The Heart of the Hills Part 17

"Mine's Hawn--Jason Hawn."

The other turned away with a wave of his hand.

"See you again."

"Sh.o.r.e," said Jason, and then his breast heaved and his heart seemed to stop quite still. Another pair of proud horses shot between the stone pillars, and in the carriage behind them was Marjorie. The boy dropped to his seat, dropped his chin in both hands as though to keep his face hidden, but as the sound of her coming loudened he simply could not help lifting his head. Erect, happy, smiling, the girl was looking straight past him, and he felt like one of the yellow grains of dust about her horses' feet.

And then within him a high, shrill little yell rose above the laughter and vocal hum going on around him--there was John Burnham coming up the walk, the school-master, John Burnham--and Jason sprang to meet him. Immediately Burnham's searching eyes fell upon him, and he stopped--smiling, measuring, surprised. Could this keen-faced, keen-eyed, sinewy, tall lad be the faithful little chap who had trudged st.u.r.dily at his heels so many days in the mountains?

"Well, well, well," he said; "why, I wouldn't have known you. You got here in time, didn't you?"

"I have been waitin' fer you," said Jason. "Miss Hilda told me to come straight to you."

"That's right--how is she?"

"She ain't well--she works too hard."

The school-master shook his head with grave concern.

"I know. You've been lucky, Jason. She is the best woman on earth."

"I'd lay right down here an' die fer her right now," said the lad soberly. So would John Burnham, and he loved the lad for saying that.

"She said you was the best man on earth--but I knowed that," the lad went on simply; "an' she told me to tell you to make me keep out o' fights and study hard and behave."

"All right, Jason," said Burnham with a smile. "Have you matriculated yet?"

Jason was not to be caught napping. His eyes gave out the quick light of humor, but his face was serious.

"I been so busy waitin' fer you that I reckon I must 'a' forgot that."

The school-master laughed.

"Come along."

Through the thick crowd that gave way respectfully to the new professor, Jason followed across the road to the building opposite, and up the steps into a room where he told his name and his age, and the name of his father and mother, and pulled from his pooket a little roll of dirty bills. There was a fee of five dollars for "janitor"; Jason did not know what a janitor was, but John Burnham nodded when he looked up inquiringly and Jason asked no question. There was another fee for "breakage," and that was all, but the latter item was too much for Jason.

"S'pose I don't break nothin'," he asked shrewdly, "do I git that back?"

Then registrar and professor laughed.

"You get it back."

Down they went again.

"That's a mighty big word fer such little doin's," the boy said soberly, and the school-master smiled.

"You'll find just that all through college now, Jason, but don't wait to find out what the big word means."

"I won't," said Jason, "next time."

Many eyes now looked on the lad curiously when he followed John Burnham back through the crowd to the steps, where the new professor paused.

"I pa.s.sed Mavis on the road. I wonder if she has come."

"I don't know," said Jason, and a curious something in his tone made John Burnham look at him quickly--but he said nothing.

"Oh well," he said presently, "she knows what to do."

A few minutes later the two were alone in the new professor's recitation-room.

"Have you seen Marjorie and Gray?"

The lad hesitated.

"I seed--I saw 'em when they come in."

"Gray finishes my course this year. He's going to be a civil engineer."

"So'm I," said Jason; and the quick shortness of his tone again made John Burnham look keenly at him.

"You know a good deal about geology already--are you going to take my course too?"

"I want to know just what to do with that land o' mine. I ain't forgot what you told me--to go away and git an education--and when I come back what that land 'ud be worth."

"Yes, but--"

The lad's face had paled and his mouth had set.

"I'm goin' to git it back."

Behind them the door had opened, and Gray's spirited, smiling face was thrust in.

"Good morning, professor," he cried, and then, seeing Jason, he came swiftly in with his hand outstretched.

"Why, how are you, Jason? Mavis told me yesterday you were here.

I've been looking for you. Glad to see you."

Watching both, John Burnham saw the look of surprise in Gray's face when the mountain boy's whole frame stiffened into the rigidity of steel, saw the haughty uplifting of the Blue-gra.s.s boy's chin, as he wheeled to go, and like Gray, he, too, thought Jason had never forgotten the old feud between them. For a moment he was tempted to caution Jason about the folly of it all, but as suddenly he changed his mind. Outside a bugle blew.

"Go on down, Jason," he said instead, "and follow the crowd-- that's chapel--prayer-meeting," he explained.

At the foot of the stairs the boy mingled with the youthful stream pouring through the wide doors of the chapel hall. He turned to the left and was met by the smiling eyes of his new acquaintance, Burns, who waved him good-humoredly away:

"This is the soph.o.m.ore corner--I reckon you belong in there."

And toward the centre Jason went among the green, the countrified, the uneasy, and the unkempt. The other half of the hall was banked with the faces of young girls--fresh as flowers--and everywhere were youth and eagerness, eagerness and youth. The members of the faculty were climbing the steps to a platform and ranging themselves about the old gentleman with the crutches. John Burnham entered, and the vault above rocked with the same barbaric yells that Jason had heard given Gray Pendleton, for Burnham had been a mighty foot-ball player in his college days. The old president rose, and the tumult sank to reverential silence while a silver tongue sent its beautiful diction on high in a prayer for the bodies, the minds, and the souls of the whole buoyant throng in the race for which they were about to be let loose. And that was just what the tense uplifted faces suggested to John Burnham--he felt in them the spirit of the thoroughbred at the post, the young hound straining at the leash, the falcon unhooded for flight, when, at the president's nod, he rose to his feet to speak to the host the welcome of the faculty within these college walls and the welcome of the Blue-gra.s.s to the strangers from the confines of the State--particularly to those who had journeyed from their mountain homes. "These young people from the hills," he said, "for their own encouragement and for all patience in their own struggle, must always remember, and the young men and women of the Blue-gra.s.s, for tolerance and a better understanding, must never forget, in what darkness and for how long their st.u.r.dy kinspeople had lived, how they were just wakening from a sleep into which, not of their own fault, they had lapsed but little after the Revolution; how eagerly they had strained their eyes for the first glimmer from the outside world that had come to them, and how earnestly now they were fighting toward the light. So isolated, so primitive were they only a short while ago that neighbor would go to neighbor asking 'Lend us fire,' and now they were but asking of the outer world, 'Lend us fire.' And he hoped that the young men and women from those dark fastnesses who had come there to light their torches would keep them burning, and take them back home still sacredly aflame, so that in the hills the old question with its new meaning could never again be asked in vain."

Jason's eyes had never wavered from the speaker's face, nor had Gray's, but, while John Burnham purposely avoided the eyes of both, he noted here and there the sudden squaring of shoulders, and the face of a mountain boy or girl lift quickly and with open- mouthed interest remain fixed; and far back he saw Mavis, wide- eyed and deep in some new-born dream, and he thought he saw Marjorie turn at the end to look at the mountain girl as though to smile understanding and sympathy. A mental tumult still held Jason when the crowd about him rose to go, and he kept his seat. John Burnham had been talking about Mavis and him, and maybe about Marjorie and Gray, and he had a vague desire to see the school- master again. Moreover, a doubt, at once welcome and disturbing to him, had coursed through his brain. If secret meetings in lanes and by-ways were going on between Mavis and Gray, Gray would hardly have been so frank in saying he had seen Mavis the previous afternoon for Gray must know that Jason knew there had been no meeting at Steve Hawn's house. Perhaps Gray had overtaken her in the lane quite by accident, and the boy was bothered and felt rather foolish and ashamed when, seeing John Burnham still busy on the platform, he rose to leave.