GRAYSON'S BABY
THE first snow sifted in through the
Gap that night, and in a “shack” of
one room and a low loft a man was
dead, a woman was sick to death, and
four children were barely alive; and
nobody even knew. For they were hill
people, who sicken, suffer, and sometimes
die, like animals, and make no
noise.
Grayson, the Virginian, coming down
from the woods that morning, saw the
big-hearted little doctor outside the door
of the shack, walking up and down,
with his hands in his pockets. He was
whistling softly when Grayson got near,
and, without stopping, pointed with his
thumb within. The oldest boy sat
stolidly on the one chair in the room,
his little brother was on the floor hard
by, and both were hugging a greasy
stove. The little girl was with her
mother in the bed, both almost out of
sight under a heap of quilts. The baby
was in a cradle, with its face uncovered,
whether dead or asleep Grayson could
not tell. A pine coffin was behind the
door. It would not have been possible
to add to the disorder of the room, and
the atmosphere made Grayson gasp. He
came out looking white. The first man
to arrive thereafter took away the eldest
boy, a woman picked the baby girl from
the bed, and a childless young couple
took up the pallid little fellow on the
floor. These were step-children. The
baby boy that was left was the woman's
own. Nobody came for that, and Grayson
went in again and looked at it a
long while. So little, so old a human
face he had never seen. The brow
was wrinkled as with centuries of pain,
and the little drawn mouth looked as
though the spirit within had fought
its inheritance without a murmur, and
would fight on that way to the end. It
was the pluck of the face that drew
Grayson. “I'll take it,” he said. The
doctor was not without his sense of humor
even then, but he nodded. “Cradle and
all,” he said, gravely. And Grayson put
both on one shoulder and walked away.
He had lost the power of giving further
surprise in that town, and had he met
every man he knew, not one of them
would have felt at liberty to ask him
what he was doing. An hour later the
doctor found the child in Grayson's
room, and Grayson still looking at it.
“Is it going to live, doctor?”
The doctor shook his head. “Doubtful.
Look at the color. It's starved.
There's nothing to do but to watch it
and feed it. You can do that.”
So Grayson watched it, with a
fascination of which he was hardly
conscious. Never for one instant did its
look change—the quiet, unyielding
endurance that no faith and no philosophy
could ever bring to him. It was ideal
courage, that look, to accept the inevitable
but to fight it just that way. Half
the little mountain town was talking
next day—that such a tragedy was possible
by the public road-side, with relief
within sound of the baby's cry. The
oldest boy was least starved. Might
made right in an extremity like his, and
the boy had taken care of himself. The
young couple who had the second lad
in charge said they had been wakened
at daylight the next morning by some
noise in the room. Looking up, they
saw the little fellow at the fireplace
breaking an egg. He had built a fire,
had got eggs from the kitchen, and was
cooking his breakfast. The little girl
was mischievous and cheery in spite of
her bad plight, and nobody knew of the
baby except Grayson and the doctor.
Grayson would let nobody else in. As
soon as it was well enough to be peevish
and to cry, he took it back to its mother,
who was still abed. A long, dark
mountaineer
was there, of whom the woman
seemed half afraid. He followed Grayson
outside.
“Say, podner,” he said, with an
unpleasant smile, “ye don't go up to
Cracker's Neck fer nothin', do ye?”
The woman had lived at Cracker's
Neck before she appeared at the Gap,
and it did not come to Grayson what
the man meant until he was half-way to
his room. Then he flushed hot and
wheeled back to the cabin, but the
mountaineer was gone.
“Tell that fellow he had better keep
out of my way,” he said to the woman,
who understood, and wanted to say
something, but not knowing how, nodded
simply. In a few days the other children
went back to the cabin, and day
and night Grayson went to see the child,
until it was out of danger, and afterwards.
It was not long before the women
in town complained that the mother was
ungrateful. When they sent things to
eat to her the servant brought back
word that she had called out, “ `Set
them over thar,' without so much as a
thanky.” One message was that “she
didn' want no second-hand victuals from
nobody's table.” Somebody suggested
sending the family to the poor-house.
The mother said “she'd go out on her
crutches and hoe corn fust, and that the
people who talked 'bout sendin' her to
the po'-house had better save their breath
to make prayers with.” One day she
was hired to do some washing. The
mistress of the house happened not to
rise until ten o'clock. Next morning
the mountain woman did not appear
until that hour. “She wasn't goin' to
work a lick while that woman was
a-layin' in bed,” she said, frankly. And
when the lady went down town, she too
disappeared. Nor would she, she
explained to Grayson, “while that woman
was a-struttin' the streets.”
After that, one by one, they let her
alone, and the woman made not a word
of complaint. Within a week she was
working in the fields, when she should
have been back in bed. The result
was that the child sickened again.
The old look came back to its face,
and Grayson was there night and day.
He was having trouble out in Kentucky
about this time, and he went
to the Blue Grass pretty often. Always,
however, he left money with
me to see that the child was properly
buried if it should die while he was
gone; and once he telegraphed to ask
how it was. He said he was sometimes
afraid to open my letters for
fear that he should read that the baby
was dead. The child knew Grayson's
voice, his step. It would go to him
from its own mother. When it was
sickest and lying torpid it would move
the instant he stepped into the room,
and, when he spoke, would hold out
its thin arms, without opening its eyes,
and for hours Grayson would walk the
floor with the troubled little baby over
his shoulder. I thought several times
it would die when, on one trip, Grayson
was away for two weeks. One
midnight, indeed, I found the mother
moaning, and three female harpies
about the cradle. The baby was dying
this time, and I ran back for a
flask of whiskey. Ten minutes late
with the whiskey that night would
have been too late. The baby got to
know me and my voice during that
fortnight, but it was still in danger
when Grayson got back, and we went
to see it together. It was very weak,
and we both leaned over the cradle,
from either side, and I saw the pity
and affection—yes, hungry, half-shamed
affection—in Grayson's face. The
child opened its eyes, looked from
one to the other, and held out its
arms to
me. Grayson should have
known that the child forgot—that it
would forget its own mother. He
turned sharply, and his face was a
little pale. He gave something to the
woman, and not till then did I notice
that her soft black eyes never left
him while he was in the cabin. The
child got well; but Grayson never
went to the shack again, and he said
nothing when I came in one night
and told him that some mountaineer
—a long, dark fellow-had taken the
woman, the children, and the household
gods of the shack back into the
mountains.
“They don't grieve long,” I said,
“these people.”
But long afterwards I saw the woman
again along the dusty road that
leads into the Gap. She had heard
over in the mountains that Grayson
was dead, and had walked for two
days to learn if it was true. I pointed
back towards Bee Rock, and told her
that he had fallen from a cliff back
there. She did not move, nor did her
look change. Moreover, she said nothing,
and, being in a hurry, I had to ride
on.
At the foot-bridge over Roaring
Fork I looked back. The woman was
still there, under the hot mid-day sun
and in the dust of the road, motionless.
