Emerson Hough

“ Youth, life, joy, vitality, freedom from care, absolute ignorance and disregard of toil or trouble or anxiety—there stood Polly Pendleton.
She laid the violin to her cheek and, her eyes now aside and high, drew a strong, firm bow across the strings. When she did this she drew out the heart and soul from the body of David Joslin.
[108]
But David Joslin never really had heard the violin before. Of actual music he knew nothing. He had never heard a master of any instrument in all his life. ”

“ All life is the same thing. It’s all an education, all a growing—God! Give me my chance to grow! Let me get ready, so I can deserve. I’ve been hungry all my life—hungry for the world—hungry for my education—hungry for all a man’s life—love, happiness, content, power, usefulness. ”

“ You and I between us know about how much I know—we both know that you know a lot more than I do. Now, you’ve been talking to me a lot of rot about starting a college or a school, or something—I don’t remember what all you were saying. Forget it! Cut out all that business about saving your country. Think a little bit about saving yourself. This business of doing a whole lot for other people is all right on paper, but when it comes down to practical life there’s nothing in it. A fellow’s got to think of himself. ”

“ The reticent postmaster and the blacksmith had provided a few flickering lamps. And finally thither, soon after twilight of the appointed day, the mountaineers turned, group by group, man after man, silently, two score Joslins and as many or more of the Gannts, all of them too proud to stay away even though a stern mystery lay ahead. Every man of them was armed, every one of them ready for what might come. ”

“ I want to tell you those times are past I see you sitting there, Absalom Gannt—I know you’re not [148] a-scared of me, and I’m not a-scared of you. You’re fighting men, every one of you. And you’ve come here to fight each other once more—to kill each other, just like you and I and our fathers have been doing here in these mountains farther back than any of us can remember. You don’t know why you do that, but you think you ought to do it. It’s a sort of religion with us, just to kill each other. We don’t know no better—we never have. ”

“ French-Irish—dark and curly-haired—big eyes, like enough—she come right under his arm when he stood up—the sort that’s sort of squushy when you hug ‘em—maybe light on her feet—laughin’, maybe! Wimmern that laughs has always got the aidge on them that cries. Why, I kin see that womern dancin’ as she goes along, alive clar down to her toes—that’s the one—you hear me now!”
And having demolished all argument on the part of the listening knot, Granny Joslin at length did knock the last ashes from her pipe, and, rising, leave the empty house and cold hearthfire of what was no longer a home. ”

“ Alone, Joslin was wide-eyed and sorrowing, as any man must be who carries burdens other than his own. Unconsciously, he was learning the great truth that human sympathy is the only foundation for human leadership.
“Fer a man who kin read the way he kin, four syllerbles and all, Davy hain’t stuck up none at all,” said old Absalom Gannt. “No, I reckon he’s all right. He hain’t changed a bit inside.”
“He kin play the fiddle yit, too,” assented Chan Bullock. ”

“ The stream plunged across a broken reef, dropping some feet in a wide cascade. On either side were flat ledges of rock now exposed above the water. Obviously, it was the intention of Joslin to walk alongside and drag up the boat close to the shore.
“How far is it on from here?” demanded Haddon, sullenly. “It’s one hell of a looking spot, ain’t it, you’ve brought us to—black already as though it was night! I never did like water anyway.”
“There’s a short cut across the hills from here to town—only a few miles,” Joslin answered quietly. “We can make good time once we get above here.” ”

“ But Joslin made him no reply. What he had seen, what he had felt that night, was epochal, abysmal for him. He had looked into her eyes. He had seen her face framed in her dark hair—had caught the very fragrance of her hair itself. He was mad.
A motor car stood below, waiting for the popular team of Pendleton and Stanton. It whirled them now far uptown, to the little buffet flat which made their home. Nina, matter-of-fact as usual, busied herself about her preparations for the close of the day’s work. ”

“ You’ve been talking a lot of bally rot about your duty to these people—seeing that we wouldn’t rob them in the price we paid for the land or the oil leases. You know mighty well we can go down there and lease a whole farm a hundred years for a dollar. Now, you can crab our whole act—that’s easy to see—if you go down there and tell those people they’re fools, and that they ought to have two dollars an acre for their oil rights—more’n we’ve paid them for all their coal and their timber and their land any time these last twenty years! ”

“ Well-clad, such a man as he would attract many a backward gaze from men—or women—on any city street.
He stepped straight down the little bank beyond the fence marking the delimitations of the scant yard and the little cornfield of Preacher Joslin’s cabin, and at once was in the road, or all the road that ever had been known there. It was no better than the rocky bed of the shallow creek which flowed directly in front of the cabin. Here, in the logging days, iron-shod wheels had worn deep grooves into the sand [19] rock. ”

“ Haddon,” said David Joslin quietly. “I did not double-cross you. I never did that in my life to anyone. You can’t call that to me.”
“Well, you didn’t go along,” rejoined Haddon [211] testily. “I hate above all things the man that won’t go along with the bunch. It knocks to pieces any sort of business—big men go in front and plan things, and some little fellow comes along and knocks it all out I’ve got no patience with that sort of thing.”
Joslin’s pale face suddenly went white.
“I’ve not a dollar in my pocket now, Mr. Haddon,” said he at last. ”

“ Men in evening dress, with top hats and beautifully fitting evening wear, men impeccable [98] in gloves and glasses and fit for presentation in any city of the world—stood here, laughing, talking, jesting, drinking. One after another all these now accosted Haddon, some with a sly word, a glance, a hint, a jest—things which he hushed down as soon as might be, for he knew the keen suspicion of the mountaineer.
“Well, what are you going to have to drink?” said he to Joslin at length, edging his own way up to the bar. “We’ve got to lay some sort of a foundation for the dinner, you know. ”

“ David Joslin went suddenly white. “Ye fergit, I reckon—I told ye I was a married man. I’ve got a wife—we had two children, down thar in Kentucky.”
“Well, I’ve got a wife too,” rejoined Haddon contemplatively. “If I had any children I’d need that much more of something to make me forget my condition of servitude. I don’t know where the Missus has gone to, but she’s shook us this morning, that’s plain! You go up and talk religion to Polly, while I go down to the office and try to make a dollar and a quarter. Maybe you can save a human soul—eh? That’s up to you. ”

“ I wish there wasn’t a man in all the world, that’s all—I’m sick of them! I’ve got to make a living, haven’t I? Well, it’s jolly hard business sometimes to do that. Why, listen—it’s only an angel, and a good one, that’s kept us on our feet. I’m wearing all my old clothes and hats and things. [163] And I don’t know if I can go back to Broadway again. You don’t have all the trouble in the world.”
“An angel?” said David Joslin, not in the least understanding her, more than she had him in his last remark, which she thought so slighting to herself. ”

“ You’ve got your education ahead of you. I’m twenty-six years old, and I know more than you will when you’re a hundred and twenty-six. You don’t need to have a house fall on you, do you? Come now! I don’t”—and here, in spite of all, she laughed through her unwilling tears—“I don’t want your little old thirty-five cents at all! Take it and go on, and save the country, friend.”
David Joslin sat for a long time. “Sometimes things are hard to figure out,” said he at last.
“Yes!” said Polly Pendleton in a low voice. ”

“ And then John Calvin went on to tell David Joslin, sitting here in the saloon of John Moran, what sin was:
Wherefore, Augustine, though he frequently calls it the sin of another, the more clearly to indicate its transmission to us by propagation, yet, at the same time, also asserts it properly to belong to every individual. And the apostle himself expressly declares, that “death has therefore passed upon all men, for that all have sinned;” that is, have been involved in original sin, and defiled with its blemishes. ”

“ Haddon, I reckon I do understand,” said he.
“Well, well, then, what about it? Do you find New York such a poor place to live in? Isn’t there anything here to light you up a little bit more than anything you ever saw down in the Cumberlands?”
Joslin looked at him, his pale face going still paler. “I’ve seen things here I didn’t know was in all the world. But ye wasn’t asking me to sell out my own people, was ye?”
“There you go again!” retorted the irritated man across the table from him. “Rot! I’ve told you the question of right or wrong don’t come into business at all. Business is business. ”

“ Whither they go, who knows—the young women of the world, the beloved and the forgotten. The world has always had them, and perhaps will always have them—young, splendidly beautiful, splendidly alluring—who come from none knows whence, and who go no one knows whither. ”

“ But old Granny Joslin was not perturbed. She lighted her pipe once more and sat for a time engaged in her own thoughts as before—her eyes fixed exactly on a certain knot of a certain log in the rude wall—she voiced her own conclusions to herself.
“I was about that height my own self when I was a gal. An’ Lord! hain’t it sweet—to come just inside the arm of a strong man, Meliss’? Don’t I know?
“I was a-wonderin’ fer a while which one of them two wimmern Davy’d turn up with fustest. But, sakes! I know—he tolt me plenty, if he didn’t Meliss’. ”

“ Certain gentry of the road he met, but they neither accepted him as one of the guild, nor hindered him in his going, for they could not classify this man who walked slightly stooped, with pale face, but with long and steady stride, a man whose clothing betokened no luxury, but who still had something about him which did not grade him as one of the hopeless drifters of the world. ”

“ No, he would [56] not even go to say farewell to his wife, nor to greet his grandma, Granny Joslin, to give counsel to her. He, being dead, must depart secretly forever from these hills until he might return to them to do the thing given him to do.
Such, unnatural and hard as that might seem to others, was the ancient, grim, uncompromising creed of David Joslin of the Cumberlands. Let the dead bury its dead. Let the living live their own lives. ”

“ Joslin,” said she, “everyone ought to be useful. We’ll need more good citizens in America. All of us women ought to work in some way. The country must go on, until we’ve won. Where could I be more useful than here? Don’t you think I could keep the work going some way until—until you came back, David Joslin?”
Still he did not answer, and still she went on, struggling somewhat desperately with his native reticence and her own. ”

“ Ye’ve got no money to start a school. Ye couldn’t keep a teacher thar if ye did.” Thus old Absalom.
“That’s true,” replied David Joslin quietly. “That’s the Gospel truth! As I stand here now I haven’t got two dollars in my pockets. It’s plumb taken all the [150] money I’ve got to keep the soul alive in my body so I could study hard as I had to. But when I do get through up there, I promise you I’ll come here and start a college. Money or no money—help or no help—I’ll come and start that college! If I do, will you promise me that between now and that time you’ll not start any trouble here?” ”

“ As for Joslin, he had work to do. Absalom Gannt was still inside the house.
He stepped forward again deliberately to the door, pushed aside the man who stood there peering out, and broke his way into the crowd. Two or three women, cowering, shrank into the farther corner of the room. Men stood here and there, each with weapon [49] in hand. The acrid taste of gunpowder, which hung in the blue pall of smoke, was in the nostrils of all.
“Absalom Gannt!” rose the high, clear voice of David Joslin, “I’ve come fer ye. Come out here an’ meet me fair if ye hain’t a coward. Absalom Gannt! ”

“ Ye have sinned in the sight of God on the holy Sabbath day-ah! Ye have kivered up yore sin from me, the sarvent of the Lord-ah! Ye have plotted agin me. Ye have no grace, fer grace is not offered by the Lord to be either received or rejected—it is grace that perjuces both the will an’ the choice in the heart of man. But whar air the subserquent good works of grace? Ye don’t show them. Ye nuvver had no grace, neither one of ye! The both of ye will quoil in hell like that thing thar. ”

“ We have heard that the impurity of the parents is so transmitted to the children that all, without a single exception, are polluted as soon as they exist. But we shall not find the origin of this pollution, unless we ascend to the first parent of us all, as to the fountain which sends forth all the streams. Thus it is certain that Adam was not only the progenitor, but as it were the root of mankind, and therefore, that all the race were necessarily vitiated in his corruption. What cavil will the Pelagians raise here? ”

“ I’m a Joslin. You’re Gannts over there—you and your kinpeople. We’re fine men, both families of us here. We can kill fifty fine men here in three minutes. Or we can build a school up yonder on the hill, across the river, inside of a couple of years. ”