Part 26 (1/2)

Suddenly Boone laid the sword on the table and dropped on his knees beside it, with his hands clasped over the hilt.

”Almighty G.o.d,” he prayed, ”give me the strength to make good--and not disappoint him.”

It was a heavy hearted young man who presented himself the next night at the house of Cyrus Spradling, and one who went as a penitent to the confessional.

Once more the father sat on the porch alone with his twilight pipe, and once more the skies behind the ridges were high curtains of pale amber.

”Ye're a sight fer sore eyes, boy,” declared the old mountaineer heartily. ”An' folks 'lows thet ye aims ter run fer office, too. Wa'al, I reckon betwixt me an' you, we kin contrive ter make sh.o.r.e of yore gettin' two votes anyhow. I pledges ye mine fer sartain.”

Boone laughed though tears would better have fitted his mood, and the old fellow chuckled at his own pleasantry.

”I reckon my gal will be out presently,” Cyrus went on. ”I've done concluded thet ye war p'int-blank right in arguing that schoolin'

wouldn't harm her none.”

But when the girl came out, the man went in and left them, as he always did, and though the plucking of banjos within told of the family full gathered, none of the other members interrupted the presumed courts.h.i.+p which was so cordially approved.

Happy stood for a moment in the doorway against a lamplit background, and Boone acknowledged to himself that she had an undeniable beauty and that she carried herself with the simple grace of a slender poplar. She was, he told himself with unsparing self-accusation, in every way worthier than he, for she had fought her battles without aid, and now she stood there smiling on him confidently out of dark eyes that made no effort to render their welcome coy with provocative concealment.

”Howdy, Boone,” she said in a voice of soft and musical cadences. ”It's been a long time since I've seen you.”

”Yes,” he answered with a painful sort of slowness, ”but now that we're both through school and back home to stay, I reckon we'll see each other oftener. Are you glad to come back, Happy?”

For a few moments the girl looked at him in the faint glow that came through the door, without response. It was as though her answer must depend on what she read in his face, and there was not light enough for its reading.

”I don't quite know, myself, Boone,” she said hesitantly at last. ”I've sort of been studying over it. How about you?”

When she had settled into a chair, he took a seat at her feet with his back against one of the posts of the porch, and replied with an a.s.sumption of certainty that he did not feel, ”A feller's bound to be glad to get back to his own folks.”

”After I'd been down there the first time and came back here again, _I_ wasn't glad,” was her candid rejoinder. ”I felt like I just couldn't bear it. Over there things were all clean, and folks paid some attention to qualities--only they didn't call 'em that. They say 'manners' at the school. Here it seemed like I'd come home to a human pig-sty--and I was plumb ashamed of my own folks. When I looked ahead and saw a lifetime of that--it seemed to me that I'd rather kill myself than go on with it.”

”You say”--Boone made the inquiry gravely--”that you felt like that at first. How do you feel now?”

”Later on I got to feelin' ashamed of myself, instead of my people,” she replied. ”I got to seein' that I was faultin' them for not having had the chance they were slavin' to give me.”

Boone bent attentively forward but he said nothing, and she went on.

”You know as well as I do that, so far, there aren't many people here that have much use for changes, but there are some few. The ground that the school sets on was given by an old man that didn't have much else to give. I remember right well what he said in the letter he wrote. It's printed in their catalogue: 'I don't look after wealth for them, but I want all young-uns taught to live right. I have heart and cravin' that our people may grow better, and I deed my land to a school as long as the Const.i.tution of the United States stands.' I reckon that's the right spirit, Boone.”

CHAPTER XXII

Still the boy sat silent, with his chin in his hand, as sits the self-torturing figure of Rodin's bronze ”Penseur”--the att.i.tude of thought which kills peace. Boone understood that unless Happy found a man who shared with her that idea of keeping the torch lit in the midst of darkness, her life might benefit others, but for herself it would be a distressing failure.

Happy had fancied him, that he realized, but he had thought of it as a phase through which she would pa.s.s with only such a scar as ephemeral affairs leave--one of quick healing.

Now the fuller significance was clear. He knew that she faced a life which her very efforts at betterment would make unspeakably bleak, unless she found companions.h.i.+p. He saw that to him she looked for release from that wretched alternative--and he had come to tell her that, beyond a deep and sincere friends.h.i.+p, he had nothing to offer her.

Such an announcement, though truthfulness requires it, is harder for being deferred.