Jane Dawson; a novel

Front matter

LIBRARY

WEST VIRGINIA

UNIVERSITY

Chapter I

^HE Cohutta Mountains lay like sleeping monsters under the blue May sky. The highest and sharpest peaks of bare brown stone, the rugged horns of the monsters, pierced the drooping clouds which seemed scarcely to move or change their shape in the all but breezeless air. The eye of the imagination could see the pliant crust of the cooling earth receiving its last effective lash from the imprisoned forces, leaving the half - molten matter quivering, bubbling, hissing, to be shaped by after-ages of moisture, air, sunshine, melting ice-caps, and verdure into its present majestic form.

The young plowman in the field at the foot of the mountain was a product of a later process. He was of a higher type than the men who had lived, loved, fought, and hated on that soil before him. As he worked with hoe, plow, spade, or pick he uncovered remnants of their cruder tools and weapons of granite and flint, and wondered what they had been like in their clothing of skins and ornaments of feathers and paint — he wondered if the spirit within them had questioned and suffered as the spirit within him had questioned and suffered. If not, then the inscrutable process was either mindless or unkind, for it had seemed to him that his own pain had increased in exact ratio with the knowledge which had come to him unbidden and upon which he had fed with an infinite hunger likewise imposed upon him. And yet his knowledge had ended where the knowledge of all men had ended. The scientists, whose books he had read, could account satisfactorily to themselves for every visible part of him, as they could also for the substance of the lank bay horse he was driving, for the soil he trod, the air he breathed, the water he drank, but of the soul -hunger, the spirit-thirst, which were more vital to the young man than all else, they knew as little as he, as little as the baffled hordes in the past who had awaited the coming of the Messiah only to deny Him andHis revelation. The man between the handles of the plow had just reached the age of full maturity. His ruddy face, glowing under exercise and flowing perspiration, had a downy covering lighter in color than his fine head of dark-brown hair. He was above medium height, broad of shoulder, full of chest, and strong of limb. His brow bespoke intelligence of a rare order; his massive chin and jaw indicated firmness of will and purpose; his ceaseless activity and close application to work showed him to be a man of boundless energy. When he had plowed down to the end of his row of corn, and with his single line drawn the horse around to go back again, his attention was attracted by the sound of some one calling in the mellow, resonant manner of the mountaineers.

The voice came from the thick - growing willows and cane-brake along the nearer shore of a creek hard by, at a point where the main-traveled road crossed the stream by means of a ford, and a young man was seen approaching between the furrows the plowman had made. The new-comer wore no coat, and was in the garb of a workingman, and yet there was a certain jauntiness in the appearance of the neat gray shirt, with its full collar, the necktie daintily fastened with a scarf-pin, the easy leather belt which supported trousers only slightly soiled and of fine quality. These things, and the fact that the wearer wore his blond hair somewhat longer than was customary in that locality, and had a face almost free from tan, if not slightly inclined to effeminacy, with thin lips, aquiline nose, and earnest blue eyes, caused him to present a sharp contrast to the man at the plow, on whose stronger, handsomer face, exposed neck and arms the dust of the field lay.

"Hello, George!" the approaching man said, as he strode forward, lashing his legs with a wagon-whip. "I'm in trouble again. It looks like I'll never have any common sense. You may have seen me come down the mountain - road just now with a load of wood. I am hauling it to town to fill a contract at the flour-mill for twenty cords. I reckon I'm a fool, but I drove into the ford, went too far down-stream, and am stuck in the mud. They have been making a new dam at Mell's mill, and the creek bottom is as soft and sticky as dough. I did my best, but old Tom simply can't budge the thing an inch. I jumped to the rocks and got out without a wetting, but my horse, wagon, and load of wood are there to

Jane Dawson i

stay if something isn't done. I know you are busy, but I thought you might at least give me a hint as to what might be done. You see, I don't want to leave the wagon there and — "

"Is the wood green or dry?" George Dawson asked, with a slight frown of displeasure.

"Dry as cork," the other said. "Chestnut cut a year ago for fence-rails and never used."

"All right, then; come on," Dawson said, and he drove the point of his plow into the soil and steadied it. "I think I can show you what to do — can't be much of a mire-up with a load as light as that."

"Well, I certainly tried everything I could think of," said the other, "and Tom certainly tugged hard enough."

In a few minutes they reached the bank of the creek where the road crossed, and they paused and looked at the horse and wagon.

"You certainly must have been dead asleep to 'a' driven down there with the road right before your nose on the other bank," Dawson said, almost with a sneer.

"I don't think I was fully aware of what I was about." The fair face of Olin Dwight flushed. "I was practising on a little talk they've asked me to make at meeting to-night. I forgot where I was. I get that way once in a while."

"Your sermon may have affected old Tom," Dawson said, with a laugh. "Maybe he was converted, and thought you wanted to baptize him, and was wading in for that purpose — the deeper the better. He looks like a hardened old sinner, unfit even for horse heaven."

"We won't talk about it, George," Dwight said, coldly. "Our arguments never come to anything, and you are so good at making fun."

"No, time is passing, and I haven't any to lose," Dawson replied, good-naturedly. "I've got my own job to finish. Say, hop across on the foot-log to the other side. There is no use wetting pants and shoes as fine as yours are. I don't mind mine, and they will dry quick enough out in that field, I'll have your old hide-and-bones out in a minute."

Olin Dwight hastened across the foot-log as commanded and came down to the water's edge at the road. "I can't see what good I am to do over here," he said, with a helpless smile of perplexity,

George Dawson was now up to his waist in the stream and close to the wagon. "Why, me and you are going to play a game," he said. "I'm going to shoot these sticks of wood at you and you are to see if you can catch them and pile them at the side of the road. Our fun will last till the wagon floats; then I'll drive Tom out and you can reload and go about your business."

' ' Good gracious ! I needn't have bothered you if I'd only thought of that!" Dwight said, abashed.

"Look out for the first shot!" Dawson cried, and he deftly shoved one of the light sticks straight across the surface of the stream. Dwight caught the end of it, pulled it out, and laid it aside. This was repeated till the load was considerably lighter, then George grasped the hub of one of the rear wheels and gave a sharp command to the horse. The animal pulled jhis feet from the mire, bent his back in a strenuous effort, and finally drew the wagon up the slight incline on the shore.

Dripping from the waist downward, Dawson followed.

"Two heads are better than one," he said, in a tone that was half apologetic for the jests he had been indulging in.

"Well, mine is a cabbage-head when it comes to anything of a practical nature," Olin Dwight quoted. "I suppose that's why I never had any turn for farming like the rest of you. Well, every man to his bent, George, and I know that I am cut out for a minister of the Gospel. Since I've been old enough to see my duty I have thought of nothing else. It was what my mother always wanted and prayed for."

"So you really intend to put that through?" Dawson said, almost contemptuously.

"If the Lord will let me," Dwight answered, firmly, the light of his purpose burning fiercely in his frank eyes. ' ' I am laying aside every dollar I make at this sort of work. It is slow, but I'll win in the end. I think I can save enough in two years to go to college. My father is bitterly opposed to it, and refuses to advance a cent, but my mother is working her fingers to the bone."

"And all that you may learn silly, childish things and teach them to grown-up people who but for such as you would use their brains as I am using mine — in reading books full of advanced thought. You may think I am harsh, Olin, in disagreeing with you, but you seem horribly wrong — you and all the rest. If they would follow the teachings of Christ, I'd be the first to join them, but they don't — not one of them. They backbite; they slander; they envy; they hate one another hke snakes; they have no charity — their very struggHng for redemption is nothing but greed so deep set that they want to take it into another hfe with them,"

OHn Dwight was raising a dripping stick of wood to the wagon, and as he carefully put it in place he smiled in a faint, baffled way.

"I can't talk with you at all," he said. "You see, you abuse the things which are my very life, the air I breathe, the food that nourishes my soul — the things which make me so happy that at times I can hardly speak. There are moments when I feel like flying through the air. Oh, George, I have found the way — the only way to peace of mind and uplift of soul. You have simply missed it. I have heard you say you were not happy, and I cannot wonder at it. Any one can look at your face and know that something is wrong with you. You are staying away from church when everybody else goes, and is benefited socially and spiritually by it. You are becoming unpopular in advancing views which are so — so heretical. George, young as you are, you never would have been that way if you had been brought up differently. I am sure your mother started you to thinking as you do."

"She did, and she has a big brain, and it is all her own," Dawson retorted, sharply. "The way she has been treated by your narrow - mouthing gang has opened her eyes to the shallowness of their pretensions. Did the followers of the great Teacher they pretend to worship take pity on her when she was friendless and in need ? No, they drew their sanctified garments aside and walked by with their noses in the air. That caused her, in self-defense, to seek for the truth. She found as much of it as is to be found, and she taught me to think for myself. I know what she is at heart if you don't, and her religion is good enough for me. I expect to live and die by it."

The wood had been replaced on the wagon and, whip and reins in hand, young Dwight proceeded to drive on.

"We simply must stop these arguments," he said, with a friendly smile. "You have done me many a good turn, George — like this to-day — and I shall always be your friend and your mother's. I see the faults of my people as well as you do, and I intend to do my best to set them right. My friend, as sure as that sun is above us I have been called by God to the work that is before me. I have heard His still, soft command hundreds of times, and I'll obey. There is one thing you can't prevent me from doing — even by argument — and that is praying for you. George, I am going to pray that you may be blessed with understanding and have the happiness you deserve. You are on the wrong road — it can lead you to nothing but despair. No young man can live in a community like this and hold the views you hold. Surely you can see that. I like you — I love you as an old playmate and a brother, but, George, I cannot stand quietly by and see you teaching the young the awful things you believe. It would be worse than allowing a man to give morphine to boys and girls. Well, I must be going. Good-by. I'll not forget your kindness. You say some of my people hate one another— well, I'll never hate anybody, certainly not you."

Dawson waited till the wagon had started, and then he crossed the foot-log and climbed over the fence into his field.

' ' Good-hearted , fanatical f ool ! " he mused . ' ' Well , he is taking the easy road through life. If he does get into the ministry, the brethren will keep him well fed and clothed. He'll climb, too. He believes the whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel, and he has the gift of gab, a flashing eye, and a ringing voice. He's right about me, in one way ; I'll never gain anything by telling what I know. It only makes them hate me, but I don't care. I'll give them the truth as I see it if I die for it."

Chapter II

fc^HE sun went down behind the mountain ; the air grew cooler, and the gray edge of the thickening darkness crept across the fields. The sounds which accompanied the pastoral gloaming awoke to life. Mellow voices were calling to mooing cattle and grunting swine; dogs were barking; sheep - bells were clanking ; cocks were crowing ; farmers were singing and whistling as they trudged homeward from the fields carrying their dinnerpails and water-jugs.

Leaving his plow in a furrow near the creek, George Dawson mounted his horse, using the looped trace-chains for stirrups. The tired beast needed no guiding rein, and took the shortest way home across the soggy meadow, once a swamp, where the brown-tipped bulrushes grew stark and straight in the rich, black loam. The horse bore his master to the log stable which stood a hundred yards nearer to the field than the one-storied farm-house. George dismounted, and, leading the animal into a stall, he took off the harness, and from the loft overhead he drew down some corn and fodder. Suddenly he heard voices raised as if in anger in the cow-lot behind the stable, and, looking through a crack between the logs of the wall, he saw his mother standing near her brindle cow, a milk-pail in her hand, and at the rail fence of the lot stood another woman. It was Mrs. Dwight, the doting parent of the young candidate for the ministry. She was short and heavy-set. As her fat white hand, with its plain gold rings, clutched the top rail of the fence she spoke in harsh, crisp tones.

"You know the big revival begins to-night, Jane Dawson. You don't have to be told; but I felt that it was my duty to God to remind you, and give you another chance to do your duty to the community you live in. You know as well as I do that you ought to go and lead a different life. You ought to lay aside prejudice and hate and beg God's forgiveness and start anew. The whole thing was your fault, and you know it — nobody else was to blame."

Shocked and chilled to the core of his being, George Dawson pressed his face so close to the crack that the bark on the logs sank into his forehead. The failure on the part of his mother to speak at once told him, who knew her so well, of the pent-up storm that would soon break. He saw Jane lower the pail to the ground and draw her tall, gaunt form erect.

"You are a purty thing!" came cold and harsh from Jane's lips, "to bring holy messages to any one. Huh ! your fat, wobbling body right now fairly drips with the slime of hell. Your tongue is forked and full of venom. You ain't here to do me no good turn. I know you. You are the foulest snake that ever coiled under weeds and grass to strike the helpless. A lot of good your prayers and psalm-singing will do you in this life or any other!"

II

"No fallen woman can criticise me or my acts," retorted the shape at the fence. "God is my Judge, not you. I am not mad — you couldn't make me mad. I came to you because I felt it to be my duty to God and my religion. My boy is to speak to-night, and — "

"Yes, that's it — you let the cat out then, you hussy!" Jane Dawson broke in, fiercely. "I see clean through you, fat and puffy as you are. You think it will worry me to see your boy become a preacher and gad about while mine has to work like a nigger in the fields. Le'me tell you, Sarah D wight, you may put Olin there, but he'll never amount to a hill of beans among men of brains and progress. You think his speech to-night will worry me. Huh! do you reckon I'd want a boy with a head like mine has on his broad shoulders to spend his days teaching stuff I wouldn't learn to a crazy baby? I've laughed till I was tired over Olin's arguments at my house. George would knock out his statements as fast as he'd make 'em. Olin couldn't give a reason for a thing. Black was white with him, and Jonah swallowed the whale without salt or pepper. Put 'im into the pulpit. Yes, by all means put him there. Let 'im yell his lungs out, and what will it all amount to — nothing but that he will be the laughing-stock of all thinking people."

"I didn't come here to quarrel with you," Mrs. Dwight said, almost with a hiss. "I've told you what my object was. I can't expect a poor, degraded outcast like you to approve of anything that is decent. After all, what else could you do with your boy? Folks say you haven't even told him who his father is. You have not only brought him into the world without a name, but you have robbed him of the religion he was entitled to. You've made him an infidel to gratify your spite against holy people who would not endorse your conduct. Take that and make the best of it, Jane Dawson; it's what I've wanted to say to you for a long time. Good-night."

George Dawson saw the speaker moving away in the half -darkness. He heard his mother catch her breath and utter a groan of impotent rage.

"You — you meddlesome hypocrite!" Jane cried. "If you was not such a coward and sneak I'd climb that fence and jerk every rag from your filthy carcass. You — you'd better run, you wife of a fool and mammy of an idiot! I — " But the fleeing form had blended into the dusky background. Jane stood like a pillar of stone, her thin, bare arms akimbo, her pail at her feet, her head thrown back. Her son could hear her deep breathing. For fully three minutes Jane did not move. Suddenly a sound fell on her ear that caused her to whirl sharply about and stare in a startled way in her son's direction. The sound was that made by his horse in gnawing the corn grains from the cob against the resounding trough. The next instant she had picked up her pail and was striding toward the stable, a look of anxious inquiry clutching her features. There was nothing for him to do but to show himself. They met at the threshold of the low doorway.

' ' Is — is that you ? Was — was you — ?' ' Her voice left her, and she simply stood panting, her hand on her breast.

2 13

"Yes, I was feeding," he answered.

There was a piteous glare in her eyes. He saw her thin Hps trembHng and twitching. She made an effort to smile indifferently, but, realizing the sheer inadequacy of the subterfuge, she allowed the frail pretense to fade from her rigid face.

"You — you heard what she said — you know you did!" Jane spoke firmly, as if to forestall the denial which she felt would be the outcome of his torn sympathies.

"Oh, I heard you two quarreling," he said, feebly. "I knew you had no use for each other, and was not surprised to hear — "

"Stop! Listen to me!" Jane broke in, with a little gurgle in her throat like a suppressed sob. "She mentioned a — a matter that has never yet come up between you and me, and I might as well — we might as well — -but never mind; this ain't no place to talk. I'll finish milchin'. You go on to the house and tote in some stove wood. I'll come right on. Get ready for your supper. It's all cooked and nothing to do but to take it up and lay it on the table. We'll talk it over after supper, but not now — not right at this minute."

"We needn't talk about it at all.'' He was valiantly trying to comfort her. He laid his hand on her shoulder and was drawing her gaunt form to him when she drew back almost coldly, and so suddenly that the empty tin pail on her arm rang against the door-frame.

"Don't do that!" she cried. "Don't put on, or pretend. It won't do a bit o' good — nothing can take the sting of that woman's tongue away. She meant it to hurt. She's chuckhng in glee at this minute. Go on and do as I tell you. I'll come as soon as I get through here."

There was nothing for him to do but obey, for she had gone to the cow and crouched down by the animal's flanks. Hearing the milk spurting into the pail, he turned up the path to the house. Going to the wood-pile at the end of the yard, he filled his arms w4th the sticks and bore them into the kitchen. Then he went to his room adjoining that of his mother's and bathed his face and hands and brushed his hair. The room, as shown by the candle-light, was meagerly furnished. There was no carpet, rugs, or mats on the floor; a rough bed in a corner under snowy coverings, and with great downy pillows, had a soft and restful look. There was an old-fashioned hair trunk near the chimney; a bureau against the wall; a deal table in the center of the room fairly well filled with books, magazines, and papers. The walls of the room were white, the wooden ceiling was sky - blue. He removed his candle from the bureau to the table. There was a thing he had intended to look up in one of his books, a thing which haunted him vaguely. He tried to recall it now, but it eluded him. He could think only of the words he had just overheard, and their blighting effect on the grim and suffering recipient. Seated at the table, he aimlessly turned the pages of a book; he heard his mother's shambling step as she entered the kitchen — a clatter of pans and dishes, and then her hesitating voice calling him.

He found the dining-room darker than was usual at the supper hour. The red tip on a smoking candle-wick on the table showed that she had extinguished it. She had lighted some pieces of pine in the wide, brick fireplace, and a red blaze, interwoven with twisting snakes of smoke, threw a flickering glow over the room. Above, from the dingy, time-stained rafters, hung bunches of dried pepper-pods, herbs for medicinal uses, hams, shoulders, and sides of seasoned pork, cast-off garments, and remnants of tools, bits of rusty chains, and scraps of harness.

They ate in silence. He had a lusty appetite, and, despite his perturbation, he enjoyed the food she had prepared for him. She scarcely touched the things on her plate, daintily munching a piece of bread and raising her cup to sip from it when he looked at her.

When the meal was over and he had risen to leave the table she put out her hand impulsively and gulped, as she swallowed the food which seemed to stick in her throat.

"Set down — set down," she faltered. "I've got some'n' to — to say. I — " Her glance went to the fireplace, where the pine was suddenly blazing more brightly, and she shaded the side of her face with gnarled and knotted fingers. She paused for a moment, then she added: "No, you go on out to the front and smoke. I'll wash the dishes and come out there. I've got some'n' to say that I just must say, or — or it will kill me. I've been puttin' it off — year after year I've put it off. It's some'n' you ought to know now that you are as old as you are."

"If it is anything about what that meddlesome

i6 woman was saying just now," he faltered, as, red in the face, he leaned heavily on the back of his chair, "why, you might as well cut it out. I don't care — " "You go on and wait," she broke in. "I'll be there in a few minutes."

Chapter III

^E hesitated a moment, then turned away. As he strode through the sitting-room his steps rang harshly on the smooth, bare floor. He crossed the httle vine-grown porch and stepped down upon the grass in the yard. There was no moon in sight, but the coming stars in the darksome void overhead faintly lighted the scene — the apple orchard on the right, the stretch of meadow-land to the left, and the half -street, half -road which led by the neighboring farm-houses to the village of Shelby, the scattering lights of which showed just around the bend of the way. There were some crude, hand-made chairs on the grass, and George took one of them and got out his pipe and filled it with tobacco. He could see the drab, drooping figure of his mother as it moved now and then past the unshaded kitchen window. Suddenly the stillness of the hour was broken by the clanging of the cast-iron bell at the village church. It rang vigorously, as if the ringer were putting newly awakened zeal into the call to the revival meeting which had just started.

The bell seemed the signal for prompt action on the part of the woman in the house, for the blazing pine was plunged into the ashes, and she came to the doorway. George thought, as she paused there a moment, then crossed the porch and approached him, that he had never before seen so much of decrepitude in her. Wrapped as she was in the folds of the darkness, yet he could almost see the quivering of her body. She took the vacant chair opposite him, leaned her sharp elbows on her knees, and pulled the poke-bonnet she wore day or night in doors or out over her eyes. Her thin, colorless dress clung to her slight form; he saw her bare toes through the holes worn in her shoes.

"Now, don't stop me," she began, in a voice that was dry and harsh and seemed to come as much from chest as throat. "There is no use blinding ourselves. You heard what Olin Dwight's mammy said at the cow-lot. Mean and low and spiteful and hypocritical as she is, she told the plain truth. She was right. All these years since you was a baby in that little trundle-bed in the house and a toddler about the yard, I hain't never mentioned your — your father's name to you. I was ashamed — more ashamed to have you or any living soul know who he was than all the rest of the trouble. If he had been a good man, a worthy man, like — like I once thought he was, I wouldn't care, but, oh, George! to have you know him as he is to-day crushes me into the very mire of shame. And yet you ought to know. Sarah Dwight is right. You ought to be told. I've put it off too long. It is due to you. You might — might meet him and humiliate yourself if you ain't forewarned. Last night, long after you stopped reading and went to bed, I had one of them fluttering spells of my heart, and I thought that I was about to die. I started to tell you then, but backed out when I looked in your room and saw you sleeping so calm and peaceful. I've prayed, as little as I believe such things are ever noticed — I've prayed for some way out of it. That one thing has always been uppermost in my mind. I have known of other folks having misfortunes like your'n and mine, and I never yet knew of the — the child growing up ignorant on that point. It is an awful thing, but truth even in that is better than not being told, and if I die without speaking my sin would be even greater. George — ' '