_ CHAPTER XIV
Have you seen Spring come to the mountains? Have you felt the subtle power on the human heart, of trance-drugged impulses awakening in plant, in animal, in humanity; in the deep hard arteries of the ancient hills themselves? Winter there is grim and bleak beyond the telling. In far separated cabins, held in the quarantine of mired roads, men and women have lived, from hand to mouth, sinking into a dour and melancholy apathy.
But when Spring comes, the gray and chocolate humps of raggedness are softly veiled again with tender verdure and a song runs with the caress of the breeze. It is a song relayed on the throats of birds. The color of new flower and leaf and of skies washed clean of brooding finds an echo in man and womankind. When the dogwood blossom, everywhere, breaks into white foam upon the soft billows of woodland green, and the sap stirs--then the old and crabbed bitterness of life stands aside for the coming of Love.
If one be young and free, one feels, admittedly or subconsciously, the deep tides that sing to sentiment and the undertows that pull to passion.
About the lonely house of Alexander McGivins the woods were burgeoning and tuneful. Stark contours of landscape had become lovely and Alexander, preparing for the activities of "drappin' and kiverin'" in the steep corn-fields, felt the surge of vague influences in her bosom.
Joe McGivins had carried a stricken face since Old Aaron's death. He looked to his sister, as he had looked to his father, for direction and guidance and though he worked it was as a hired man might have worked, patiently rather than keenly and without initiative.
But keeping busy failed to comfort the empty ache in Alexander's heart because in the grave over yonder lay all that had filled her world, and though she would have fought the man who suggested it, there were times when her lovely lips fell into lines of irony, and when she half-consciously felt that her playing at being a man had been a bitter and empty jest. She had only forfeited her woman's rights in life, and had failed to gain the compensation of man's.
Once or twice when on the high road, she passed youthful couples, love-engrossed, she went on with a wistfulness in her eyes. For such as these, life held something, but for her, she was sure in her obduracy of inexperience, there was no objective.
If the truth be told, the "spring-tide" was welling in the channels of her being, as well as in the rivulets of the hills, and the changes that had come to her were near to bearing fruit.
That space of little more than a week, when she had left her home--a home which had also been a world with its own laws and environment--had brought her into contact with other views. Her father's death had left the house no longer the same. Two independent souls, with strong views, may succeed in fashioning their own world, and she and her father had been two such.
One left unsupported may fail, and now she was alone--for Joe hardly counted.
Ever since she had been old enough to think at all, she had been inordinately proud of "being a man," and profoundly contemptuous of the women about her whose colorless lives spelled thraldom and hard servitude.
That long fostered and passionately held creed would die hard. She would fight herself and whomsoever else challenged its acceptance--but insidious doubts were assailing her.
So to all outward seeming Alexander McGivins was more the "he-woman" than ever before, but in her inner heart the leaven of change was at its yeasty work.
"I've got ter be a man," she told Joe, who mildly objected, even while he leaned on her strength. "Now thet paw's gone, I hev greater need then ever ter stand squ'ar on my own two feet."
The youth nodded. "I reckon ye're right," he acknowledged, "but folks talks a heap. I'm always figgerin' thet I'm goin' ter hev ter lick somebody erbout ye. I wouldn't suffer nobody ter speak ill of ye when I war present."
Alexander looked steadily at the boy. "I'm obleeged ter ye, but I'll do my own fightin', Joe," she told him calmly. "I'll even make shift ter do some o' your'n, an' yit----" She paused a moment and he inquired, "Wa'al, what's on yore mind, Alexander?"
"An' yit," she went on more slowly and thoughtfully, "I'd be mighty nigh willin' ter prove ther cause of ye gittin' in one or two good fights--ef hit couldn't be brought ter pass no other way."
"Paw always counseled peace, ef a feller warn't pushed too fur," he alleged in defense of his pacific attitude.
"So does I. But Joe, hit's jest on yore own account thet I'd like ter see ye show more sperit. Folks talks erbout _you_ too. I know what blood ye've got, commandin' blood--an' ef ye got roused up onc't hit'd mek a more upstandin' man of ye. I knows hit's a lie, but I've heered ye called ther disablest feller on Shoulder-blade!"
A touch of contempt stole into her voice as she added, "An' yore paw's only son!"
He went away somewhat sulkily, but she had ignited in him a spark of needed torture. Bred of a fighting line, the acid of self-scorn began eating into his pride, and when a few days later he halted at a wayside smithy, which was really only a "blind-tiger," and came upon a drinking crowd, the ferment of his thoughts developed into action.
Sol Breck was sitting with his back turned as the boy strolled in and it chanced that he was talking about Alexander. The girl herself with her square sense of justice, would have recognized his comments as crude jesting and would have passed them by unresented.
But Joe had been bitterly accusing himself of timidity and he needed sustenance for his waning faith in his own temerity. It was characteristic of him that he should pick an easy beginning, as a timid swimmer seeks proficiency in shallow water. Sol Breck had the unenviable reputation of one who never declined battle--and never emerged from one crowned with victory. Joe hurled at him the challenge of the fighting epithet and after a brief but animated combat had him down and defeated. Then he returned home with a swelling breast, and just enough marks of conflict upon his own person to bear out his report of counsel heeded and resolution put to the touch.
Alexander listened without interruption to the end, for Joe had told her all but the name of his adversary and the exact words that had precipitated battle.
But when the narrative came to its conclusion she inquired quietly, "What did he say erbout me?"
"Oh, hit wasn't so much what he said es ther way he said hit," was Joe's somewhat shame-faced reply. "Ef hit hed been erbout any other gal, I reckon I mout of looked over it."
"What was it?" The demand was insistent.
"He jest 'lowed that if 'stid of warin' pants an' straddlin' hosses, ye'd pick ye out an upstandin' man an' wed him, thar mout come ter be some _real_ men in ther fam'ly."
The girl's face crimsoned.
"I thought ye said hit war me ye fought erbout, Joe."
"I did say so, Alexander."
"An' ye didn't see no aspersion thet called fer a fight--in ther way them words teched _you_?"
That phase of the matter had not occurred to Joe at all. He was used to being overlooked.
"He warn't thinkin' erbout me," he lamely exculpated. "I reckon he hed hit in head thet I hain't quite twenty-one yit."
For a while Alexander stood looking at him with a slowly gathering tempest of anger in her eyes, under which the boy fidgeted, and finally she spoke in that ominously still manner that marked moments of dang'er.
"What he said erbout me war true enough--an' ef ye admits what he all but said erbout you--thet ye hain't no man--then _thet's_ true too."
The boy was crestfallen and a little impatient now. He had come to recount an achievement which had plumed and reappareled a limping self-respect and he had expected congratulation.
"What's ther use of faultin' me by mincin' words? I licked him, didn't I? Set hit down ter anything ye likes."
Her voice still held that cold note of inflexible but quiet anger. "Yes, ye licked him but hit looks like ter me ye picked yore man plum keerful an' got ye an easy one. Wait hyar, I'm goin' atter my hat."
"What fer?"
"Were a'goin' over thar tergether--an' ye're goin' ter crave his pardon."
"I wouldn't crave his pardon," burst out the boy violently, "ter save his soul from torment. I'd be a laughing stock ef I did."
"Ye're agoin' ter do one of two things, Joe," she announced with finality. "Ye're either agoin' ter ask his pardon, whilst I stands by an' hears ye do hit or else ye're a'goin' ter tell him thet ye licked him over ther wrong words--an' thet seein' ye blundered, ye're willin' ter lick him afresh over ther right ones--him or anybody he names ter fight in his place."
Joe hung his head for a moment, then the pricking of the old self-scorn came with a turning tide.
"All right," he said. "Let's go."
It was an unmannerly, but a very astonished crew upon which they came but at the sight of Alexander herself they all became sheepish and discomfited of aspect.
"Sol," began the girl tersely, "Joe tells me thet him an' you hed a fight jest now over somethin' ye said erbout he. I kin do my own fightin', but Joe hes something ter tell ye on his own account."
So introduced, Joe spoke and this time it was the swimmer striking boldly into deep water.
"Alexander 'lows I didn't hev need ter fight over loose talk erbout her. But when airy feller says thar hain't no man in my household, so long's I'm thar, I hev got ample cause ter fight. Ye've got ter tek thet back right now. Ef so be ye hain't rested up yit, an' ye've got any friend hyar thet ye'd like ter hev take yore place, I'm ready fer him."
But Sol had had enough, for the present. Alexander's presence made him, somehow, feel foolish, as if his thrashing were less of an embarrassment than its cause.
"I war jest a-funnin,'" he protested. "I'm willin' ter take back anything thet's done give offense."
One day shortly after that, when Joe came unexpectedly into the house he surprised Alexander attired as he had never before seen her--in the skirts of her own sex.
"Fer ther Lord's sake," exclaimed the boy. "Thet's ther fust time I ever seed ye in petticoats. Looks like ye must hev on a half score of 'em."
"Like es not hit's ther last time ye'll ever see hit, too," retorted Alexander hotly while her cheeks flamed. "Some day I mout hev ter go down below ter some big town on business. A woman's got ter w'ar these fool things thar, an' I was practising so's I could larn ter walk with 'em flappin' round my legs."
Yet she walked, for all the alleged difficulty, with an untrameled and regal ease. With a sweep of hauteur she left the grinning boy and when she returned a few minutes later she was breeched and booted as usual.
Sometimes, in these days, she went to a crest from which the view reached off for leagues over the valley and beyond that over ridge upon ridge of hilltops. There she thought of many things and was very lonely. She could not have worded it but, deep in her heart, she felt the outcry of the Spring voice: "Make me anything but neuter when the sap begins to stir."
But how could this be any love-impulse in Alexander? Love, she had always heard, must fix itself upon some one endearing object and lay its glamor over definite features.
The most magnificent figure of a man she had ever seen often reared itself in her thought-pictures with its six feet six of straight limbed strength, its eagle-like keenness of eye, and its self-confident bearing.
"Ef I could really be a man," she told herself, "I'd love ter be a man like ther Halloway feller--ef only he wasn't so plum dirty and raggedy."
One day on her way back from the fields she saw a tall figure loafing near the front door of her house and, at that distance, she thought that it was Halloway. It stood so tall and straight that it must be, but that was because the setting sun was in her eyes and the man showed only in silhouette. So seen Jerry O'Keefe--for it proved to be Jerry--suffered little by comparison with any man she knew--except Halloway.
But Alexander did not greet him with any great warmth. She was angry with herself because her heart had started suddenly to pounding at the instant when she had imagined this man to be the other. She was angry, too, with Jerry for disappointing her.
So she nodded coolly and demanded, "What's yore business hyarabout?"
In Jerry the rising joyousness of rebirth was full confessed. He was here because since he had seen her last he had carried no other picture in his thoughts, and now that the world was in bloom he wanted to see her against a befitting background. To that end he had sold his small farm and rented a plot and cabin near-by and if there was to be no welcome for him here he had merely sold himself out of a home.
But the gray-blue eyes were whimsical, and the mobile lips smiling. He was unrebuffed as he made a counter-query.
"Kain't a feller kinderly come broguein' in hyar, without some special business brings him?"
Alexander felt that she had been unneighborly, but in her memory the things that Brent had said to her had become a sort of troublesome refrain. "Men will come and they won't be turned back." She remembered, too, her own hot retort, "Like hell they won't!" It was in the spirit of that retort that she answered.
"Ef ye hain't got no business hyar, ye hain't got no business hyar, an' thet's all thar air ter hit."
"Mebby ye're ther business yoreself, Alexander," he suggested and there was a persuasive quality in his voice.
"I'm my own business, nobody else's."
In this mood that had troubled her of late, Alexander was very combative. She was not willing to surrender her code--not willing yet to be treated as a woman.
"I heers tell thet ye've moved over hyar, bag an' baggage--an' ef I kin help ye out any way, I'll seek ter convenience ye outen a sperit of neighborness." She spoke in that extra-deliberate fashion that went before a storm, and as she stood there with her head high, and her eyes undeviatingly meeting his, she had the beauty of a war-goddess. "But when ye hain't got no matter of need, don't come."
Jerry had no intention of being lightly repulsed. His purpose of courtship had become his governing law but he had learned much of this Amazonian woman and had set himself, not to an easy conquest, but to a hard campaign. The man who, merely to be near one woman, sells a river bottom farm that he had nursed into something like prosperity and who takes on rocky acres in its stead, has shown, by his works, the determination of his spirit.
Now, the humorous eyes riffled with a quiet amusement.
"I didn't say thet I come without business, Alexander. Mebby I hain't stated hit yit."
"Then ye'd better state hit. Ye don't seem ter be in no tormentin' haste."
O'Keefe thought that "tormentin' haste" in his position would be fatal and yet the streak of whimsey that ran through him brought a paradoxical answer.
"My hearth's cold over thar. I come ter borry fire."
He was watching her as he spoke, and now that he no longer stood under the disadvantage of comparison with Jack Halloway he was no mean figure of a man. One could not miss the fine, if slender, power of his long and shapely lines from broad shoulder to tapering waist. His hair curled crisply and incorrigibly and he bore himself with a lazy sort of grace, agile for all its indolence. Alexander could not be quite sure whether the eyes were insolent or humble. When he had stated his mission of "borrowing fire" he had used a quaint phrase, eloquent of a quainter custom. It had to do with that isolated life in a land where until recently matches were rare and when the hearth fire died one had to go to the neighbor's house and hasten back with a flaming fagot for its relighting.
"Ye don't seem ter hev ther drive of a man borryin' fire. Why didn't ye ask Joe. I heers him in thar."
"Hit's _goin' home_ not _comin'_ thet a man's got ter hasten with his fire," he reminded her. "I didn't ask Joe because--he hain't got ther kind of fire my heart needs, Alexander."
So her suspicion was true! He had been speaking, not literally, but in the allegory of a suitor and her gathering wrath burst.
"Then I hain't got hit fer ye nuther. Let yore h'arth stay cold, an' be damned ter ye--an' now begone right speedily!"
With pure effrontery the young man laughed. Into his voice he put a pretense of appeal, as he calmly stuffed his pipe with tobacco crumbs. "Alexander ye wouldn't deny a man such a plum needcessity es fire, would ye?" he questioned, though even as he said it he drew from his pocket a box of matches and struck one.
So he had made deliberate and calculated sport of her! Her anger saw in his presence itself only the insult of the first attack from those men who "would not be turned back," and once more the rage in her came to its boiling-point.
She wheeled and went into the house and when she came out her face was pale to the lips and her brows drawn in a resolute pucker, while in her hands she carried a cocked rifle.
"Down yonder lays my fence-line," she autocratically told the man who had continued standing where she had left him, and whose seeming was still unflurried. "I've got a license ter say who crosses hit. Ye've done sought ter make sport of me, an' now I commands ye ter cross ther fence an' begone from hyar." She paused a moment because her breath was coming fast with passion. "I warns ye nuver ter put foot on this farm ergin--I aims ter see thet ye don't--an' when ye starts away don't tarry ter look back, nuther."
Slowly Jerry O'Keefe nodded. One ordered from another's house must obey, but the twinkle had not altogether faded from his eyes and there was nothing precipitate in his movements, albeit the rifle was at ready and the girl's deep breast was heaving with unfeigned fury.
"All right," he acceded, "I'm goin' now but es fer not lookin' back, I wouldn't like ter mek no brash promises. You're hyar an' hit mout prove right hard ter keep my eyes turned t'other way. I'm an easy-goin' sort of feller anyhow, an' I likes ter let my glance kind of rove hyar an' thar."
Her hands trembled on the gun and her voice shook into huskiness. "Begone," she warned. "I kain't hold down my temper much longer."
"An' es fer comin' back," Jerry continued blandly, "some day you're ergoin' ter _invite_ me back. Anyhow, I reckon I'd come, because thar's somethin' hyar thet'll kinderly pulls me hither stronger then guns kin skeer me off."
The girl sat there on her doorstep with her rifle across her knees and halfway to the fence-line Jerry paused and looked back. The rifle came up--and dropped back again as Alexander belatedly pretended that she had not seen him. At the stile O'Keefe paused to turn his head again. He even waved his hat, and this time she looked through him as through a pane of glass.
But when she had been sitting broodingly for a long while, the cloud slowly dissipated from her face. In her eyes a twinkle of merriment battled with the fire of righteous indignation, and at last she even laughed with a low pealing note like a silver bell.
"He's an impudent, no-count devil," she said, "but he's got right unfalterin' nerve, an' thar's a mighty pleasin' twinkle in his eyes."
Not long after that Alexander made a journey to a nearby town, but since it was one near the railroad she went in woman's attire, paying a new deference to public opinion which she had heretofore scorned. She was busily occupied there all day and her mission was one of mystery. _