Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Dec 1920)

MOTION PICTURE The didactic voice of the schoolmaster sounded soothingly. "A gentleman isn't the best thing to be, Chad boy. If you're honest and brave and kind you'll be a man, and that's better. A king who controls a million meii is no greater than a man who controls himself." "Chad could be a king," Melissa cried, jealously, with a look that yearned toward the long, lank boy-figure huddled before the fire ; "Chad could be a king easy. He aint like the res' of us, somehow, 'pears like. He's like somebody — somebody in that book you-all read t'other day at school, "bout toumyments and round-tables." If Chad had lifted his eyes to the girl's face as she turned it tcvfiird him with the age-old mothering in it, he would have known what few people guessed — ^that Melissa Turner, daughter of his employer, was beautiful. But Chad's gaze \<'as. in the dancing flames, where his fancy pictured the strange, fluid, changing shapes of the future, and his thoughts were leagues away from the ding)', log-cabin room. Caleb saw, however, and winced. It was a pity that there could be no beauty, no grace in the world without bringing suffering with it, as the sunshine brings shadows. "But tlie boy must not be fettered. He must be free, and he will go far," he thought. "Melissa is right. He is not like these dull-souled mountain folk. There is blood in him somewhere, race. Look at the height of that forehead, the shape of that chin! But he must go away quickly before harm can come. He is young, and youth's wants are dangerous." Aloud he spoke in his accustomed drawl. "How would you like to go to Lexington, Chad ? Or, better still, how woidd you like to go up North to school ?" "Oh, sir !" Chad gasped, and could say no more. His sensitive lips were quivering, his long, lean hands, which all the rough work of shepherding could not make like the thick-set paws of the mountain boys, clenched together on his knee with a grip that turned the fingers white. Neither he nor Caleb, absorbed in the plans of the moment, heard the strange little cry the prl gave from her shadows, a hurt cry, like a little wild animal wounded, nor saw the whitening of the long, pointed face between the fans of wild tangled brown. They were still talking eagerly, making plans for the journey that was to set Chad's impatient feet on the pathway to the world, when she slipped out into the cool Cumberland night, lucent with the cold clearness of the stars. She lifted her face toward them, marked with strange woman lines of pain in its girlishness. Melissa was fifteen, but she was very old tonight, old as the travail of her soul, old as .the brave, sweet heart of her that now rose above its pain to pray for him. "I've lost him, but hit's best. On'y, God, take keer o' him. If they's any hurtin' to be done, hurt me instead," Melissa begged. "That's what womenfolks was made for, I reckon, to git hurt 'stead of they men." The next week Chad Buford, with all his worldly possessions, a f)oor calico shirt, two pairs of white socks and a thumbed, dog-eared copy of "The Knights of the Table Round" rolled into a bundle under his arm, started out afoot down the mountains, with Caleb Hess beside him, and only the half-jeering commentaries of the loafers outside the tiny general store as farewell. "Spect you'll be 'lected President one o' these days, Chad!" "Dont I'am too much — 'taint healthy, I reckon. Knowed a man onct went thru the 'rithmetic and took with a fever 'n' died." To each other, after the two figures had disappeared down "How would you like to go to Lexington, Chad? or, better still, how would you like to go up North to school?" (Thirty)