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The Ordeal: A Mountain Romance of Tennessee, a novel by Mary Noailles Murfree |
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Chapter 14 |
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_ CHAPTER XIV Lillian, at her home in Glaston, replied by wire in that tumult of emotion which each new lure was potent to excite, despite the quicksands of baseless hope that had whelmed its many precursors. Still, she expected only another instance of deliberate and brazen fraud, or crafty and sleek imposture, or, worse still, honest mistake. The little suit-case, packed with all that the child might need, which had journeyed through so many vicissitudes, so many thousand miles, was once more in her hand as she took the train. She never forgot that long night of travel, more poignant than all her anguished journeyings that had preceded it. Hurtling through the air, it seemed, with a sense of fierce speed, the varied clangors of the train, the ringing of the rails, the frequent hoarse blasts of the whistle, the jangling of the metallic fixtures, the jarring of the window-panes, all were keenly differentiated by her exacerbated and sensitive perceptions, and each had its own peculiar irritation. She scarcely hoped that she might sleep, and it was only with a dutiful sense of conserving her strength and exerting the utmost power of her will in the endeavor, that she lay down when her berth was prepared. But the seclusion, the darkness within the curtains, oppressed her, for unwittingly the sights and sounds of the outer world had an influence to make her quit of herself, in a measure, and to focus her mind on some trivial object of the immediate present. She drew the blind at the window that she might see the scurrying landscape--the fields, the woods, the river--and now and again the sparkling lights of a city, looking in the distance as if some constellation, richly instarred with golden glamours, had fallen and lay amidst the purple glooms of the hills. For these elevations, and the frequent tunnels as the dawn drew near, gave token that the mountains were not distant; the great central basin of Tennessee lay far to the west; the engine was often climbing a steep grade, as she noted from the sound. She was going to the mountains, to the mountains--to meet what? Sometimes she clasped her hands and prayed aloud in her fear and heart-ache and woe. Then she blessed the many clamors of the train that had lacerated her tenderest fibres, for they deadened the sound of her piteous plaints, and she was a proud woman who would fain that none heard these heart-throbs of anguish but the pitying God Himself. She must have slept from time to time, she thought, for she was refreshed and calmer when she looked forth from the window and beheld the resplendent glories of the sunrise amidst the Great Smoky Mountains. Vast, far-stretching, lofty, as impressive as the idea of eternity, as awesome as the menace of doom, as silent as the unimagined purposes of creation, they lifted their august summits. They showed a deep, restful verdure in the foreground, and in more distant reaches assumed the blandest enrichments of blue, fading and fading to mere illusions of ranges, and finally dreaming away to the misty mirages of the horizon. Lillian was ready, erect, tense, waiting, for miles and miles before her destination could be reached, when suddenly the conductor appeared, his face alive with the realization of sensation. The sheriff of the county had flagged the train. He had a vehicle in waiting for Mrs. Royston, in order that she might curtail the distance, as the house where the child was held was on the verge of the Qualla Boundary, and the nearest station was still some miles further. There were few words spoken on that hasty morning drive under the vast growths of the dense and gigantic valley woods. The freshness of the forest air, the redundant bloom of the rhododendron, the glimpse now and again of a scene of unparalleled splendor of mountain range and the graces of the Oconalufty River, swirling and dandering through the sunshine as if its chant in praise of June must have a meaning translated to the dullest ear--all was for Lillian as if it had not been. The officers had cast but one glance at her tense, pale face, then turned their eyes away. The suspense, the pain, the torture of fear could end only with that signal moment of identification. Though the group respected her sorrow in silence, they themselves experienced the rigors of uncertainty and agitation when the log cabin came into view amidst the laurel, and every man of them trooped in, following her, when the door opened and she was ushered into the little, low-ceiled room, so mean, so rough, so dingy of hue. But for her it held the wealth of the universe, the joy of all the ages. There upon the bed lay her sleeping child, larger, more vigorous, than she remembered him, garbed in a quaint little garment of blue gingham; his blond hair clipped close, save for two fine curls on top, worn indeed like a scalp-lock; his long lashes on his cheeks, rosy ripe; his red lips slightly parted; his fine, firm-fleshed, white arms tossed above his head; his long, bare legs and plump, dimpled feet stretched out at their full length. His lips moved with an unformulated murmur as her hysterical, quavering scream of joyful recognition rang through the room. Then he opened his big blue eyes to find his mother bending over him. He did not recognize her at once, and after a peevish sleepy stare he pushed her aside, calling plaintively for his precious "Polly Hopkins." "Oh, bring Polly Hopkins, whoever she is!" cried the poor rebuffed mother. "And Heaven bless her if she has been good to him." But when the dismal old squaw blundered into the room, more blinded by grief and tears than infirmity, the identity of his visitor came back suddenly to him with the recollections of the past, and in all the transcendent joy of an invaluable possession he called out, "Look, mamma! Ain't her pretty? So-o pretty! Me s-sweet Polly Hopkins!" And sitting up in bed, he threw his arms around both as they knelt beside it, and all three wept locked in the same tender embrace. For Lillian would not hear of the implication of "Polly Hopkins" in the suspicion of the abduction, and the rigors of the law were annulled so far as she was concerned. On the contrary, Mrs. Royston's first effort was to ameliorate the old woman's condition, to take her at once to their home to be cherished there forever. When the ancient sibyl, affrighted at the idea of removal and change, positively refused, the mother tenderly begged that she would tell then what could be done for her. "Polly Hopkins" asked but one boon: the boy. That was the limit of her demand. Lillian was fain to solace her earnest desire to bestow rich reward by settling a comfortable annuity on her and contracting for a snug, stanch house to be built here, with every appliance that could add to her comfort, and for this "Polly Hopkins" cared not at all; for her poor home had been full of joy with "Alchie Loyston." "I am glad I can afford it," said Lillian, with a gush of tears--how long it had been since she could say she was glad of aught! "Though she will not come with me, I shall have the best specialist in the United States to leave everything and come here and take the cataracts from her eyes. At least, she shall have her sight restored." But alack, it was not "Alchie Loyston" whom she should see! As for Lillian, she would scarcely consent to be separated from the child for one moment. The authorities conceived it necessary to take his statement in private--but allowed her to stand just outside the door--before his mind could be influenced by the comments of others or the involuntary assimilation of their views with his knowledge of the facts, for there was still a large reward for any information leading to the apprehension of the murderers of Edward Briscoe. Little Archie had obviously been a witness of that catastrophe and kidnapped to prevent his revealing the identity of its perpetrators. Indeed, this was a well-founded fear, for he was very glib with the details of that momentous occasion, and he had no sooner mentioned the name of Phineas Copenny, or "Phinny 'Penny," in his infantile perversion, than the North Carolina official turned aside and indited a telegram to the sheriff of the county in Tennessee where the crime had been committed. None of his capacity to make himself understood had the boy lost by the craft of the moonshiners in placing him where he would never hear an English word and was likely to forget the language. A very coherent story he told still later when he was brought into the criminal court at Shaftesville, being the capital of the county in Tennessee where the deed was perpetrated, and confronted by Copenny. One of the moonshiners, arrested on suspicion of complicity with the murder, had turned State's evidence and had given testimony as to the details of the plot to ambush the revenue officer, and the delegation of Phineas Copenny and two others to execute it. Another testified that he had afterward heard of the murderous plan and of the mistake in the identity of the victim; but as neither of these parties was present at the catastrophe, the story of the child was relied on as an eye-witness to corroborate this proof. The admission of his testimony was hotly contested because of his tender years, despite the wide inclusiveness of the statute, and its inadequacy would possibly have resulted in a reversal of the case had an appeal been taken. But Phineas Copenny made no motion for a new trial and desired no appeal. He had feared, throughout, the possible capture and conclusive testimony of Drann and Holvey, and, lest a worse thing befall him, he accepted a sentence of a long term in the penitentiary. In view of the turpitude of "lying in wait," though a matter of inference and not proof, he doubted the saving grace of that anomaly of the Tennessee law that in order to constitute murder in the first degree the victim of a premeditated slaughter must be the person intended to be slain. There was scant doubt as to his guilt in the minds of the jury. The boy singled out Copenny from a crowd in which he had been placed to test his recognition by the little witness. He remembered the man's name, and called him by it. He gave an excited account of the shooting, although this was the least intelligible part of his testimony, for he often interrupted himself to exclaim, "Pop-gun--_bang!_" disconnectedly, as the scene renewed itself in his memory. He explained the disappearance of Mr. Briscoe and the mare by the statement that "Phinny runned out--pop-gun--_bang!_--an' bofe felled over the bluff." He called the moonshiners' cave a cellar, however, and declared that he went hunting for his mamma in a boat, and the counsel for the defence made the most of such puerilities and contradictions. But the child was very explicit concerning the riving from him of his coat by Phineas Copenny, and the plan to throw it over the bluff, and it made a distinct impression on the jury when he added that Copenny took his hat also--for no mention had been made of the discovery of the hat in the quagmire in the valley--and that Copenny had broken the elastic that held it under his chin and this snapped his cheek. He could, nevertheless, give no account how he reached the Qualla Boundary, and he broke off suddenly, dimpling, bright-eyed, and roseate, to ask the judge if he knew "Polly Hopkins." "Her is so-o pretty!" he cried out in tender regret. Mrs. Royston was nettled by the laughter elicited by this query, with its obvious fervor of enthusiasm, for she divined that the merriment of the crowd was charged with ridicule of the incongruous object of his callow adoration, the forlorn old fortune-teller, who had been so gentle and so generous, albeit so alien to the civilization of the present day. Lillian could but realize that the ministering angel is of no time or nationality, and the transcendent beauty of its apparition may well be a matter of spiritual and not merely visual perception. The heart of a woman is no undecipherable palimpsest for the successive register of fleeting impressions. Here was written in indelible script the tenderest thought of affection, the kindest charity, and all the soft graces of fostering sentiment, with no compensatory values of reciprocal loyalty, or the imposing characters of authority. For the old squaw could not even understand the justice of the dispensation; it seemed to her that with impunity she was deserted, denied; her plea was a jest to right reason; her love, in which the child had once rejoiced, was superfluous, worthless, now that he had come to his own; her poor hearth, which his bright infantile smiles had richly illumined, was dark, desolate; the inexorable logic of law and worldly advantages was beyond her ken, and she felt that she had only rescued and cherished the little waif that she herself might be lacerated by grief and bereaved for his sake, and fain to beat her breast and to heap ashes on her head. Poor, poor, "pretty Polly Hopkins!" Cheering news of her, however, now and again came from the mountains. The noted oculist, after his final visit to her, stopped over in Glaston to report to Mrs. Royston the complete success of the treatment, knowing the gratification the details would afford. He brought, too, the intelligence that she was free of her old torture from rheumatism, which had been of the muscular sort, resulting from exposure and deprivation, and had yielded to the comforts of the trig, close house that Mrs. Royston had built for her, and the abundance of warm furnishings and nutritious food, a degree of luxury indeed which was hardly known elsewhere in the Boundary. Her prosperity had evolved the equivocal advantage of restoring her prestige as a sibyl, and she had entered upon a new lease of the practice of the dark arts of fortune-telling and working charms and spells. He gave a humorous account of her expressions of gratitude to him for the restoration of her sight, which facetiousness Bayne, who chanced to be present, perceived did not add to Mrs. Royston's pleasure; for she regarded "Polly Hopkins" very seriously indeed. Before the physician quitted the "Boundary," the old squaw bestowed upon him, through the interpreter, certain secret magic formulae for working enchantments on his city patients, and thereby effecting rapid cures and filling his coffers. Knowing of Bayne's hobby for linguistics, the oculist jocularly turned these archaic curios over to him. In that connection Bayne recounted that after the child had departed with his mother from the mountains, he himself being detained by final arrangements with the authorities, his interest in researches into the arcana of old Cherokee customs had been revived by seeing the sibyl seated on the ground, swaying and wailing and moaning, and casting ashes on her head as if making her mourning for the dead. At the time he had marked the parity of the observance with the Hebraic usage, and he intended to make an examination into the origin of the curious tradition of the identity of the American Indians with the lost tribes of Israel. Train-time forced the oculist to a hasty leave-taking, and it was only after he was gone that Bayne noticed the evidence of restrained emotion in Lillian's face. Bayne had been about to conclude his own call, which concerned a matter of business, the claim of a reward which he considered fraudulent, but he turned at the door, his hat in his hand and came back, leaning against the mantel-piece opposite her. He noted that the tears stood deep in her eyes. "I can't bear to think of her unhappiness," she said, "when I consider all I owe to her." "You had better consider what you owe to me," Bayne gayly retorted, seeking to effect a diversion. "Oh, you, you! But for _you_! When I think of what you have done for Archie, and for me, I could fall down at your feet and worship you!" she exclaimed with tearful fervor. "Oh, oh, this is so sudden!" he cried, with a touch of his old whimsicality. "Don't--don't make fun of me!" she expostulated. "Bless you, I am serious indeed! I expected something like this, but not so soon; and, in fact, I expected to say it _myself_--but I could not have done it better!" "Did you really intend to say it, to come back to me?" She gazed appealingly at him. "As soon as we had time for such trifles." He would not enter into her saddened mood. "But one thing I want to know: did you _really_ intend it, or was it only my cruel affliction that brought you back to me--motives of sheer humanity--because no one else would help me, because they thought I was the prey of frenzied fancies to believe that Archie still lived?" Julian was silent for a moment, obviously hesitating. Then he reluctantly admitted, "No, I should never have come back." She threw herself back in the chair with a little pathetic sigh. He looked at her with a smile at once tender and whimsical. She too smiled faintly, then took up the theme anew. "But, Julian," she persisted, "it is very painful to reflect that you had deliberately shut me out of your heart forever; that when you saw me again you had no impulse to renew the past. Had you none, really?" The temptation was strong to give her the reassurance she craved. She had suffered so bitterly that a pang of merely sentimental woe seemed a gratuitous cruelty. Yet he was resolved that there should never come the shadow of falsehood between them. He was glad--joyous! The future should make brave amends for the past. He sought to cast off the bitter retrospection with which she had invested the situation. His gay laughter rang out. "Madam, I will not deceive you! I intended that you should _never_ get another shot at me; but circumstances have been too much for me--and I have ceased to struggle against them." [THE END] _ |
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