knew so little, and needed so much.
True, his own knowledge was not great; but it was all freely at their service. His heart swelled with good-will as he prepared to open his modest campaign of usefulness.
To come into leaders.h.i.+p naturally a man should be the logical outgrowth of his cla.s.s and time, and this Creed knew he was not. Yet he had pondered the matter deeply, and put it thus to himself: The peasant of Europe can only rise through stages of material prosperity to a point of development at which he craves intellectual attainment, or spiritual growth. But the mountaineer is always a thinker; he has even in his poverty a hearty contempt for luxury, for material gain at the expense of personality. With his disposition to philosophy, fostered by solitude and isolation, he readily overleaps those gradations, and would step at once from obscurity to the position of a man of culture were the means at hand.
”Bonbright,” remonstrated Jephthah Turrentine, in the first conversation the two held upon the subject, ”Ye cain't give people what they ain't ready to take. Ef our folks wanted law and order, don't you reckon they'd make the move to get it?”
”That's it exactly, Mr. Turrentine,” responded Creed quickly. ”They need to be taught what to want.”
”Oh, they do, do they?” inquired Jephthah with a humorous twitch of the lips. ”Well, ef you're a-goin' to set up to teach, hadn't you better have a school-house, place of a jestice's office?”
”Maybe you're right. I reckon you are--exactly right,” Creed a.s.sented thoughtfully. ”I'd studied about that considerable. I reckon I'm a more suitable age for a schoolmaster than for a justice; and the children--but that would take a long time; and I wanted to give the help where it was worst needed.”
”Oh, well, 'tain't a hangin' matter,” old Jephthah smiled at the younger man's solemn earnestness. ”Ef this new fangled buildin' o' yours don't get used for a jestice's office we can turn it into a school-house; we need one powerful bad.”
The desultory, sardonic, deep-voiced, soft-footed, mountain carpenters who worked leisurely and fitfully with Creed were always mightily amused by the exactness of the ”town feller's” ideas.
”Why lordy! Lookee hyer Creed,” remonstrated Doss Provine, over a question of matching boards and battening joints, ”ef you git yo' pen so almighty tight as that you won't git no fresh air. Man's bound to have ventilation. Course you can leave the do' open all the time like we-all do; but when yo're a-holdin' co't and sech-like maybe you'll want to shet the do' sometimes--and then whar'll ye git breath to breathe?”
”I reckon Creed knows his business,” put in the old man who was helping Doss, ”but all these here gla.s.s winders is blame foolishness to _me_. Ef ye need light, open the do'. Ef somebody comes that you don't want in, you can shet it and put up a bar. But saw the walls full o' holes an' set in gla.s.s winders, an' any feller that's got a mind to can pick ye off with a rifle ball as easy as not whilst ye set by the fire of a evenin'.”
He shook a reprehending head, h.o.a.ry with the snows of years, and containing therefore, presumably, wisdom. He had learned the necessary points of life in his environment, and as always occurs, the younger generation seemed to him lavishly reckless.
It was only old Jephthah's criticisms that Creed really minded.
”Uh-huh,” allowed Jephthah, settling his hands on his hips and surveying the yellow pine structure tolerantly; ”mighty sightly for them that likes that kind o' thing. But I hold with a good log house, becaze it's apt to be square. These here town doin's that looks like a man with a bile on his ear never did ketch me. Ef ye hew out good oak or pine timber ye won't be willin' to cut short lengths for to make such foolishness.”