Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 11, 1925 — page 88: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

242 5 A the orchestration of the night. If sounds have color, these were all in harmony with the blue and green and silver from the moon’s palette. At length, Cynthy heard the man saying quietly: “We faults ther laws fer bein’ unfair an’ yit, right oftentimes, we lets men like Cas Harley go down below an’ help ter make 2! our laws. Save only fer you we’d hev fell : inter thet same error ergin.” He paused, then turned toward her with more of impulsiveness in his voice than was usual. “Ve hain’t been hyar long an’ yit ye’ve done a’ready wrought some right needful changes hyarabouts. Ye’ve done aided in gittin’ ther new school an’ ye’ve done quieted down a hateful threat of warfare. Ye’ve done been ther cause of one scallawag bein’ turned outen ther old schoolhouse, an’ now ye’re forewarnin’ us from lettin’ a rascal go ter ther Legislature. An’ you’re a gal—an’ a furrin’ gal.” Cynthia looked down at the shimmer of moonlight on still water. She wanted to declare to him, in the humility of confessional spirit, that the girl who had done these things was not at all the girl who had climbed over the high wheel of his wagon that night outside Ashe- ville. She felt the need of admitting that the girl whose portrait he had just sketched was a counterfeit playing an enforced part, but a counterfeit with a new yearning to make the imitation genuine. Perhaps, if Jock Harrison had remained dead, she might in the end have accom- plished it. Through the centuries the most fascinating dream of alchemists had been ae the transmution of base elements into pre- oe cious metals. It had remained one of the impossibilities, but Cynthia had begun to hope that human metals might be different. - Then Harrison had come, and in Harrison’s hands she would be inert clay again. She had always been plastic, and until en ic ow no sculptor had sought to mold her _ contours toward any expression of an ideal. = = dere she stood as the clay on the studio turntable. = Wade Murrell, the rude visionary, saw in rison’s cynical eye saw in her only the her the material of nobility. Jock Har- ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. makings of a plaything and caricature—and she herself saw no way to prevent Jock Harrison from elbowing his way to the. sculptor’s place and taking possession of both clay and modeling tools. Together, she and Wade walked slowly back to the house. From the opening of the dog run they could catch the red glow of Carroll’s pipe bowl. As they drew near the pipe was re- moved and the lips that had held it began a low whistling of a jazz fragment. In the dog run itself Cynthia turned with an abrupt haste to her own door and Wade, with a word of greeting to his other guest, passed on to that of the main room. Carroll nodded and said pleasantly: “Miss Stokes, we have missed you both.” From the safety zone of her own threshold the girl turned and paused with her hand on the knob. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Carroll,” she ex- claimed lightly to hide the heavy despair that chilled her heart. ‘ To tell you the truth, I’d forgotten you were alive.” Wade had disappeared, and the new- comer lowered his voice as he stepped forward. “After all,” he answered equably, “ why shouldn’t you? It isn’t your fault I am, is it?” But the bedroom door had slammed in his face, and he heard the heavy hand- wrought bolt shoot home. “‘ Godfrey-mighty, Cas,” observed Lesher Skidmore, as the would-be statesman “lit down” from a white mule at his door. “ Ye’re wearin’ a woebegone face like es ef ye’d done buried yore last friend. What ails ye, son?” For a moment or two the scowling young man stood overwhelmed with his sense of catastrophe and anger, then he found words. “Yestiddy,” he announced explosively, “Wade Murrell rid up ter my stile. He didn’t even light down an’ come inside. He jist hollered fer me ter come out.” “Well, an’ ye went out, I reckon, didn’t yer” The visitor nodded moodily. “He sot thar on his ridin’ critter an’