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.