The Call of the Cumberlands

The old man's face hardened.

"Ef ye goes," he said, almost sharply, "I won't never send fer ye. Any

time ye ever wants ter come back, ye knows ther way. Thar'll be room

an' victuals fer ye hyar."

"I reckon I mout be a heap more useful ef I knowed more."

"I've heered fellers say that afore. Hit hain't never turned out thet

way with them what has left the mountings. Mebby they gets more useful,

but they don't git useful ter us. Either they don't come back at all,

or mebby they comes back full of newfangled notions--an' ashamed of

their kinfoiks. Thet's the way, I've noticed, hit gen'ally turns out."

Samson scorned to deny that such might be the case with him, and was

silent. After a time, the old man went on again in a weary voice, as he

bent down to loosen his brogans and kick them noisily off on to the

floor: "The Souths hev done looked to ye a good deal, Samson. They 'lowed

they could depend on ye. Ye hain't quite twenty-one yet, an' I reckon I

could refuse ter let ye sell yer prop'ty. But thar hain't no use tryin'

ter hold a feller when he wants ter quit. Ye don't 'low ter go right

away, do ye?"

"I hain't plumb made up my mind ter go at all," said the boy,

shamefacedly. "But, ef I does go, I hain't a-goin' yit. I hain't spoke

ter nobody but you about hit yit."

Lescott felt reluctant to meet his host's eyes at breakfast the next

morning, dreading their reproach, but, if Spicer South harbored

resentment, he meant to conceal it, after the stoic's code. There was

no hinted constraint of cordiality. Lescott felt, however, that in

Samson's mind was working the leaven of that unspoken accusation of

disloyalty. He resolved to make a final play, and seek to enlist Sally

in his cause. If Sally's hero-worship could be made to take the form of

ambition for Samson, she might be brought to relinquish him for a time,

and urge his going that he might return strengthened. Yet, Sally's

devotion was so instinctive and so artless that it would take

compelling argument to convince her of any need of change. It was

Samson as he was whom she adored. Any alteration was to be distrusted.

Still, Lescott set out one afternoon on his doubtful mission. He was

more versed in mountain ways than he had been. His own ears could now

distinguish between the bell that hung at the neck of Sally's brindle

heifer and those of old Spicer's cows. He went down to the creek at the

hour when he knew Sally, also, would be making her way thither with her

milk-pail, and intercepted her coming. As she approached, she was

singing, and the man watched her from the distance. He was a landscape

painter and not a master of genre or portrait. Yet, he wished

that he might, before going, paint Sally. She was really, after all, a

part of the landscape, as much a thing of nature and the hills as the

hollyhocks that had come along the picket-fences. She swayed as

gracefully and thoughtlessly to her movements as do strong and pliant

stems under the breeze's kiss. Artfulness she had not; nor has the

flower: only the joy and fragrance of a brief bloom. It was that

thought which just now struck the painter most forcibly. It was

shameful that this girl and boy should go on to the hard and unlighted

life that inevitably awaited them, if neither had the opportunity of

development. She would be at forty a later edition of the Widow Miller.

He had seen the widow. Sally's charm must be as ephemeral under the

life of illiterate drudgery and perennial child-bearing as her mother's

had been. Her shoulders, now so gloriously straight and strong, would

sag, and her bosom shrink, and her face harden and take on that drawn

misery of constant anxiety. But, if Samson went and came back with some

conception of cherishing his wife--yes, the effort was worth making.

Yet, as the girl came down the slope, gaily singing a very melancholy

song, the painter broke off in his reflections, and his thoughts

veered. If Samson left, would he ever return? Might not the old man

after all be right? When he had seen other women and tasted other

allurements would he, like Ulysses, still hold his barren Ithaca above

the gilded invitation of Calypso? History has only one Ulysses. Sally's

voice was lilting like a bird's as she walked happily. The song was one

of those old ballads that have been held intact since the stock learned

to sing them in the heather of the Scotch highlands before there was an

America.