Valley Folks

I

A MOUNTAINEER, in a speculative mood, will push back his hat, take an extra chew of tobacco, and drawl: ‘I don’t noways aim ter shorten the power o’ Gawddlemighty, but I ’low hit ’pears lak hit seems thet thar’s one thing He kain’t do Hisself. He kain’t make two mountings ’ithout a valley atween ’em.’

Peter often tossed this nugget of wisdom at me as I irrationally considered some way of avoiding valleys and valley folks on our journey with the pushcart.

It seemed preposterous that a mere protuberance on the earth’s surface should so change the manners of people living but a few miles from each other. I was reminded that the way we earn our bread makes a vast difference in us; and that the people of the rich valleys earn their bread in an easier way than the mountaineers, and earn more of it. The labor of others serves the owner of valley land, and his manners — the mirror of man’s relation to other men — seem to have lost the antique dignity which still distinguishes the mountain man. ‘For no pauper ever felt him condescend, nor Prince presume.’ He has no need for the nice adjustment of his relation to other men; for he knows but one class, and gives every man the respect he feels due himself.

Something of this was in my mind as we pushed Sisyphus slowly down the dusty road of the little town toward the bank where we had come to cash the last one of our traveler’s checks. We were light-heartedly penniless, for I had just spent our last forty-five cents for an airy nothing in the way of a crocheted hat. But though we were in sight of funds we were tired and hungry; Sis was empty of food; and it was Saturday afternoon. So we hurried on for fear of the bank’s closing early.

It was a little town with no railway. We passed pretentious places with wellcared-for grounds, and beside them neglected tumble-down shacks. In a mountain village it is true that the inhabitants would collect about us and gaze wonderingly at our Chinese wheelbarrow with ‘Sisy’ painted on one side and ‘-phus’ on the other, and at our beloved mongrel John walking so proudly beside it. But they ever regarded us with a certain compassion, knowing us to be homeless wanderers. These valley folks stared at us with hard eyes of derisive curiosity. One by one the inhabitants of the town set out after us; and, rather annoyed Pied Pipers, we trudged before them on the way to the bank.

‘Give you fifty cents fur that dawg.’

‘Where you-all goin’?’

‘Whut you sellin’?’

‘Whut a consarned little wagon!’

‘Hello, Sisy! Goin’ ter give a show? Goin’ ter preach, Sis?'

I counted the minutes until we could get the money and climb the nearest road to the mountain. The ‘sweet security of streets’ was not for us. Charles Lamb’s ghost could n’t find security in streets to-day.

The crowd, constantly augmented, followed us into the little bank, and the overflow pressed against the window. I went inside with the check, because John was in no pleasant mood, and there might be a dog fight to settle.

A solemn, pasty-faced man peered at me over his spectacles as I hurriedly reached in the chamois bag at my neck and gave him the last little crisp paper. He read it carefully, then contemptuously tossed it back to me.

’This isn’t a check,’ he said. ’It’s just the printed wrapper that comes around the checks.’

I gazed at the paper in horror. It was too true. I recalled now that Peter had insisted that we had cashed them all. But I carried the checks, and there was that little paper with the formula printed thereon! Now, disaster! How could I face Peter, waiting so hopefully outside?

The grinning crowd now chuckled in open amusement. ‘Fifty cents fur yer dawg!’ ’Hit the grit, Sis!’

I longed to run to Peter and transfer this trouble to him. But it was all my fault, so I turned to the banker and asked him if he would telegraph to our bankers on the Eastern Shore of Mobile.

‘There is a telephone at the drug store,’ he said. ‘You can telephone from there. We have no telegraph.’

‘But,’ I said, ‘I have n’t any money. Could n’t you telephone and pay yourself for the trouble when the money comes?’

‘ I could n’t take the risk. It would cost something. Would have to be relayed twice.’ And he turned away. The crowd jeered openly. You could n’t fool their banker! Cruel? No. They were reveling in a fresh emotion, elated by the moral elevation that comes from catching a would-be swindler.

As I tried to push my way to the door a tall youth bent his sunburnt face above me and said in a low tone, ‘There is another bank here. A little one. The Farmer’s Bank. Try it. I’ll show you the way.’

II

Outside, in a few. broken words, I told the tragic tale, and we set out for the other bank — Peter, Sis, John, and I in the middle of the street like a circus parade; followed, I do believe, by every able-bodied man in the town except the pasty-faced banker.

Before a little green one-roomed building, in an easy-chair on the sidewalk, dozed a ponderous man. He straightened up with difficulty, rubbed his eyes, and stared at this mob descending upon him with an air almost of fright. Our friend the youth spoke a word to him; he heaved himself up, waddled heavily into the room, followed by Peter, glared threateningly at the rest of us, and slammed the door. Presently Peter came to the window and nodded reassuringly to me. I whispered a word to my sunburnt knight, who stood beside me, and he pushed Sisyphus across to the drug store. In a moment I had unlocked the cart, tuned my violin, and climbed on the bench before the store. I meant to pay for my carelessness and to make this crowd pay for its impudent curiosity. So I bowed in my best manner, and said; ‘My friends, I feel sure that you will be pleased to know that the Farmer’s Bank is sending for our money. But we must live until it comes. This is Saturday. The money will not come, perhaps, until Monday. I intend to play for you, and I intend to pass the hat afterward; so if anyone does n’t. care to hear he may leave now. I shall spend every cent I collect at the grocery store next door — putting the money at once back into circulation in your charming little city.’ And I dashed into what fireworks I could command at the moment. I hoped to finish before Peter could know, but he ran across the street, mingled horror and amusement in his face. I ended hastily on an improvised chord, and passed my hat. While the crowd cheered, — more in admiration of my nerve than my music, I fear, — Peter, not to be outdone, reached in the cart for a book we had received at the last mountain post office. He stepped jauntily on the bench, and, waving the book, cried: —

‘Fellow citizens. As I look into the faces of this intelligent audience, the thought comes that I can say nothing that is new to you, nothing that will interest you. But there is one late discovery that maybe some of you have not heard. This is that we are all living inside the earth instead of outside it. Korish Colony of Estero, Florida, — which we recently visited, — has proved this; at least no one has disproved it. We are all crawling around like flies inside of an empty orange skin, and the stars are in the middle of it.’ I pulled frantically at Peter’s blouse. This was tempting fate with utter recklessness! ‘Peter!’ I cried. ‘Stop! They’ll put us in the asylum! ’ But he went on: ‘ Here where you are all conversant with the latest thought of the age, you will grasp eagerly the book called The Cellular Universe for the ridiculous sum of twenty-five cents! Who wants to know that he is living inside the earth for only twenty-five cents? Also there are pictures in it — at least there are diagrams.’

A wizened old man in a black coat approached and said: ‘I’ll take that book.’ ‘Here you are,’ said Peter. I wish I had more of them for the rest of you. But it is limited in circulation. The gentleman who bought it can explain it to you — if he can understand it. I never could. I thank you.’

The temper of the crowd had changed. No longer hostile, they cheered us wildly, and the druggist insisted that we come in for ice-cream soda. I invited my friend the youth to join us, and he told us that the druggist kept the key to the schoolhouse, and that we might camp there over Sunday. We accepted thankfully, for we knew there would be no privacy in our little tent in this town. I proudly counted my money. There was one dollar and twenty-six cents. With Peter’s twenty-five cents we were rich again, and we spent it all at the grocery next door.

It was well that we had the key to the schoolhouse, for sixteen men and boys sat about watching us at supper by our camp fire, and I doubt if we could have slept without a retreat.

Sunday morning as we built a little breakfast fire in the schoolhouse yard a voice called, ‘Come on in to breakfast!’ And there, leaning on the fence at the back of the yard, was the owner of The Cellular Universe. We thanked him, but declined, and presently his wife appeared at the fence with a covered dish of griddle cakes, homemade sausage, and a square of chocolate cake. The man leaned over the fence and said: ‘ Say, do you reckon that book is so?’ To save Peter embarrassment I replied that I considered it a dangerous book, because while I was reading it I could n’t help but believe it.

‘Well,’ said the old man, ‘I’m not afraid to believe anything that seems so to me.’

‘Hurrah for you!’ cried Peter. ‘Perhaps I’d believe it if I could understand it. Anyway, it’s worth the money, is n’t it?’ he asked uneasily.

‘Yes, it is,’ answered the man. ‘I’ll work on it this winter.’

We went to church. We had never attended a valley church. A very old and feeble man preached courageously on ‘Old things are passed away/ and spent half an hour on the inadvisability of burnt sacrifice and other personal matters concerning the Jews. The sermon was convincing, but the dear old man read from notes, and it was a relief when the organ gasped a prelude and four men sang, — I quote the refrain from memory, —

This somewhat disconcerting picture was relieved by the beautiful voice of the bass. Utterly without self-consciousness, he gazed through the open door to the blue hills beyond, and his voice rolled out, sonorous, sweet, true, expressive. There was, to him, nothing incongruous in the vision of his mother floating there just as he remembered her, with the addition of wings. Nor was there to me while his rich voice boomed out the refrain. We waited to speak to him after the service. He was the village carpenter. A simple man, and, I feel sure, as fine and as true as his voice.

Monday morning the ponderous banker with the soft drawl and shrewd eyes gave us the money, and I humbly asked Peter to carry it. I reminded him that traveler’s checks had always brought me misfortune. For once, when we were passing through a Southern city, I looked up from lunch on the gallery of our apartment into two gleaming pistols, and looked down at two armed policemen in the yard below. All because one is expected, absurdly enough, to sign one’s name as well in a mood of depression as when one happens to be enjoying a moment of ease and quiet nerves! The law seems rather an inhuman, unreasonable thing. But I have a criminal record, having once before been arrested for refusing to pay an outrageous city license on a car of apples I had raised. These cases were settled in my favor at once; and never, in the clutches of the law, have I had such a feeling of utter helplessness as at the window of the bank in this valley town.

III

I was feverishly anxious to climb the mountain and forget the marts of men. For to one of us this journey meant not only an escape from the world, but a last good-bye to earth. Soon, we thought, one of us must greet the summer dawns and watch the winter stars alone. And while the devout believe in the communion of saints, and admit, perhaps, the companionship of spirits quick or dead, yet no spirit may put his face against the rough bark of a tree and, listening for its heartheat, say, ‘I too, brother!’ Nor may he break the smooth surface of blue water where long ago an Indian cooled his bronzed breast, or dappled fawns drank timidly, and say, ‘I too pass this way, with our sister the rain and our brother the wind.’ Dust to dust. No more the dear close kinship with the earth, whatever star the eye of faith may discern in the impenetrable darkness beyond.

‘Now,’ said Peter, gently but firmly, ‘we are compelled to walk down the valley road. There is absolutely no way over the mountain here.’

It was a blow. For though this fertile valley would have brought joy to the heart of a farmer, the trees were all cut down for fields, and no bird sang. Only a meadow lark on a rail fence sang his song ‘twice over,’and no impudent mocking bird derided. But the insects droned through the ‘lazy jack,’ as the negroes call the drifting heat waves; and the sun blazed down on the unshaded way. The road was being repaired, and we met motor ears in deepest grief, while the spirited horses of the valley shied always at Sis and rendered us unpopular on the road.

Late in the afternoon we came upon a little feudal valley where a great house bullied the surrounding tenant cottages. Suddenly a splendid race horse bore down upon us. Our inoffensive Sisyphus appeared to him as a monster of such frightful mien that we expected to see his rider, a boy of twelve perhaps, thrown at our feet. But we did not know Richard then! When he was safely past us and we had sighed relief, there was a thunder of hoofs and the struggle began once more. Again and again the boy forced the terrified animal past the cart, until at last the horse stood trembling and snorting beside us. Four great black eyes blazed at us alike. Then the boy in the elegant riding breeches and billowing silk shirt suddenly patted the arched neck, and they were off Avithout a word.

The day was gray now and sullen clouds loomed in the Avest, so we pushed Sis under a tall oak in a Aacant lot between two small houses, one of which seemed unoccupied, and began hurriedly to make camp. ‘Hi there!’ called a voice, and the horse took the ditch before the lot with a splendid jump. ‘It’s going to rain in a minute like the very devil! ’ cried the boy in a curious voice starting in a gruff bass and ending in a muted tenor. ‘Go into that empty house at the left. I’ll get the key.’ He dashed to the house at the right, and called, ‘Hi! Mr. Bell! Bring out the key to Paw’s house!’ An old man appeared with the key. The boy tied his horse to the fence, and we followed them into the house — unfurnished, but with a welcoming fireplace. ‘No chairs,’ said the boy, and, running back to Mr. Bell’s house, he brought over two chairs. Then he mounted his horse and rode away.

‘Who is that remarkable person?’ I asked.

‘That’s Richard. Richard Winstone. His paw owns about everything in the valley, and he does just what he pleases. His paw can’t do anything with him. He’s the only boy. His sister’s just home from boarding school and he pesters the life out of her. Don’t worry. It’ll be all right — your stopping here. Lord! The old man’d be glad if that’s the worst. he’d do! be’ll be back right away.’

And he was; appearing on foot, and bearing two generous slices of ham and a segment of loaf cake. ‘Richard,’ said Mr. Bell, ‘you stole that ham and cake! You’ll get these folks in trouble. Now don’t take nothing from nobody else.’

‘I did n’t steal ’em. I got ’em at home. Mister, can you play that A’iolin?’

It rained. We built a fire in the fireplace, sat on real chairs, and dined sumptuously. As Peter lighted a luxurious tailor-made cigarette, I saw the green shutters move, and a decapitated fowl fell in the middle of the floor. A gruff voice called, ‘For breakfast! ’ Peter rushed to t he window and cried, ‘ Richard, you really must not go on like this! You’ll get us in bad in the village!’

‘No, I’ll not!’ cried the sAveet tenor. ‘That pullet was n’t ours. I got it at Miller’s. He owes Paw anyway. I’ll be back with some folks to hear you play the violin.’

He returned with three men and a boy, who appeared rather apologetic. But not Richard. As I played he sat on the floor in his fine gray breeches and beat time on the hearth with the poker.

He was satisfied with the performance, for he said to the audience, ‘Now there’s Dorothy. She’s been squeaking away on her violin — taking lessons ever since I was a kid, and you know the lonesome stuff she pulls out!’

During our stay of two rainy days I fancy Richard ate and slept little. We snatched what we could. For when he was not raiding the village for supplies for us he was sitting before the fire on the floor, asking eager questions about the world outside. In vain did his father send men with messages telling him to return home at once. Richard would answer amiably, ‘Tell Paw I’ll be on directly.’ And once he said, ‘You go tell Paw he’s got these folks all wrong. You tell Dorothy to come over and hear this woman play on the violin. She might learn something. You tell Paw these folks are all right. They are not gypsies.’

Fearing Richard would accompany us, on the morning of the third day we stole away at dawn, leaving a note of thanks for many favors. But at our noon camp there came the sound of galloping hoofs, and there was Richard with a loaf of homemade bread and a whole cake. He lunched with us, delighted with our oven dug in the ground, where we had baked an apple pie, covering it with the iron lid we carried. As he leaned against a tree with a lighted cigarette, there was the sound of wheels. ‘That’s Paw,’ he said resignedly. An irate voice called, ‘Richard, you get on your horse and come home. This minute, sir!’

‘Which road are you going to take?’ asked Richard, as he mounted his horse. ‘ Maybe I ’ll be back to-morrow.’

We watched him ride away behind the cart, in which his father slumped wearily. From the rear he gently lifted a white flour sack which appeared to be heavy, and, leaning from his horse, softly deposited it in the road. Then he made a time-honored gesture with his thumb toward his father, waved his velvet cap, and pointed to the sack with his riding whip. Peter wanted to rush after the cart and call. But why get Richard in trouble at this last moment? So I walked down the road and found half a bushel of rare peaches with which no doubt some tenant had presented his father on the way. Dear, lawless, generous Richard of the lion’s heart! He told us he was to be sent away to school in the fall. Upon what school he descended, and how long it was before he was expelled, we never learned. ‘Feudalism,’ said Peter, ‘has its points.’ Weeks later, at a mountain post office, we received a marked copy of a little county paper.

Some of the nicest folks ever in this valley camped here this week. And the lady could play the violin better than some folks who took lessons for five years. Come again, folks!

‘Richard’s fine Italian hand,’ I said. ‘His last gesture of defiance.’

‘I wish,’ said Peter, ‘I could have seen him defying that editor!’

IV

Still we must pursue the valley road. And at sunset we camped in a grove beside a little church. Suddenly from the church came the sound of most exhilarating jazz. I peeped in at the open door. Two young men were smoking cigarettes; one lolled in the pulpit chair, and one thumped joyously on the tin-pan piano. ‘Come in! ’ called the youth in the pulpit. Though I confess that I was shocked at this surprising irreverence, I sat down to rest and to listen; and after a while complimented the youth at the piano on the quality of his jazz.

‘Oh, I just play by ear,’he said modestly. ‘I can only play in the black keys.’

‘Some players think that difficult,’I said.

‘Can you plav?’

‘Only a little.’

The youth in the pulpit had already gone out, and was curiously watching Peter make camp. I gazed away to the mountains through the open door, and rather ungraciously played Mendelssohn, and drifted into scraps of Beethoven, as befitting a church.

I said, ‘I fear I can’t play anything in a church that you will care for.’ I was rewarded for my priggish ness. ‘Ho,’ said the youth, ‘music is music! What has a church to do with it?'

It was one of those haunted summer nights when the world suddenly blanches under a bright moon and as suddenly vanishes under a flying cloud. We sat before the tent in silence, when the two young men of the church appeared and asked us to go in a car up the mountain to a house where there was a piano, and play the violin. We declined. They insisted. But we had no desire to career up a dangerous mountain road in the night, with two unknown men, to an unknown destination— probably a moonshine party. They went away, visibly disappointed; and presently one returned alone, and sat quietly beside us. ‘You see,’ be said, ‘I thought maybe you-all might think we wanted you to go to some lowdown party up the mountain. These people we want you to go play for are nice folks. Valley folks. They went to live up on the mountain because Boy — he was my buddy in the war — was sick. Could n’t breathe good in the valley. He’s been wounded — in the face — and he’s been gassed. He can’t live much longer. His mother lives up there alone with him. She’s seventy-five and she plays the piano fine. I telephoned about you-all, and they want you to come mighty bad. You sec, Roy was going to marry Judge Weir’s girl in the valley here, and he would n’t marry her after he was gassed—and he don’t look nice now—his face is all shot up. But she wanted to marry him. They are mighty lonesome nights up the mountain.’

Already I was taking my heavy coat from Sis, and Bctcr was assisting the youth in pushing the cart into the church and locking the door. But I insisted that John come with us. If we were to be kidnaped we should at least all die together.

‘Is it far?’ asked Peter, as we glided down the valley road. ‘It’s the first road up the mountain,’ the driver answered ambiguously. After what seemed a long drive, we turned to the left and ascended the mountain. The moon would suddenly light some deep gorge over which we seemed to hang suspended. Around hairpin curves and over great rocks we rushed. We splashed through unseen waters, and skidded on sandy hills. On and on with these two reckless youths who smoked and played jazz in a church, and who told a preposterous romantic tale to lure us here. I clutched John tightly, pulled my coat about me in the chill air, thought of our last traveler’s check in the chamois bag, and resolved to sell my life dearly. Peter said, ‘Are you cold?’ And one of the youths said that he had a bottle of good liquor, and if I did n’t mind taking a drink from the bottle it would warm me. I did n’t mind. If it were knock-out drops the pangs of dissolution would be eased; and presently when the moon came out I could look down a precipice calmly.

At last we stopped, and to my relief a man appeared with a flash light and conducted us across a yard into a great, bare, dimly lighted hall where a grandfather’s clock ticked, and on into a well-furnished living room where, before an open fire, stood a little, gray, black-eyed, birdlike old lady in black silk. At first I was cold with fright, for fear I could not understand the speech of this fair-haired, tall youth who had been so handsome, and who yet lived on a while in his marred beauty. But his friends unobtrusively helped me to understand him. His mother played a nice accompaniment for simple airs, the youth of the five flats pounded out enticing jazz, and Peter told his funniest stories. After a while our hostess tinkled old-fashioned polkas and mazurkas, and we sang, — not war songs, not a word of the war, — and we were all merry together.

Then Roy asked me if I would play at the telephone in the hall. Radios were slow to penetrate the mountains, and he wanted a friend in the valley to hear. He called someone, and I followed him into the hall. ‘Can you play “Good-bye, Summer”?’ he asked. ‘She likes that song.’ And as my fingers searched the strings for the familiar air he leaned his yellow head against the wall, where the light fell from the open door, and covered his disfigured face with his hands. As the old clock ticked away his life — and mine — I had a curious feeling that neither of us was there, on the mountain, in the shadowy hall — that only the broken shell of the youth was there against the wall, and that he himself walked proudly down the valley road with another, and that I myself was but an echo of the night through the gulf that divided these lovers. And always, as I recall that moment, I have a strange feeling that I left something of myself there on the lonely mountain. Or a feeling that I was not I, but a voice calling over and over again, ‘Good-bye! Good-bye, Summer!’

I finished, and left the boy leaning against the wall, with Ins scarred face in his hands.

Presently I heard him at the telephone, and after a while he appeared from another room with a tray bearing a great bowl of eggnog and little oldfashioned seed cakes, and he served us with feverish gavety. The little old lady and Peter danced while I played a waltz; and the other lad and I foxtrotted to hilarious jazz. Then Roy said, ‘It’s late and cold, and you are not going down the mountain to-night. You are going to stay here, and we’ll have fried chicken and waffles and honey for breakfast!’

But the gay little lady was weary now, and her hand trembled on the railing as she climbed the stairs before me to show me the room with its dainty curtains and hooked rugs. As she said good-night she murmured, ‘I want to thank you for coming to cheer my boy. He’s lonely. And I’m seventy-five, and he’s all I have. He’ll not be here much longer.’ The little white head raised itself proudly. ‘But I’m not afraid.’

What had I to offer that dauntless spirit?

At breakfast we were gay. And there were yellow roses on snowy linen, and a single waxen-white rose at my plate.

On the way down the mountain the driver said, ‘Jim, we ought to come up oftener to see Roy. Some day he’ll go West and we’ll feel pretty mean, He’s lonesome. Let’s bring the girls and come up Sunday. He misses the valley folks.’

‘Dear kind valley folks!’ I cried, patting his shoulder.

‘Belated justice,’ said Peter. And the boy turned surprised young eyes upon us.