A NEW CREED

THE young man who had been dismissed from his father’s house walked unmindful of the rain still falling in the evening gloom, nor looked back to the door now closed behind him. His face, strong and deeply lined, now had settled into a sternness which belied the half-humorous expression it but now had borne. He was wide of chest, broad of shoulder, straight of limb as he walked now, hands in pockets, straightforward, not slouching down, his back flat. There was little of apathy or weakness about him, one would have said. 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 rock. The longer erosion of the years also had cut sharp the faces of some of the clay banks. It might have been seen in a stronger light than this of twilight, that these banks had great seams of black running parallel through them—croppings of the heavy coal seams known throughout the region.

From time to time the young man sprang from rock to rock as he made his way down the bed of the little branch now running full from the heavy rain, but he walked on carelessly, for the road was well known to him by day or night. It had been the path of himself, his family, his ancestors, for well nigh a hundred years.

As he advanced, David Joslin cast an eye now and again upon the mountain sides. They were beautiful, even in the dull of evening, clad in gorgeous autumnal glories of chlorophyll afire under the combined alchemies of the rain, the frost, and the sun. There were reds more brilliant than may be seen even among the maples of the far north when the frost comes, yellows for which a new color name must be invented, browns of unspeakable velvety softness, a thousand ocherous and saffron hues such as no palette carries. They lay now softened and dulled, but very beautiful.

Young Joslin knew every hill, every ravine, every mountain cove which lay about him here,—all the country for fifty miles. Presently he reached the end of this little side trail down from the mountains, and emerged into a wider valley where passed the considerable volume of a fork of the Kentucky River, itself now running yellow from the rains. Had he cared he might have noted, now passing on the flood, scattered logs and parts of rafts, flotsam and jetsam of the old wasteful occupants of the land, who cut and dragged priceless timber to the grudging stream, and lost the more the more they labored.

He turned to the right, followed down the muddy river bank, and within a quarter of a mile turned yet again to the right at a decrepit gate serving in part to stop the way as adjutant of a broken rail fence which marked a scanty field.

Before him now lay a cleared space of some twenty acres or more, occupied at one corner by spare, gnarled apple trees, no man might say how old, appurtenances of acres which David Joslin had “heired” from the husband of the same grandam, whom but now he had left. Behind the apple trees rose a low roof, the broken cover of a scant gallery, a chimney, ragged-topped, at each end of the cabin. Here and there stood a China tree, yonder grew a vine, softening somewhat and beautifying even in the beauty of decay those rude surroundings. Back of the house were other small log buildings, cribs scantily filled with corn. In the barnyard stood two tall poles, behind which, running up into the darkness of the mountain side, stretched the long rusted wires which in the harvesting of the autumn sometimes carried down from the side of the mountains, too steep for the use of horse or mule, the sacks of corn perilously gathered above and sent down in the easiest way to the farmyard.

Apparently the harvest that fall had been but scant. The place had an air of poverty, or meagerness—rather perhaps should one use the latter than the former word. It was not the home of a drunkard, or a ne’er-do-well, or a poverty-smitten man, which David Joslin now approached—his own home, one like to many others all about him in these hills. It was an old, old, out-worn land, a decrepit land, which lay all about him. He was like his neighbors, his home like theirs.

David Joslin walked past the China tree and up to his own door. He stood for a moment scraping the mud from his feet at the end of the broken board on the little gallery before he pushed open the door. A woman rose to meet him.

She was a woman yet young, but seemed no longer young. Perhaps she was twenty-two, perhaps twenty-five years of age. She was tall and strong, after the fashion of the mountain woman, angular, spare. The thin dark hair, swept smoothly back from her bony forehead, seemed to come from a scalp tight-grown upon the skull. She appeared to carry about her the look of a certain raw, rugged strength, though there was little of the soft and feminine about her figure, about her attitude, about her voice as she now spoke to him.

“Why didn’t ye come home long ago?” she demanded with no preliminary.

Joslin made no answer, but sat down sullenly in a chair which he pushed up to the fireplace. The flames were dying down into a mass of coals which likewise seemed sullen. He reached out to the scant pile of firewood at the corner of the hearth, and cast on a stick or so.

“Ye’re always away,” she went on grumbling. “Folks’ll think ye don’t care nothin’ fer yore own fam’ly. Every whip-stitch ye’re off up into the hills, visitin’ somewhars or other, I don’t know whar. What’s it comin’ to?”

Still he made no answer, and she went on upbraiding.

“We been married four years, an’ ye act as free as if we’d nuvver been married at all. Don’t yore fam’ly need nothin’ now an’ agin? Is this all a womern’s got to live fer, I want to know? Look what kind of place we got.”

“Hit’s all ye come from,” he said at length. “Hit’s all yore people ever knowed, er mine. Why should ary of us expect more?”

An even, dull, accepted despair was in his tone. As for her, she cared not so much for philosophy as for the heckling she had held in reserve for him.

“Hit’s a lot to offer ary womern, hain’t it?” said she.

“Had ye much to offer in exchange?” said he, quietly and bitterly. “We traded fair, the best we knowed, the same sort of trade that’s common. We got married—thar was our children. What more is thar fer ye er em er ary of us in these hills, I’d like to know! Such as I’ve had, ye’ve had.”

There was something so stern, so bitter, in his sudden unkind remark that she took another tack.

“Hain’t ye tired?” she began, wheedling. She stooped over and pulled back the coverlet, a gaudy, patchwork quilt upon the single bed of the apartment. “Don’t ye want to lay down an’ rest a while?”

“No. I’m a-thinkin’.”

“What was ye thinkin’ about—me?”

“No, I was thinkin’ about the new doctor, an’ what he said to me last week.”

She was silent now. The name of the new doctor seemed to be something she had heard before.

“Ye talk too much with that new doctor. He puts too many fool ideas in yore haid. We’re married, an’ we got to live like that. How do ye figger any different, I’d like to know? Ye brung me here yore own self—ye knowed what ye wanted when ye come up thar courtin’ me at my daddy’s at the haid of Bull Skin. I come right down here to yore house when I was married. I stood right on this floor here, an’ yore daddy, he married us. Ye know that.”

“Yes, I do.” The young man’s face was extremely grave and gray as he spoke.

“—An’ yore daddy was a regular ordained preacher.”

“What’s the matter with ye, anyways?” she went on querulously. “Ye been a-quarlin’ with yore own people well as me?”

“My own daddy jest now ordered me outen his house. I’m nuvver goin’ thar no more.”

“Huh! I reckon yore own free-thinkin’ ways druv it on ye.”

“He burned my fiddle!” said David Joslin, with sudden resentment.

“Ye mought have expected it—goin’ up thar to play a fiddle in a preacher’s house!”

“I jest had her strung up for the fust time,” rejoined her husband. “I was a-playin’ ‘Barbara Allen.’ My daddy accused me of bein’ sinful. We’ve got it hard enough livin’ in these hills without being damned when we die.”

“Hush, Dave! Be keerful of what ye say.”

“I’m a-bein’ keerful. I’m castin’ up accounts this very day. I been castin’ up accounts fer some time. I’m thinkin’ of what that new doctor said to me. That was preachin’ sich as I nuvver heern tell of afore in these hills. I wish’t he’d come here an’ stay right along.”

She made no answer now, but pulled out the rude board table at the side of the fire, and placed upon it a yellowed plate or so, holding a piece of cold cornpone, a handful of parched corn.

“Eat,” said she. “Hit’s all we got. I borrowed some meal from the Taggarts. They’ve got no more to lend.”

“Don’t ask nothin’ of no one, womern. I’ll not be beholden to ary man. I tell ye, I’m castin’ up accounts.”

“What do ye mean—what ye talkin’ about, Dave?” She was half-frightened now.

“I hardly know. I kain’t see very much light jest yit.”

“Hain’t ye goin’ to eat?” she said. “Hain’t ye goin’ to sleep? Hain’t ye goin’ to lay down on the bed?”

“No!” said he. “No! Our children laid thar onct—them two. They died. It was best they died. They’re our last ones.”

“What do ye mean, Dave?” she again demanded, wide-eyed. “What do ye mean—ye hain’t a-goin’ to sleep here with me agin—nuvver?”

“No, I told ye. I said I was a-castin’ up accounts. Meliss’, I’ve got to go away.”

“Ye hain’t a-goin’ to quit me?”

“I don’t like that word. I nuvver quit nobody nor nothin’ that I owed a duty to. But I’ve got to go away. Hit hain’t right fer ye an’ me to live together no more. Children—why, my God!”

“Dave! Air ye crazy? Hain’t I been a good and faithful womern to ye? Tell me!”

He did not answer her.

“Tell me, Dave—have ye——”

“No! I’ve been as faithful as ye. We made our mistake when we was married—we mustn’t make it no more an’ no wuss.”

“The new doctor!” She blazed out now with scorn, contempt, indignation, all in her voice.

“Yes!” he replied suddenly. “The new doctor—ary doctor—ary man with sense could have told us what he told me. I know now a heap of things I nuvver knowed—what my pap an’ mammy nuvver knowed.”

“Ye’re a-goin’ to quit me like a coward!”

“I quit nobody like a coward. I hain’t a coward, Meliss’, an’ you know it. I’m a-goin’ to quit ye because I’m a brave man. I’ve got to be as brave as ary man ever was in the Cumberlands to do what I’ve got to do. Do ye think it’s easy fer me? Don’t ye think I hear my own children cryin’ still—mine as much as yours? An’ this was all I have to give them. Thank God they died! They’d nuvver orter of been borned.”

His wife sank into a chair, her hands dropped limp in her lap. His own hands were trembling as, after a long time, he turned toward her; his voice trembled also.

“Look around us in these hills,” said he, his lips quivering. “Think of what’s in them coves back fer fifty mile yan way, and yan, and yan, up the Bull Skin, up the Redbird, up Hell-fer-Sartin an’ Newfound an’ the Rattlesnake an’ the Buffalo—houses like ours—whisky—killin’—cousins.”

“Cousins?” Her voice was hoarse. “Why not?”

“Whisky—killin’—cousins!” he repeated. “I don’t know which is the wust, but I reckon the cousin part is. We was cousins! Thar’s cousins back in our family, both sides, as far as we know. Those children—thank God! Thar’ll be no more.”

Now indeed a long, long silence fell between them. The woman was pale as death as she turned to him at last, to hear his self-accusing monotone.

“God knows what I’m a-goin’ to do. But one thing shore, if I’ve sinned I’ve got to pay. I reckon it’s a-goin’ to be a right big price I’ve got to pay. Thar’s a wall around us—hit’s around these mountings—hit shets us all out from all the world. Do ye reckon, Meliss’, if I was able to make a way through—do ye reckon they’d say I’d paid?”

“Ye talk like a fool, man!” said she with sudden anger, “like a fool! Ye let a limpy, glass-eyed doctor stir ye all up and fill yer haid with fool idees. Ye say ye’re a-goin’ to quit me, that had our babies—because of what? Yore duty’s to me—to me—me! Ye married me. I want live children—hit’s a disgrace when a womern don’t have none. Hit’s yore business to take care of me, an’ now ye say ye’re a-goin’ to quit me. Ye’re a coward, that’s what ye air, the wustest coward ever was in these mountings. I don’t want furrin ways myself—I don’t want to go Outside—I don’t want ary of them new doctors comin’ in here, fetched on from Outside. This is our country, an’ it’s good enough. Ye talk about leavin’ me. Thar’s some other womern somewhars—that’s what’s the matter with ye, Dave Joslin, an’ I know it!”

He rose now, gray, pallid, half-tottering as he stood under her tirade.

“That’s not true,” said he at last “I don’t reckon ye understand me, er what I mean, er what I think. The only question is, what’s right. We hain’t livin’ the way folks orter do to-day. The new doctor tolt me what’s Outside. Why, womern, that’s the world—that’s life! More’n that—a heap more’n that—that’s duty! If I stay here an’ make a little corn an’ raise a couple of hogs a year, livin’ with ye an’ raisin’ a couple more of childern, I hain’t livin’ the way I’d orter. If we wasn’t cousins—if I didn’t know now it’s a sin to live on this way—I wouldn’t quit ye—I’d die first. I hain’t a-goin’ to quit ye now. As long as I got a dollar in the world it’s yores. I’ll hep ye more by goin’ out. An’ I’m a-goin’ out—I’m a-goin’ Outside.

“I’m sorry fer ye, Meliss’,” said he presently, as she sat stone-cold. “I’m sorry fer all of the wimern like ye in these mountings, sorry fer us all. God knows I don’t want to make it harder fer ye—only easier. Hit’s just a question o’ what’s the right thing to do.”

There was a vast softness, a great pity in his voice as he spoke now. He stood irresolute, and his eyes, in spite of himself, turned sideways to where once had lain two small bundles at the foot of the unkempt bed.

“Ye coward!” she cast at him, bitter and intense. “Ye low-borned coward! Ye’re a-goin’ to quit me, mother of yore dead childern. Well, go on along. I won’t ax ye to stay. Git along.”

“My granny she’s a-goin’ to take keer o’ ye,” said David Joslin. “She’ll be kind to ye, an’ ye’ll have no babies to bother over nuvver. Don’t—don’t talk to me no more. I reckon I kain’t stand no more.”

He stepped to the mantel, took from it the old faded book that lay there—no more and nothing else of all in the house that had been his. Then he turned toward his own door.

She heard his slow footsteps stumbling through the sodden grass. There closed behind him for the second time that evening a door opening upon what he had once called home.