MARCIA HADDON, AND THE MERRY WIFE OF WINDSOR

THE single hotel of Windsor was a raw and rambling structure, for the most part frequented by raftsmen and mill hands. Joslin knew the proprietor, commonly known as Old Man Bent. That worthy stood quizzically regarding the young man, as the latter accosted him, and explained his almost penniless plight.

“Ye’re plumb wore out, an’ I can see it,” said he. “Go in an’ go to bed, atter ye’ve had a squar’ meal, an’ don’t say nothin’ about pay ontel times is better fer ye. Hit’s many a dollar ye’ve paid to me, raftin’ times.”

Without further word, Joslin stepped into the dining room, and ate his first real meal for more than a week—ate ravenously, like any animal; and all that night he slept in a stupor of exhaustion.

When morning came once more he found his host. “I’ve got to git work,” said he. “I kain’t live here withouten I go to work right away. Ye know that.”

Old Man Bent looked at him with pursed lips. “I’ll tell ye what I’d do. Ye go down to Jones’ brick yard an’ see if he’ll give ye something to do fer a little while, ontel ye kin turn yoreself somehow.”

The Windsor brick yard was run by a man by the name of Jones, who himself was not above driving a canny bargain, as he noted the stalwart figure of this applicant.

“I could put ye to work carryin’ the molds from the mixer out to the dryin’ yard,” said he. “Sixty cents a day ain’t much, but I kin git plenty of men at that. They mostly work barefoot, anyways.” He glanced down at Joslin’s shoeless feet, worn with the hard going.

So this was David Joslin’s first encounter with the great outside world—for so even this village might be termed. Without murmur he went to work—twelve hours a day, with a back-breaking load each trip, carrying the wet clay of the molded bricks. The reflex of the wound in his head gave him a continuous headache. He still was weak. But he worked that day and the next. Then once more he went to his landlord.

“I kain’t nohow make it even,” said he. “I don’t feel right payin’ ye only fifteen cents a day, when I know ye charge everybody else a dollar. I been eating only two meals here now, trying to make it easier for ye.”

Old Man Bent understood the stern quality of the mountain character well enough, and accepted, at its face value, the rugged independence of the man before him.

“I’ll tell ye what I’d do if I was in yore place, Dave,” said he. “I’d go over to the Widow Dunham’s place. She ain’t got no man there now to hep her aroun’, an’ her regular price for board is only three-fifty a week. Maybe ye could manage to git a place to sleep an’ three squar’ meals a day.”

After his fashion, silent, Joslin nodded, and forthwith went over to the boarding house of the Widow Dunham, a few streets distant from the hotel. He placed before that dame a fair statement of his own case, explaining that sixty cents a day was all he was earning, that he was very, very hungry, but that he could perhaps do with two meals a day. The widow smilingly estimated the tall young man before her, reviving a somewhat ancient dimple as she did so.

“Men is mostly troublesome,” said she. “I’ve married two of ‘em in my time. The first one was kilt out in the hills, and the second one was so triflin’ he went out into the Blue Grass, an’ I never did hear from him no more. I orter have some sort of man around the place to fetch in the water an’ git me some wood now an’ then. Ye come in and take keer of them chores like, an’ pay me fifty cents a day, an’ we’ll call it even.

“Ye’d orter have a pair of shoes, by right,” added she, “an’ maybe a coat. Sometimes I have quality come here to my place—I’m expectin’ some any time now from outside. Mr. James B. Haddon of New York, him and his wife is comin’ in, he writ me. Natural, if I have folks like them around ye’d orter have a pair of shoes an’ a good coat, anyways of nights.”

She stepped back into her own well-ordered domicile, and presently emerged with a pair of shoes, not much worn. To these she added a coat, which, beyond question, never had seen fabrication in this part of the world.

“Here’s something that Mr. Haddon lef’ here, last time he was in. He goes back into the hills, or leastways he intended to if he ever got started to it, because he’s the Company man. He threw them things away, so I reckon ye’ll be welcome to ‘em.”

Joslin took these articles and looked them over. To put on another man’s clothing was to him the hardest trial of all his life. Proud as the proudest of aristocrats, it cut him to the core to use these things thus offered. Concluding that it was his duty, he accepted it with the other punishments which life was offering him.

“Thank ye, ma’am,” said he. “They’ll come right handy, I’m sure.” He did not smile as he spoke.

As for the Widow Dunham, she herself did smile, as he went out the gate. “Hit’ll be right good to have a man around the house onct more,” said she to herself.

This was of a morning. As dusk fell, Joslin appeared once more at the door of his new home. He was not left long idle.

“I’ll tell ye, Mister,” said the widow, “I ain’t axin no questions about how ye come here—I’m mountain myself, an’ I kin keep my mouth shet. If ye’ll fetch me some worter from the well yander, an’ go down to the river an’ git me some slabs fer the fire, an’ saw ‘em up, I’ll be obleeged to ye. Then ye’ll have yore supper. How ye beginnin’ to feel now?” She turned her glance to the wound in the back of Joslin’s head.

He made no answer, but accepted the pail which she handed him, and presently brought in the water. He never in his life had taken orders from a man, far less from a woman, and no duties could have been harder for him than these menial ones of the household.

About the second portion of his errand, Joslin went to the slab pile, which lay above the saw mill near the boat landing, which itself was about a half a mile above the last of the locks of the Kentucky River. As he rose, having gathered his armful of bits of sound pieces for firewood, he heard the chug of a power boat, so unusual a thing in that part of the world that for a time he stood motionless, looking at the craft as it approached. It was a river skiff, driven by an ouboard motor, the latter operated by a stranger, perhaps a hand from some garage in a downstream town.

The other occupants of the craft might at a glance be seen to be “furrin,” as the local phrase would go. A stout, middle-aged man, florid of face, exceedingly well clad, immaculate as to collar, cuffs and shirt bosom, sat in the bow, looking anxiously ahead. Midships was a yet more extraordinary figure for that locality—a young woman, perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five years of age, nicely turned out in tailor-made traveling suit, and wearing gloves, apparel unheard of for a woman in the mountains. Of extremely beautiful face was she, with large, somber gray eyes, defined strongly by the dark brows above them, and a mouth of exceeding sweetness, which softened the grave repose of her features. Withal, a figure of striking comeliness and grace for any surroundings, she was a miracle, an apparition, here in this rude hill town. Joslin had never seen her like nor dreamed it She was a creature of another world.

It bid fair to be a clumsy landing on the part of the steersman, who seemed none too well accustomed to his task. “Damn it! Look out!” irritably called the man in the bow. “You’ll have us over yet. Lend a hand there, can’t you?”

His last remark was addressed to Joslin, who without noting the imperative nature of the words, at once dropped his armful of slabs, and hurried to the edge of the wharf, steadying the bow of the boat as it came in. He made fast the painter at a projecting bit of the wharf floor, and went so far as to steady the stranger by the arm, as he clumsily stepped out from the boat. The latter himself gave a hand to the other passenger.

“Well, here we are, Marcia,” said he; “end of the world, anyway as far as I’ve been myself before. So we’re even at that, anyhow.”

“Well, stranger,” said he, turning once more to Joslin, “who are you?”

Joslin knew that he was meeting none other than the “quality folks,” Mr. and Mrs. Haddon of New York—the man whose coat and shoes he was at that time wearing. But with his genius at reticence, he made no comment..

“I jest come down from the Widow Dunham’s to git a little firewood,” said he. “Kin I hep ye up with any of yore things, ma’am?”

The strangely beautiful young woman stood looking at him gravely and unsmilingly, yet kindly. Instinctively, he recognized the soul of a real gentlewoman.

“Thank you,” said she to him now. “There are some things there”—she hesitated, as she turned toward the boat.

“That’s all right, ma’am. I’ll fetch up a bunch of ‘em when I come.”

So he turned to these additional duties, so foreign to his life and taste; but suddenly it seemed to him that just in return for that gaze of hers, not critical, not appraising him as some wild creature, not twitting him or degrading him, he would be willing to do almost anything in the world.

The newcomers were welcomed most effusively by the Widow Dunham herself, who escorted them into the best room of the house, and dusted off all the chairs with her apron, talking meanwhile volubly, and assuring them of her great delight at seeing them.

“Ye’ll like it here, Ma’am, onct ye git used to it. I know yore husband right well—he was here last year. Air ye going back into the hills with him?”

“I think we are not quite sure about that yet,” replied Mrs. Haddon. “It’s very pleasant here, and I’m very tired. Do you suppose, Jim,” said she, turning to her husband, “we could rest here for a while? It’s very beautiful here, and I feel I’m going to be comfortable.”

“That’s how we try to make everybody feel,” said the Widow Dunham. As she spoke to the woman, her eyes were upon the man. She was what was sometimes termed by her neighbors a marrying woman, and all men, married or single, she estimated with a keen eye and one experienced.

Haddon laughed a gusty laugh. “We’re fifty miles short of the real Cumberlands here, Marcia. Our property runs from thirty to fifty or even sixty miles back in. To tell the truth, I haven’t seen any of our lands, although we’ve got more than a million invested in here.”

“There’s a power of land been bought—timber an’ coal rights—for the last twenty year,” assented the Widow Dunham. “Now they do tell me that they’re a-findin’ oil on some of that land up in yander. No tellin’ what’ll happen. There’s even talk maybe there’ll be a railroad up Hell-fer-Sartin one of these days afore long.”

“Who told you about these things?” inquired the newcomer with a certain asperity. “Don’t let it get out—don’t talk about anything. By the way, I’ve got to get some sort of guide—some man who knows that country, and will take me in. Know of anybody?”

“Why, I don’t know, Mr. Haddon,” replied the widow ruminatingly, “who ye could git to take ye in. There’s a young man I got around the house—he just come out.”

“You don’t mean the chap that was down at the boat-landing, do you? He’s out in the yard now.”

The Widow Dunham nodded contemplatively. “Yes. His name’s David Joslin. Folks here knows the Joslins. He’s a mounting man—borned an’ bred up in there, fifty mile or so. He’s one of the best raft steersmen on this river—been right wild in his time, but he ain’t a-skeered of nothin’. That’s the name he’s got in these mountings. Maybe ye’d better ax him. He’s a-workin’ down to the brick yard now, an’ tell I give him yore old coat an’ shoes he didn’t have a stitch of clothes to his name, so to speak. He orter be willin’ to go to hell for a dollar a day, an’ I reckon he would.”

“Well, I guess it’ll be a hell of a trip up in there,” said Haddon in reply. “What do you think, Marcia?”

But Marcia Haddon neither then nor at any later time, while partaking of the rude fare of the place, made any comment or expressed any discontent.

When they had finished their evening meal, Haddon led his wife out to the scanty gallery of the Widow Dunham’s home, which, fenced off only by a broken paling against the street, looked out toward the western prospect of the hills. It was starlight now; the last glow of the sinking sun had disappeared. Here and there the slow sounds of the village life, now about to adjust itself to sleep, came to their ears. The fragrance of Haddon’s fine cigar hung heavy in the air. They sat in silence. Haddon himself spoke more often to others than to his wife, so it would appear, and as for her, she was reticent by instinct. Her hands folded in her lap, she sat without comment, looking out toward the shadowy outline of the mountains which crowded down to the river.

At length Haddon rose and stepped back into the house, where he found the Widow Dunham standing in the hall in converse with the tall young mountaineer.

“Now, now, Amy,” said he, advancing boldly, and chucking the comely dame under the chin, “no visiting with anybody else but me, you understand—you haven’t forgotten your old friend, have you?”

Joslin stepped back, somewhat astounded at this familiarity on the part of the stranger, but the latter only laughed in his face.

“Come along, young man,” said he. “Come out on the porch. I want to talk to you for a while.”

Joslin silently followed him out, and stood leaning against the rail of the gallery, as Haddon seated himself and began to explain what he had in his mind.

“See here, young man,” said he. “They tell me you’re from back in these mountains.”

“I was born thar,” said Joslin quietly.

“How’d you happen to come out here?” demanded the newcomer.

“I don’t reckon it’s ary man’s business but my own,” replied Joslin calmly.

“Well, you’re going back in, aren’t you, after a while?”

“I hadn’t planned ter,” said the young man. “I come out because I wanted ter. I’m a-goin’ on Outside because I think I’d orter. I’ve got to work. What I want is a chancet.”

“Well, I’ve got a chance for you.”

“How do ye mean, stranger?”

“Near as I can tell, you’re the very man I’m looking for. I’m the manager and vice-president of the land company that’s been buying stuff up in here for the last twenty years. We’ve got big holdings up in there—on the Laurel and Newfound, and the Rattlesnake and Buffalo, and Big Creek and Hell-fer-Sartan—we’ve got timber or coal or both located all through there. Now, listen—I’m in here now because there’s talk of oil being found in there. Do you know anything about that?”

“They said they found some along some of the creeks not fur from whar I lived at.”

“Have you ever heard anything about the railroad?”

“Yes, I was huntin’ on Hell-fer-Sartin not more’n two months ago, an’ I seen the stakes. There hain’t no other way they kin git through but only jest that one.”

“What is there in the way of moonshining going on in there? Any danger for an outsider to go in there?”

“I don’t know nothin’ at all about that,” said David Joslin. “If I did I wouldn’t tell ye.”

Haddon sat frowning in silence for quite a while. “You’re a funny lot, you mountain people,” said he. “It’s hard to do business with you.”

“Some ways it mought be hard with me,” replied Joslin.

“Well, don’t you need the money that I could pay you?”

“There’s nobody in the world needs money more’n I do. But I tolt ye I was headed the other way.”

“Won’t you go back in if I pay you the right wages?”

“No, I’m headed the other way.”

“Well, now, listen,” said Haddon irritably. “I need some native that knows those damned people. They tell me there’s no such thing as roads, and you have to ride horseback or muleback wherever you want to go.”

“That’s so,” replied the mountain man. “That’s the onliest way. There hain’t no sich thing as towns. Ye’d have to stop at the cabins. Ary man’s welcome in there if they think he’s all right, an’ hain’t a-lookin’ fer nothin’ er nobody.”

“Oh, ho!” said Haddon, nodding understandingly. “Some trouble in there, eh? Well, I suppose you’ve seen your share of it.” He grinned, as he looked at Joslin’s head, where he had already noted the wound still unhealed.

“We don’t say nothin’ about sich matters in these hills, stranger,” said Joslin quietly. “I’m a-tellin’ ye if I went in thar with ye, ye’d be all right. But I hain’t a-goin’. Ye kain’t noways hire me.”

“You’re pretty danged independent,” rejoined Haddon testily. “The woman here just told me that you’re wearing my coat and my shoes right now. You must be hard up against it. Probably you were run out of these hills, and that’s why you want to get outside. And now I offer you fair pay—good pay, in fact—five dollars a day, or ten—just to go in and show me the timber and coal in that country, which you don’t own but we own—and you say you won’t go. Is that the way you treat a stranger?”

“Hit mought be the way to treat some strangers. As fer yore shoes an’ coat, ye needn’t say I’m a-wearin’ ‘em no longer.” And so, deliberately, Joslin removed both the shoes and the coat, and stood coatless and barefooted, leaning against the gallery rail. He felt with a certain mortification the straight gaze of the young woman who had sat listening quietly. She spoke now.

“Mr. Joslin,” said she in the low and even tones usual for her speaking voice, “I think you need those things. I quite understand how you feel about wearing them, but you will oblige me very much by keeping them until you are able to earn something better.”

David Joslin, the shame, humiliation and hot anger of his heart struggling for mastery, turned to her, for the moment unable to speak. Then, silently as he had removed the offending articles, he replaced them.

“I thank ye, Ma’am,” said he. “I reckon ye know better’n I do what I’d orter do.”

“Well, sir,” said she, turning toward him in the twilight a face that to him had the charm of an angel’s, “my husband wants you to go back in there with him. Why is it impossible?”

“Hit’s impossible, Ma’am, because when I make up my mind to a thing it’s impossible to change it.”

She sat looking at him curiously. Never in all her life had she seen a personality more powerful than that of this half-wild heathen who stood before her. The feel of the iron of his soul came upon her with strange effect.

“I’ll not ask you why you’re going outside,” said she, after a moment.

“Jest because ye don’t ax me, I’ll tell ye,” said Joslin suddenly. “I’m a-goin’ outside to git a education.”

“An education? There aren’t many schools back in there?”

“Thar hain’t no schools at all, Ma’am. My daddy war a preacher afore he died. I kain’t read in no book to amount to nothin’. I kain’t hardly write my own name. I’m a-goin’ outside to git a education, because I’m a-goin’ to build a college, Ma’am.”

“A college!”

“Yes, Ma’am. I’ve got to do it. My people have been a-killin’ each other in thar fer a hundred years. They kain’t read, they kain’t write, they kain’t think. They hain’t amountin’ to nothin’ whatever in the world. They’re a great people, Ma’am. They’re worth savin’. Well, it kind of come to me, in a sort of callin’, that I’d orter save them. So, like I said, I’m a-goin’ Outside to git me a education, soon as I kin.”

The situation had suddenly become extraordinary. They waited for the mountaineer to go on, as presently he did.

“I’ve nuvver been further down the river than a couple of locks below. I’ve rafted here sence I was fourteen year old, but beyant the aidge of the hills I don’t know nothin’ of the world. Kin ye tell me whar I kin git my education? I don’t reckon it’ll take long—us mounting people larn right fast, Ma’am, when we git a chancet.”

Then, after a pause, he went on, anxiously: “I’d do arything in the world to obleege ye, Ma’am—I’d go back in thar right now with ye if I had time. But ye see, I’m twenty-eight year old, an’ I hain’t got no time to lose.”

Marcia Haddon sat in silence for a time and looked at her husband, who, moody and irritated, was flicking at the end of his cigar.

“This is rather an extraordinary thing, Jim,” said she. “Do you suppose—is there any way we could help this man?”

“He doesn’t seem any too willing to help us,” replied Haddon grimly.

“I hain’t said that, Mister,” said Joslin evenly. “I’d do arything in the world I could fer ye people if it was right.”

Haddon gave a snort of laughter. “You people in here haven’t got a thing in the world—we bring in all the money you’ll ever see. You’ve got your resources to sell, and you aren’t willing to sell them. Well, what do we owe you?”

“I don’t know as ye owe us anything,” said David Joslin, the slow color rising to his face. “As fer me, I don’t allow to owe ary man arything very long. I reckon ye understand that, Ma’am.”

He turned now to the woman, who nodded. He knew that she did understand.

“Is there anybody else that you can get to take us in there?” demanded Haddon impatiently. “Damn it all, I’ve almost a notion to turn around and go back again! For half a cent I’d advise the boys to charge off the whole damn thing to profit and loss. I’m sore—that’s what I am.”

The low voice of Marcia Haddon began once more, and as before she addressed not her husband, but the young mountain man.

“You spoke about going in at some later time,” said she. “You interest me. My husband and I have no children. I’d like to do something—something for those children back there in the hills.”

“Ma’am,” said David Joslin, his voice trembling, “if ye could do that God A’mighty shore would nuvver fergit it, not whiles He had a universe to run. If ye could do that—I’d do arything in the world fer ye.”

“Well, now, come,” said Haddon, still argumentatively. “You say you don’t know anyone else that you can get to take me in there?”

“I don’t, sir. The Gannts an’ the Joslins is both a-ridin’ now. Thar’s been men killed, an’ goin’ to be more killed. If ary stranger went in thar, he’d be liable nuvver to come out at all.”

“Well,” rejoined Haddon, “I don’t think my salary will warrant my going in there and getting shot up by some long-legged son-of-a-gun toting a squirrel rifle. That doesn’t appeal to me any whatever. Listen, man!” Haddon sat up suddenly in his chair as an idea flashed upon his keen business brain. “Listen now,” and he extended an arresting forefinger. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you. You know that country and I don’t. I’ll pay you ten dollars a day and all your expenses to New York if you’ll go back with me. I want you to address a meeting of my company and some other companies that are in the business. That’ll do just as well, if you tell a good straight story, as if I went in there myself. You do know the country, don’t you?”

“I know it day an’ night, through an’ through. I know every coal seam in them hills. I know most every old-time poplar tree an’ big white oak from Hell-fer-Sartin to the mouth of Rattlesnake, an’ from Big Creek to the Main Forks. I don’t know nothin’ else.”

“Now then—now then—now then,” resumed Haddon excitedly—“that’s the answer! That certainly is the answer to the whole thing. Now, you come back with us—I’ll get you some clothes, and that sort of thing, of course. I’ll pay your railroad fare and expenses, and ten dollars a day, and I’ll keep you in New York until this business is over. In return for that, all I want you to do is to tell my men what you know about that country—how many trees there are to an acre on that Hell-fer-Sartin tract—where the oil croppings are, so far as you know—where the railroad’s got to come. Can you show it on a map?”

“I don’t know about maps, stranger,” said David Joslin, “but if ye could tell me the names of the places on the maps, like rivers, ye know—ye see, I kain’t read very well, not yit.”

“Sure, sure, I’ll fix that all right I’ll show it for you just like a book. A child could read it.”

“I kain’t read no better’n a child, Mr. Haddon, but if ye kin show me whar the creeks is marked on the map I kin show ye whar the railroad has got to go. I kin put my finger on every place whar oil has been found, er gas—ye know, thar’s places whar gas has been burnin’ fer forty year, ever sence the War, an’ thar didn’t nobody know about it.”

“There doesn’t anyone know that there’s a continuance of the big West Virginia anticline right through these mountains,” rejoined Haddon grimly. “Oil?—There’s got to be oil in here, and I know it. Our geologists figured that all out before you ever told me there had been oil found in here. Why, man—I can’t afford not to take you back with me. And you can’t afford not to come.”

“What do ye think of this, Ma’am?” said David Joslin, turning toward the quiet young woman. “I reckon ye mought be ashamed of me if I went along with ye.” He flushed dully.

“No, Mr. Joslin,” said she, quickly. “You’ll learn. You wouldn’t be unhappy, I think. I want you to feel that we want to help you. Let my husband take care of the business part. I’ll see what I can do toward getting you a chance to study. If money is good for anything, Jim, it ought to be good for just some such thing as this.”

“Is it a trade, man?” said the Northerner suddenly.

“I believe I’ll go with ye, Ma’am,” said David Joslin quietly for his reply. He did not speak to the man.

It was a trade! When Jimmy Haddon stepped back once more into the house, to the side of the table where the flickering oil lamp stood, he caught the Widow Dunham gaily about the shoulders, chucked her under the chin once more, and kissed her fair on the lips. It chanced he did this just as his wife came into the hall, so that she saw the whole transaction. She made no comment. She also had made her trade, years ago, when she married. If she had lost, she would not yet complain. But Joslin saw the hot flush on her cheek.