Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 151, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1910 — THE QUICKENING [ARTICLE]

THE QUICKENING

FRANCIS LYNDE

CHAPTER IX.—(Continued.) “I ain’t hurt none," she said, gravely. And then: ”T reckon we'd better be gettln' them berries. It looks like it might shower some; and paw 'll kill me it I ain’t home time to get his supper.” Here was an end of the playtime, and Tom helped industriously with the ber-ry-picking, wondering the while why she kept her face tunned from him, and, why his brain was in such a turmoil, and why his hands shook so if they happened to touch hers in reaching for the piggin. But this new mood of hers was more, unapproachable than the other; and it was not until the piggin was filled, and they had begun to retrace their steps together through the fragrant wood, that she let him see her eyes again, and told him soberly of her troubles: how she was 15 and could neither read nor write; how the workmen’s children in Gordonia hooted at her and called her a mountain cracker when she went down to buy meal or to fill the molasses jug; and, lastly, how, since her mother had died, her father had worked little and drunk much, till at times there was nothing to eat save the potatoes she raised in the little patch back of the cabin, and the berries she picked on the mountain side. ‘‘l hain’t never told anybody afore, and you mustn’t tell, Tom. But times I’m scared paw 'll up and kill me when —when he ain’t feelin’ just right. He’s some good to me when he ain’t redeyed; but that ain’t very often, nowadays.” Tom’s heart swelled within him; and this time it was not the heart of the Pharisee. There is no lure known to the man part of the race that is half so potent as the tale of a woman in trouble. “Does—does he beat you. Nan?” he asked; and there was. wrathful horror in his voice. For answer she bent her head and parted the thick black locks over a long scar. “That’s where he give me one with the skillet, a year come Christmas. And this”—opening her frock to show him a black-and-blue bruise on her breast—"it what I got only day afore yisterday.” Tom was burning with indignant compassion, and bursting because he could think of no adequate way of expressing it. In all his fifteen years no one had ever leaned on his before, and the sense of protectorship over this abused one budded and bloomed like a juggler’s rose, “I wish I could take you home with me, Nan,” he said, simply. “No, you don’t,” she said, firmly. “Tour mammy would call me a little heathen, same as she used to; and I .reckon that’s what I am—l hain’t had no chanst to be anything else. And j ou-’re goin’ to'be a preacher, Tom.” Why did it rouse a dull anger in his heart to be thus reminded of his own scarce-cooled pledge made on his knees under the shadowing cedars? He Could not tell; but the fact remained. "You hear me, Nan; I’m going to take care of you when I’m able. Vo matter what happens, I’m going to take care of you,” was what he said; and a low rumbling of thunder and a spattering of rain on the leaves punctuated the promise. She looked away and was silent. Then, when the rain began to come faster: “Let’s run, Tom. I don’t mind gettin’ wet; but you mustn’t." They reached the great rock sheltering the barrel-spring before the shower broke in earnest, and Tom led the way to ttie right. Half-way up its southern face the big boulder held a water-worn cavity, round, and deeply hollowed, and carpeted with cedar needles. Tom climbed In first and gave her a hand from the mouth of the little cavern. When she was up and in, there was room in the nest-llke hollow, but none to spare. And on the instant the summer shower shut down upon the mountain side and closed the cave mouth as with a thick curtain. There was no speech in that little interval of cloud-lowering and cloudlifting. The boy tried for it, would have taken up the confidences where the storm-coming had broken them off; but it was blankly impossible. All the curious thrills foregone seemed to culminate now in a single burning desire: to have it rain for ever, that he might nestle there lh the hollow of the great rock with Nan so close to him that he could feel the warmth of her body and the quick beating of her heart against his arm. Yet the sleeping conscience did not ■tir. The moment of recognition was withheld even when the cloud curtain began to lift and he could see the long lashes drooped over the dark eyes, and the flush in the brown cheek matching his own. “Nan!” he whispered, catching his breath; "you’re—you're the ” She slipped , away from him before he could find the word, and a moment later she was calling to him from below that the rain was over and she must hurry. He walked beside her to the door of the’miserable log shack under the second cliff, still strangely shaken, but striving manfully to be himself again. The needed fillip came when the mountaineer staggered to the threshold. In times past, Tom would quickly have put distance between himself and Tike Bryerson in the squirrel-eyed stage of intoxication. But now his promise to Nan was behind him, and the Gordon blood was to the fore. “It was my fault that Nan stayed so long,” he said, bravely; and he. was immensely relieved when Bryerson. making quite sure di* his Identity, oecame effusively hospitable. "Cap’n Gordon’s boy—’f ' cou’so; didn’t make out to know ye, ’t- firs’. Come awn in the house an’ sit a spell; come in, I say!” / - /

Again, for Nan’s sake, Tom could do no less. It was the final plunge. The boy wafti come of abstinent stock, which was possibly the reason why the smell of the raw corn liquor with which the cabin reeked gripped him so fiercely. Be that as it may, he could make but a feeble resistance when the tipsy mountaineer pressed him to drink; and the slight barrier went down altogether when he saw the appealing look in Nans eyes. Straightway he divined that there would be consequences for !J!L Whe P he was sone if the maudlin demon should be aroused in her father. So he put the tin cup to his lips and coughed and strangled over a slnglo the flery ’ nausea ting stuff; did this for the girl’s sake, and then ro .!t a u. d d6d away from mountain with his heart ablaze and a fearful c amor as of the judgment trumpet sounding In his ears. The next morning he came holloweyed to his breakfast, and when the chance offered, besought his father to give him one of the many boy’s Jobs in the iron plant during the summer vacation—asked and obtained. And nei-ther-the hotel on the mountain top nor he hovel cabin under the second cliff k m ° re the lon S summer through. CHAPTER XIt was Just before the Christmas holidays, in his fourth year of the sectar,that Tom Gordon was expelled. Writing to the Reverend Silas at the moment of Tom’s dismissal, the principal could voice only his regret and disappointment. It was a most singular case. During his first and second ITII ,T ° m , aS had set a hlgh mark and , had , a ta ned to it- On the spiritual side he had been somewhat non-committal, to be sure, but to offset this, he had ?3 y / nt , ere . 3ted ln the Preparatory theological studies, or at least he had appeared to be. But on his return from his first summer spent at home there was a marked change in him, due, so thought Doctor Tollivar, to his association with the rougher class of workmen in th=> iron mills. It was as if he had suddenly grown older and and harder, and the discipline of the school, admirable as the Reverend Silas knew it to be, was not severe enough to reform him! It grieves me more than I can tell you, my dear brother, to be obliged to confess that we can do nothing more for him here/* was the concluding paragraph of the principal’s letter, “and to add that his continued presence with us is a menace to the morals of the school. When I say that the offense for which he is expelled Is by no means the first, and that it is the double one of gambling and keeping intoxicating liquors in his room, you will understand that the good repute of Beersheba was at stake, and there was no other course open to us.” Thomas Jefferson turned his back on three and a half years of Beersheba, with hot tears in his eyes and an angry word on his lips. The Pintsch lights were burning brightly ia the Pullman, and these—and the tears—blinded him. Some of the sections ln the middle of the car were made down for the night, and while he was stumbling in the wake of the porter over the shoes and the hand-bags left In the aisle, the train started. Lower ten, sah,” said the black boy, and went about his business In the linen locker. But Tom stood balancing himself with the swaying of the car and staring helplessly at the occupant of lower twelve, a young girl in a gray traveling coat and hat. sitting with her face to the window. “Why, you—somebodyl” she exclaim* ed, turning to surprise him in the act of glowering down on her. “Do you know, I thought there might be just one chance in a thousand that you’d go home for Christmas, so I made the porter tell me when we were coming to Beersheba. Why don’t you sit down?” Tom edged Into the opposite seat and shook hands with her, all In miserable, comfortless silence. Then he blurted out:'

“If I’d had any idea you were on this train, I’d have walked.” Ardea laughed, and for all his misery he could not help remarking how much sweeter the low vole* was growing, and how much clearer the blue of her eyes was under the forced light of the gas-globes. “You are Just the same rude boy, aren’t you?” she said, leniently. “Are there no girls in Beersheba to teach you how to be nice?” “I didn’t mean it that way,” he hastened to say. “I’m always saying the wrong thing to you. But If you only knew, you wouldn’t speak to me; much less let me sit here and talk to you." “If I only knew what? Perhaps you would better tell me and let me judge for myself," she suggested; and out of the past came a flick of the memory whip to make him feel again that she was-Immeasurably his senior. "I’m expelled,” he said, bluntly. "Oh!” For a full minute, as It seemed to him. she looked steadfastly out of the window at the wall of blackness flitting past, and the steady drumming of the wheels grated on hla nerves and got Into his blood. When it was about to become unbearable she turned and gave him her hand again. “I’m Just as sorry as I can be!*»'she declared, and the slate-blue eyes confirmed it “It was this way; three of the boys came to my room to play cards—because their rooms were watched.' I didn’t want to play—oh, I’m none too goodthis ln answer to something ln her eyes that made him eager to tell her the. exact truth—“l’ve done It lots of times. But that night I’d been thinking—well, I just didn't want to, that’s all. Then they said I was aff-ald, and of course that settled It”’ “Of course,” she agreed, loyally.

“Walt; I want you to know It all.? he went on, doggedly. ’When Martin —he’s the Greek and Latin, you know —slipped up on us, there was a bottfe of wltj[sky on the table. He took down our names, and then he pointed at' ‘he bottle,, and said, ‘Which one of you does that belong to?’ Nobody said anything, and after it began to get sort of —well, kind of monotonous, I picked up the bottle and offered him a drink, and put it in my pocket. That settled me.” “But it wasn’t yours,” she averred. His smile was a rather . ferocious grin. “Wasn’t it? Well, I took it, anyway; - and I’ve got it yet. Now see here: that’s my berth over there and I’m going over to it. You needn’t let on like you know me any more.”, “Fiddle!” she said, making a face at him. “You say that like a little boy trying, oh, so hard, to be a man. I’ll believe you are Jtlst as bad as ban can be, if you want me to; but you mustn’t be rude to me. We don’t play cards or drink things at Carroll College, but some of us have brothers, and—we can’t help knowing.” Tom was soberly silent for the space h*lf a hundred rail-lengths. Then he said :“I wish I’d had a sister; * T ‘aybo it would have been different.”, “No, Indeed, it wouldn’t. You’re going to be Just what you are going to be, and a dozen sisters wouldn’t make any difference.” “One like you would make a lot of difference.” It made him blush and have a slight return of the largeness of hands; but he said it. She laughed. “That’s nice. But I mean what I say. Sisters wouldn’t help you to be good, unless you really wanted to be good yourself. They’re just comfortable persons to have around when you are taking your whipping for being naughty.” “Well, that’s a good deal, isn’t it?” Again she made the adorable little face at him. “Do you want me to be your sister for a little while—till you get out of scrape? Is that what you are trying to say?” He took heart of grace, for the first time in three bad days. “Say, Ardea; I’m hunting for sympathy; just as I used to a long time ago. But you mustn’t mix up with me. I’m not worth it.” “Oh, I suppose not; no boy is. But tell me; what are you going to do when you get back to Paradise?” “Why—l don’t know; I haven’t thought that far ahead; go to work in the iron plant and be a mucke/ all the rest of my life, I reckon.” “And all the way along you’ve been meaning to be a minister?” He gritted his teeth. “That’s all over, now; I reckoh it’s been over for a long time.” “That is more serious. Does your mother know? She mustn’t, Tom; it will just break hgart.” “As if I didn’t know?” he said, bitterly. “But, Ardea, I haven’t been quite square with you. The way I told it about the cards and the whisky you might think-i—” “I know what you are going to say. But it needn’t make any all-the-time difference, need, it? You’ve been backsliding—isn’t that what you call it?— but now you are sorry, and——” “No; that’s the worst of it. I’m not sorry, the way I ought to be. Besides, after what I’ve been these last two years—but. you can’t understand; it would just be mockery—mocking God. I told you I wasn’t worth your while.” She smiled gravely. “You are such a boy, Tom. Don’t you know that all through life you’ll have two kinds of friends: those who will stand by you because they won’t believe anything bad about you, and those who will take you for Just what you are and still stand by you?” He scowled thoughtfully at her. “Say, Ardea; I’d Just like to know hbw old you are, anyhow! You say things every once in a while that make me feel as if I were a little kid in knee-breech-es.” She laughed in his face. “That is the rudest thing you’ve said yet! But I don’t mind telling you—since I’m to be your sister. -I’ll be 17 a little while after you’re 18.” “Haven’t you ever been foolish, like other girls?” he asked. She laughed again, more heartily, than eveft “They say I’m the silliest tomboy in our house, at Carroll. But I have my lucid Intervals, I suppose, like other people, and this is one of them. I am going to stand by you to-morrow morning, when you have to tell your father and mother —that is, if you want me to.” —His gratitude was too large . for speech, but he tried to look it. Then then porter caipe to make her section down, and he had to say good-night and vanish. (To be continued.)