Part 33 (2/2)
Since then occasional organizations of imitative origin had risen for a time and fallen rapidly into decay, but these were all gangs of predatory activity and outrage.
Now once more in the talk of wayside store and highroad meeting one began to hear that name ”Ku Klux” though it came vaguely from the tongue as a thing of which no man had seen any tangible evidence. If it had anywhere an actual nucleus, that centre remained as impalpable and unmaterial as fox-fire.
But the rumour of night meetings and oath-bound secrecy persisted, and some of these shreds of gossip came to Dorothy Thornton over the dooryard fence as pa.s.sersby drew rein in the shadow of the black walnut.
Nearer anxieties just now made her mind unreceptive to loose and improbable stories of that nature, and she gave them scant attention.
She found herself coming out to stand under the tree often, because it seemed to her that here she could feel the presence of the man who had gone away on a parlous mission--and it was during that time of his absence that she found more to fear in a seemingly trivial matter than in the disquieting talk of a mysterious body of avengers stirring into life.
When she looked up into the branches that were colouring toward autumnal hues she discovered here and there a small, fungus-like growth and leaves that were dying unnaturally, as though through the agency of some blight that diseased the vigour of the tree.
Her heart was ready to be frightened by small things, and through her thoughts ran that old prophecy:
”I have ye strong faithe that whilst that tree stands and grows stronge and weathers ye thunder and wind and is revered, ye stem and branches of our family alsoe will waxe stronge and robust, but that when it fails, likewise will disaster fall upon our house.”
CHAPTER XXIV
From the shallow porch of a house over which brooded the dismal spirit of neglect and s.h.i.+ftlessness a woman stood looking out with eyes that should have been young, but were old with the age of a heart and spirit gone slack.
Evidences of thrift cast overboard bespoke the dejection that held sway there, and yet the woman had pathetic remnants of a beauty not long wrecked. Her hollow cheeks and l.u.s.treless hair, the hopeless mouth with a front tooth missing, served in their unsightliness to make one forget that the features themselves were well modelled, and that the thin figure needed only the filling out of sunken curves to bring back comeliness of proportion.
The woman was twenty-two and looked forty-five, but the small, shawl-wrapped bundle of humanity that she held in her arms was her first child, and two years ago she had been accounted a neighbourhood beauty.
Under her feet the flooring of the porch creaked its complaint of disrepair and the baby in her arms raised a shrill and peevish howl of malnutrition.
As the mother clasped it closer and rocked it against her shrunken breast a second and older woman appeared in the doorway, a witch-faced slattern who inquired in a nasal whine:
”Kain't ye, no fas.h.i.+on, gentle him ter sleep, Sally?”
The mother shook her head despondently.
”My milk don't seem ter nourish him none,” she answered, and the voice which had once been sweet carried a haunting whine of tragedy.
Into the lawless tangle of the ”laurel-h.e.l.l” that came down the mountainside to encroach upon the meagre patch reclaimed for human habitation, a man who had crept yard by yard to the thicket's edge drew back at the sight of the older woman.
This man carried a rifle which he hitched along with him as he made his slow progress, and his clothes were ragged from laboured travel through rocky tangles. Small stains of blood, dried brown on his face and hands, testified to the stinging obstruction of thorned trailer and creeping briar, and his cheeks were slightly hollowed because for two days he had avoided human habitations where adequate food could be obtained.
Now he crouched there, gazing steadfastly at the house, and schooled his patience to keep vigil until the mother should come out or the other woman go away.
At least, Parish Thornton told himself, his sister and her baby were alive.
Out of the house door slouched a year-old hound puppy with shambling feet and lean ribs. It stood for a moment, whining and wagging a disconsolate tail at the woman's feet, then came suddenly to life and charged a razor-back hog that was rooting at will in what should have been a potato patch.
The hog wheeled with a startled grunt and stampeded into the thicket--almost upsetting in its headlong flight the man who was hiding there.
But the dog had stopped and stood rigidly sniffing as human scent proclaimed itself to his nostrils. The bristles rose erect as quills along his neck and shoulders as a deep growl rumbled in his throat.
That engrossment of interest and disquiet held until the woman with the baby in her arms came down the two steps, in curiosity, and crossed the yard.
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