“Are you a-tellin’ me the truth, Lucinda?”
“As the Lord is my witness.”
He stared at the farmhouse a moment; then he said:
“Well, you an’ her git everything ready, an’ I ’ll git Squire Dow an’ the license. I ’ll be back as soon as I kin.”
Lucinda Gibbs stood in the corner of the rail fence behind her cottage. Her face was damp with perspiration, and her heavy iron-gray hair had become disarranged and hung down her back below the skirt of her gingham sun-bonnet. She was raking the decayed leaves and dead weeds from her tender strawberry sprouts and mentally calculating on an abundant crop of the luscious fruit later in the spring.
“The trouble is I won’t git to eat none of ‘em,” she sighed, as she looked up and addressed the woman on the other side of the fence.
“You don’t mean that you are actually a-goin’ shore ‘nough, Mis’ Gibbs?” exclaimed Betsey Lowry, as she leaned heavily on the top rail.
The widow reversed her rake and began to pull out the leaves which were packed between the metal teeth, her face reddening gradually, as if she were slightly irritated.
“I’d like to know ef thar’s anything strange about my goin’,” she said, coldly. “You said you’d feed my cat an’ chickens an’ attend to the cow fer what she’d give.”
“Oh, it ain’t because I have the least objection to keepin’ my word about them things,” said the old maid, quickly. “Goodness knows, me an’ Joel needs the milk an’ butter bad enough, an’ it ain’t one speck o’ trouble jest to throw scraps to the cat, an’ meal-dough to the chickens, but somehow it skeers me to think of a lone woman like you a-goin’ all the way to New York by yorese’f.” Mrs. Gibbs leaned the rake against the fence. The flush died out of her face, giving place to a sweet, wistful expression.
“Betsey,” she said, tremulously, “tell me the truth. Do you think I ought to stay at home?”
The old maid turned to look through the orchard of leafless trees to her own house not far away. She had reddened slightly.
“Ef you push me fer a answer, Mis’ Gibbs, I ’ll have to tell you I don’t think you ought to go away up thar all alone.”
“You feel that-a-way, Betsey, because you hain’t never had no child an’ been separated from it like I have. When Amos married up thar an’ went to housekeepin’ it mighty nigh killed me. An’ then I begun to live on the bare hope that he’d come South on a visit, but he hain’t done it, an’ thar ain’t no prospect of the like. He says he cayn’t git away frum his business without dead loss, an’ they want me to come. I’ve said many a time that I’d never leave my home, but, Betsey, it seems to me that I cayn’t live another week without seein’ how Amos looks. The Lord only knows how lonely I am mighty nigh all the time. Ef Susie had lived, she’d never ‘a’ left me, married or not, but it’s different with a man. Sometimes I wonder why the Lord tuk ’em both frum me.”
Betsey’s kindly face softened. The intervening fence kept her from putting a consoling arm around her neighbor.
“I hain’t been blind—nur Brother Joel hain’t nuther—to yore lonely way o’ livin’,” she said, sympathetically. “Thar’s hardly a night that me an’ him don’t look out ‘fore we go to bed to see ef you are still a-sittin’ up readin’ by yore lamp. I kin always tell when you are a-thinkin’ about Susie more ’n common; it’s always when you git back frum ’er grave that you set up latest. I believe in layin’ on o’ flowers an’ plantin’ shrubs that ’ll keep sech a precious spot green, but when it seems to make a body brood-like, then I think it ought not to be indulged in to any great extent.”
“It’s raily a sort of comfort to go to the graveyard,” faltered Mrs. Gibbs; and she raised her apron to her mouth.
“How long do you intend to stay with Amos an’ his wife?” asked Betsey, to divert the widow’s thoughts. She looked over her shoulder, and saw her brother Joel, a tall, strong-looking man about fifty-five years of age, approaching from the direction of his store, down at the cross-roads.
“Three months, I reckon,” replied the widow. “I know in reason that I won’t want to leave Amos a bit sooner. You see, it may be a long time before I lay eyes on ’im again. They say the baby is doin’ fine, an’ I want to see it an’ nuss it.”
“So you are raily goin’?” cried Joel Lowry, as he leaned on the fence beside his sister.
“Yes, I’m a-goin’ to make the trip, Joel.”
“It’s a long ways,” returned the storekeeper, “an’ I don’t see how you are a-goin’ by yorese’f. Ef it was jest a few weeks later, now, I might pull up an’ go along. I’ve always believed ef I went to New York to lay in stock that I could save enough on my goods to defray my expenses thar an’ back.”
The eyes of the widow flashed eagerly. She took a long, trembling breath.
“I wisht to goodness you would,” she said. “I don’t know one thing about trains, an’ I am powerful afraid I ’ll make a bobble of the whole thing from start to finish. Ef I was to git on the wrong car—but what is the use to cross a bridge ‘fore you git to it? Mebby I ’ll git thar all right.”
“I hate mightily to have you try it,” replied Joel, reflectively, as he stroked his short gray beard. “I jest wish you would think better of it. I’m a leetle grain older ’n you, Mis’ Gibbs, an’ I’ve been about some.”
Mrs. Gibbs drew her rake after her as she turned toward her cottage. “I don’t want to change my mind,” she said, emphatically. “I’m bent on seein’ Amos, an’ I’m a-goin’ to do it. I’d better go in now. I’ve got a lot o’ packin’ to do.”
Joel went back toward his store across a field of decaying corn-stubble without looking round, and Betsey climbed over the fence and went into the cottage with her neighbor.
“I never hated to see a body go so in all my born days,” she sighed.
Mrs. Gibbs opened the front door and preceded Betsey into the room on the right of the little hall.
“You mustn’t mind how things looks in heer,” she apologized. “I left my trunk open right spank in the middle of the room, so whenever I see a thing that ought to go in I kin jest fling it at the trunk an’ put it away when I have time.”
Betsey stood over the little hair trunk and looked down dolefully.
“What on earth is that I smell?” she asked. “Sassafras, as I’m alive!”
“Yes, I dug it yesterday. Amos likes sassafras-root tea; he used to drink a power of it to thin his blood in the spring; he writ that he hain’t had a taste of it sence he left heer. Shorely, it’s come to a purty pass if a body cayn’t get sech as that in a big city like New York.”
“Seems to me,” remarked the old maid, “that you’ve got a sight more truck here than you ’ll have any need fer. What’s this greasy mess wrapped up?”
“That’s mutton suet,” was the enthusiastic reply. “It’s the whitest cake I ever laid eyes on. They ’ll need it fer chapped hands an’ lips. Amos says it’s a sight colder up thar. That’s ginger-cake in that paper box, an’ I’ve made him an’ Sally some wool socks an’ stockin’s.”
“Are you shore you are a-goin’ to be away three months?” asked Betsey, with a sigh.
“Mebby longer than that,” answered the old woman. “I feel like I never will want to leave Amos again, but I couldn’t be away from my home always, you know. La, it ’ll seem powerful strange to wake up an’ not look out o’ that thar window towards the mountain.”
“An’ not to heer the hens a-cacklin’, an’ the cow an’ calf a-bellowin’,” added Betsey. Then she put her handkerchief to her eyes and plunged hastily from the room. Mrs. Gibbs moved quickly to the window and looked out. She saw Betsey climb over the fence and go on through the orchard, her head hanging down.
The evening before the day appointed for Mrs. Gibbs’s departure, Betsey came in out of breath.
“What do you reckon?” she asked, as she stood over the hair trunk, which, roped and labeled, stood on end near the widow’s bed. “What you reckon? Joel has made up his mind to go.”
The widow was putting a brightly polished tin coffee-pot into an old-fashioned carpetbag which stood on the white counterpane of her bed. She stood erect, her hands on her hips.
“Looky’ heer, Betsey,” she exclaimed, excitedly, “don’t you joke with me! I’ve jest worried over this undertakin’ till I’ve lost every speck of appetite fer my victuals. I tell you I ain’t in no frame o’ mind fer any light talk on the subject.”
“He’s a-goin’, I tell you!” declared the old maid. “I never dreamt he was in earnest the other day when he fust mentioned it, but all last night he liter’ly rolled an’ tumbled an’ couldn’t git a wink o’ sleep fer worrryin’ over you an’ yore wild-cat project. This mornin’ the fust thing he said was that he’d made up his mind to go ef he could git a round-trip ticket thar an’ back. He told me not to say anything to you tell he had sent to town. Jest a minute ago Jeff Woods got back with the ticket. Joel seems mightily tickled over goin’.”
Mrs. Gibbs sat down. A serious expression had come over her face.
“Ef I’d ‘a’ knowed he raily meant to go I’d ‘a’ stopped ‘im,” she said. “I don’t want to be a bother an’ a burden to my neighbors. Betsey, I’m a-gittin’ to be a lots o’ trouble to other folks.”
“Pshaw!” cried Betsey. “Ef Joel hadn’t ‘a’ wanted to go he’d not ‘a’ bought the ticket. La me, now I ’ll have to go githimready.”
The next morning, arrayed in his best suit of clothes, new high top-boots, and a venerable silk hat, Joel drove to the widow’s cottage in his spring wagon. While she was locking up the doors he and a negro farmhand placed the widow’s trunk into the back part of the wagon. The neighbors from the farmhouses down the red clay road and across the gray fields and meadows gathered at the gate. When Mrs. Gibbs emerged, their mental comment was that she looked ten years younger than before deciding on the journey.
“All that flushed face an’ shiny eyes is ‘ca’se she’s goin’ to Amos,” remarked a woman who held a little bare-footed boy by the hand. The woman addressed was an unmarried woman old enough to be a grandmother. She looked at the widow’s beaming visage, gave her head a significant toss, and said, contemptuously: “I say! That woman ain’t a-thinkin’ no more ’bout Amos ‘an I am at this minute. It looks to me like some people can’t see a inch before their faces. My Lor’, you make me laugh, Mis’ Ruggles.”
Arriving at the station, Joel turned the widow’s trunk over to the baggage-master, and with her carpet-bag and his own clutched in one hand, he stood on the platform pulling his beard nervously.
“We ’ll have to spend one night on the train,” he said. “I never thought to mention it, but they tell me that a body kin, by payin’ a fraction more, git a place to lie down and stretch out, an’ snooze a bit.”
The widow seemed to have made up her mind that she would not show crude astonishment at anything new to her experience, but her curiosity finally caused her to admit that she had never heard of such an arrangement. So, to the best of his ability, the storekeeper entered into a description of a sleeping-car, lowering the carpet-bags to the platform, and making signs and drawing imaginary lines with his hands.
“Men an’ women in the same car with jest curtains stretched betwixt?” she cried. “No, thank you! I won’t make a fool o’ myse’f if other women does. I kin set up fer one night easy enough, I reckon. I’ve done the like many a time with the sick an’ the dead without feeling the wuss fer it.”
“I hardly ‘lowed it would suit,” stammered Joel, “but I thought thar would be no harm in givin’ you yore choice.”
“Not the least in the world, Joel;” and then she paled, caught her breath, and grabbed her carpet-bag, for the people on the platform were hurrying about; the train was coming.
In the train they found a seat together, and when the locomotive shrieked and they dashed off through deep cuts and over high trestles, Mrs. Gibbs was unable to control her excitement. He saw that she was holding tightly to the arm of the seat.
“I have never been on sech a fast one before,” she said, tremulously.
“She don’t whiz nigh like some I’ve rid on out West,” replied Joel, with an air of conscious importance, even guardianship.
A few minutes later she grew calmer. Happening to catch her eye, he saw that her mind was far away.
“I was jest a-thinkin’ how awful it is to be leavin’ Susie’s grave so fur behind,” she said. “I’m goin’ to Amos, but my other child is back thar.”
“I was thinkin’ about Rachel’s grave jest a minute ago,” he returned. “You called ’er to my mind jest now. Somehow you have the same sort of a look about the eyes.”
“Shucks! that ain’t so, I know!”
“It’s true as I live!”
“Well, she was a good woman.”
“The best I ever run across, an’ knowed rail well.”
The sun, seen first on one side of the car and then on the other, went down. The train porter laid a plank across the ends of the seats and climbed up on it and lighted the lamps overhead. This made the space outside look like a black curtain softly flapping against the car. The widow opened her carpet-bag and took out something wrapped in a napkin.
“Betsey said you loved fried chicken an’ biscuits,” she said.
“It’s my favorite dish,” he replied, stiltedly, readily cloaking himself in his best table manners.
“I’m dyin’ fer a cup o’ coffee,” she said. “This dry food will clog in my throat without some ‘n’ to wash it down. I put in a package o’ ground coffee an’ my littlest coffee-pot, thinkin’ thar might be some way to boil water, but I don’t see no chance. You say we don’t stop long enough to git supper?”
“That’s what the conductor said.”
But at the next station, where they stopped for only a minute, he took the coffee-pot and hurried out. The train started on, and she was greatly alarmed, thinking that he was left, but he had entered the rear door and now approached with the coffee-pot steaming at the spout.
“Now, ef you’ve jest got a cup about you we ’ll be all hunkydory,” he laughed.
Her face lighted up with combined pleasure and relief. “Well, I certainly ‘lowed you was left back thar,” she laughed. “An’ how on earth did you git the coffee?”
“They sell it by the quart on the platform,” he replied. “I drapped onto that trick once when I was on my way to Californy.”
She got out a tin cup and filled it with the coffee. “I never was so downright grateful fer a thing in my life,” she remarked. “Now, help yorese’f, an’ I ’ll sip some along with my chicken an’ bread.”
“I won’t tech it tell you’ve had all you feel like takin’,” said he, gallantly.
The coffee and the lunch seemed to stimulate them both, for they sat and chatted and laughed together till past eleven o’clock. Then he noticed that she was growing sleepy, so he took the vacant seat behind her.
“It ’ll give you more room,” he said.
By and by he saw her head fall forward. She was asleep. He rolled up his overcoat in the shape of a pillow and placed it on the end of the seat, and touching her gently, he told her to lie down and rest her head on the coat. She obeyed, with a drowsy smile of gratitude. He watched her all through the night. She slept soundly, like a tired child.
“I never seed a body look so much like Rachel in all my life,” he said several times to himself. “Pore woman! I’m that glad I come with ‘er! She’s had ’er grief, an’ I’ve had mine.”
The stopping of the train a little after the break of day roused her. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. He did not wait to speak to her, but taking the coffee-pot, he ran out at the door behind her, so that her first glimpse of him was when he appeared before her with more hot coffee.
“You must take a cup to start you out fer the day,” he smiled.
“You do beat the world, Joel!” she laughed. “I couldn’t ‘a’ done without you.”
She made room for him beside her, and they ate breakfast together. The rest of the journey they sat watching the changing landscape, remarking upon the different methods of tilling the soil, and talking of home and their neighbors.
“It’s strange how people can live as nigh to one another as me an’ you have an’ not git better acquainted,” he said. “I declare, you ain’t a bit like I thought you was.”
“I never railly knowed you, nuther, Joel,” she laughed. “You was always sech a busy, say-nothin’ sort of a man.”
“An’ right now you are off to stay a long time, and I ’ll have to go back to the backwoods. I wonder ef—”
He went no farther, and she did not help him out. She had suddenly grown reticent, and seemed occupied with the landscape, which was rushing southward like a swollen stream of level farming lands, in which floated houses, fences, twisting trees, and waltzing men and horses.
“I reckon you ’ll stay up thar all the spring an’ summer,” he said at last.
“I wouldn’t like to leave Amos right away,” she made answer. “You see, I hain’t seed the boy fer a long time, an’ I hain’t thought o’ nothin’ but him fer many a day.”
They arrived in New York at six o’clock that evening. Amos met them at the train. They hardly recognized him in his silk hat, long overcoat, stylish necktie, and kid gloves. Joel did not approve of what he considered a rather dudish dress, but he overlooked that when he saw how happy the young man was at the sight of his mother.
“I wish I could invite you to my house, Mr. Lowry,” said Amos, cordially, “but the truth is, we have only a small flat, and there is hardly room for you.”
“Oh, never mind me,” said Joel. “I’m a-goin’ to a tavern nigh whar I do my tradin’. I ’ll tell you good day now, but I ’ll run in an’ see ef Mis’ Gibbs has any word to send back when I start home.”
He did not see her again for a week. He had concluded his purchases, and was ready to return South, when he decided to look her up. Finding her was more difficult than he had imagined. After several hours’ search on the east side of the city, she being on the west, he finally reached the big building which contained Amos’s flat. Here he became involved in another mystery, for he found the front door, a glistening plate-glass affair, firmly locked, and no bell in sight. He stood in the tiled vestibule for several minutes deliberating on what was best to do. Fortunately, he saw a policeman passing, and hailed him.
“I’ve got a friend a-livin’ somewhar in this shebang,” he said; “but you may hang me ef I know how to git at ‘im.”
“Is his name on one of the letter-boxes?” asked the policeman.
“What letter-boxes?” questioned Joel. “I hain’t seed no names.”
With an amused aspect of countenance the policeman mounted the steps and went into the vestibule. Here he opened some wooden doors in the wall, disclosing to view a long row of letter-boxes with the cards of their owners beneath them.
“Who’s your friend?” he asked, kindly.
“Amos Gibbs. I’ve knowed ’im ever sence he was a little—”
“There,” interrupted the policeman. “I pushed the button. That rang a bell inside, and they will open the door by electricity if anybody is at home. When you hear the latch clicking, push the door open and go in.”
He disappeared down the street, and then Joel was roused from apathetic helplessness by a rapid clicking in the lock. He opened the door and went in. It was fortunate that Amos lived on the first floor, or even then Joel would not have known how to proceed farther. As it was, another door at the end of the heavily carpeted hall opened and a servant girl in white cap and apron put out her head.
“Yes,” she said, in answer to his inquiry. Mrs. Gibbs was at home, He followed her into a little parlor facing the street, with a single window. It was furnished more neatly than any room Joel had ever been in. The polished hardwood floor was covered with rugs of various kinds and sizes, and the room contained a bookcase, an upright piano, pictures, and pieces of bric-a-brac such as the store-keeper had never seen.
Mrs. Gibbs entered from the dining-room in the rear. Her hair was done up in a new style, which made her head appear larger than usual, and she wore a shining black silk gown that added height, dignity, and youth to her general aspect. She gave him her hand, and her whole attire rustled as she sat down.
“Well, you got heer at last,” she said. “I ‘lowed you never would come. I’ve been lookin’ fer you every day. I hain’t hardly done anything else sence I got heer.”
Joel stared, flushed, and tensely folded his hands anew. It seemed to him that he would not have suffered such a dire lack of words if she had not been looking so fine. It was as if his stalwart masculinity were a glaring misfit among the dainty gewgaws about him. He was mortally afraid the slender gilded chair he was sitting on would break under his two hundred weight. He had never imagined that dress could make such a change in the appearance of any one. The only features about her which seemed natural were her voice and a triangular bit of her wrinkled face which showed through her low-parted hair.
“I come as soon as I got through,” he heard himself say; and then he cleared his throat from a great depth as an apology for the frailty of his tone.
“I kin see you think I’m a sight to behold,” she laughed, merrily. “Sally fixed me up this-a-way: She fluted my hair with a hot curlin’ fork, an’ combed it like the New York women’s. She hain’t done one thing sence I come but haul out dresses an’ fixin’s that used to belong to ’er dead mother, an’ try ’em on me, an’ they’ve kept me on the move tell I’d give a sight fer jest one little nap whar thar wasn’t so much clatter. Last night they give me a old woman’s party. Joel, jest think of a person o’ my age a-settin’ up tell ‘leven o’clock talkin’ to a gang o’ gray-haired women like a passel o’ hens jest off the’r nests! An’ jest when I ‘lowed they was all goin’ home, Sally passed around things to eat an’ drink.”
“They wanted to make you have a good time,” ventured the storekeeper.
The widow lowered her voice, and threw a furtive glance toward the dining-room.
“But it ain’t the way to make a woman o’ my raisin’ enjoy a visit,” she said, cautiously. “I don’t dare to say a word, fer Amos seems tickled to death over all that Sally gits up; but, Joel, I’m mighty nigh dead. Like a born idiot, I told ’em in my last letter that I’d stay three months, an’ now, as the Lord is my help an’ stay, I don’t believe I can make out another week.”
Her voice faltered. Moisture glistened in her eyes.
“I hope it ain’t as bad as that,” remarked Joel, in a tone of vast sympathy.
“It’s jest awful,” whimpered the widow. “I make so many fool blunders. ‘Tother day they wanted me to go to Brooklyn with ‘em, an’ I jest lied out o’ goin’; an’ as they wanted to take the hired gal along to watch the baby, I agreed to stay at home an’ ‘tend to the house. My Lord, Joel, ef you’ve never been alone in one o’ these contraptions, don’t you ever try it. The hired gal showed me all the different arrangements, an’ what I was to do. When the bell in the back rings you must press the button in the kitchen, an’ when the bell in the front rings, it’s somebody at the side door in the hall. An’ when you hear a shrill whistle out ’n the talkin’-tube in the kitchen, you have to open the end an’ blow an’ then holler through an’ ax what’s wanted. Then ef it’s groceries, ur milk, ur peddlers’ stuff, ur what not, you have to go to the dumb-waiter that fetches things up through a hole in the wall like a well-bucket an’ take the things off. I had a lots o’ trouble. I was busy all the while the family was off at that dumb-waiter. Like a born fool, I didn’t know it tuk stuff to other folks, too, an’ I thought it would save time to set at the dumb-waiter with the door open, an’ take off the things without waitin’ fer ’em to whistle. You never seed the like in all yore life! Before I’d been thar a hour, the kitchen was liter’ly filled with all manner o’ stuff, beer, bad-smellin’ cheese, and oodlin’s an’ oodlin’s o’ milk in bottles. After a while I heerd a fearful racket inside the dumb-waiter. People all the way to the top was a-yellin’ out that somebody had stole the’r things, and the landlord was a-bouncin’ about like a rubber ball, an’ talkin’ of callin’ in the police. Finally he come in an’ axed me about it. He fixed it all right fer me, and delivered the goods to their rightful owners, an’ promised not to tell Amos nur Sally what I’d done.”
“You did sorter have a time of it,” said Joel. “I’m no hand myse’f to understand new fixin’s. It’s been chilly the last day or so, an’ when I went to my room in the tavern t’other night I noticed that it was powerful warm after I went to bed. I got up an’ struck a light, but thar wasn’t a sign of a fireplace in the room, an’ it was so hot I ‘lowed thar might be a conflagration a-smolderin’ som ‘ers. So I put on my things an’ went down to the office. They explained to me that the heat comes frum a furnace below, an’ runs into the rooms through holes in the floor. They come up an’ shet mine off so as I could sleep.”
“It’s a heap nicer our way,” said the widow, without a smile at his misadventure. “I tell you, Joel, I jest can’t stand it. I want to go back. When are you a-goin’?”
“In the mornin’.”
She fumbled in the pocket of her skirt and took out her handkerchief, placing it to her eyes.
“Oh, I’m heartily sick of it all!” she whimpered. “You are the fust rail natural thing I’ve laid eyes on sence I come. Sally is mighty cleanly, an’ I’d ax you to clean the mud off ’n yore feet, but it’s the fust muddy feet I’ve seen in so long I want to look at ‘em.”
Joel glanced down at his boots and flushed. “I never noticed ‘em,” he stammered. “I had sech a time a-gittin’ in this shebang.”
“Lord, it don’t matter, Joel! I’m jest a-thinkin’ about you a-goin’ home. I simply cayn’t stand it; an’ yet Amos an’ Sally would feel bad ef I went so soon. Amos was sayin’ last night that they would make me have sech a good time that I’d never want to leave ‘em; but la me! this is the fust rail work I’ve done in many a day.
“Well, I must go, I reckon,” Joel said, rising awkwardly and taking his hat from the floor by his chair. “I’m sorry, too, to go back an’ leave you feelin’ so miserable. I wish I could do some ‘n’ to comfort you, but I can’t, I reckon. Good-bye—take keer of yorese’f.”
When he arrived home two days later, Betsey found him, as she thought, peculiarly reticent about his trip, and all her efforts to get him to speak of how Mrs. Gibbs was pleased were fruitless. One afternoon two weeks after his return she ran into his store, where he was busy weighing smoked bacon which he was purchasing from a customer.
“What you reckon, Joel?” she asked. “What you reckon has happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking up from the paper on which he was figuring.
“Mis’ Gibbs’s got back.”
“You cayn’t mean it, sister!”
Betsey leaned against the counter, and the hardware in the showcase rattled. Joel’s face had paled. He called his clerk to him, and told him to settle with the customer, and walked to the door with Betsey.
“Yes,” she said. “She got home in Jeff Woods’s hack about a hour ago. All the neighbors is over there now. She acts so quar! She hain’t seemed to keer a speck about the cow, nur the cat, nur the chickens. As soon as she got ’er things off, she jest sot down an’ drooped. She don’t look well. The general opinion is that Amos an’ his wife have sent ’er home, fer she won’t talk about them. She acts mighty funny. Jest as I started out I happened to remark that you’d be astonished to heer she was back, an’ I never seed sech a quar look in a body’s face. But,” she concluded after a pause, “they couldn’t ‘a’ treated ’er so awful bad, fer she’s got dead loads o’ finery.”
That night Joel closed up his store earlier than usual, and when he came into the sitting-room he brought an armful of big logs and put them in the chimney. Then before a roaring fire he sat reflectively, without reading the paper he had brought with him, as was his wont. Betsey sat in the chimney-corner knitting, and looking first at him and then peering through the window toward Mrs. Gibbs’s cottage.
“Brother Joel,” she said, suddenly. “You are a-actin’ quar, too. You must know some ‘n’ about what happened to Mis’ Gibbs, ur why don’t you go over thar an’ see ’er like the rest o’ the neighbors? They’ve all been but you. She ’ll think strange of it.”
“I don’t see what good I could do,” he answered; and he began to punch the fire, causing a stream of sparks to mount upward with a fusillade of tiny explosions.
Betsey knitted silently for a few minutes longer, then she rose and stood at the window.
“She’s got ’er lamp on the table an’ a paper in ’er lap, but she hain’t a-readin’ of it,” said Betsey. “It looks jest like she’s a-goin’ to commence ’er lonely broodin’ life over ag’in. Some ‘n’ seems wrong with ‘er, as good an’ sweet as she is. She kinder fancied she’d be happy with Amos, an’ mebby when she got ’im with ’er she begun to pine fer her ole home. Now she’s back, an’ I reckon she hardly knows what she does want. I say, perhaps that may be her fix.”
“Mebby it is,” admitted the storekeeper, briefly.
Betsey turned on him quickly. There was a peculiar aggressive sparkle in her eyes, a set look of determination on her face.
“Brother Joel,” she said, “you’ve jest got to have a grain of common sense. You’ve got to go over thar this minute an’ see ‘er. Ef you don’t she ain’t a-goin’ to sleep a wink. I know women, an’ I’ve knowed Mis’ Gibbs a long time.”
Joel drew his feet from the fire and wedged his heels under the rung of his chair. The muscles of his face were twitching. There was no mistaking Betsey’s tone. She sat down near him and laid her thin, tremulous hand on his knee.
“Do as I tell you, brother. Don’t be back’ard. You can’t hide nothin’.”
Joel rose. He tried to smile indifferently as he went to a little mirror on the wall and brushed his hair and beard.
“You must wish me good luck, then, sister,” he said, huskily. “I ain’t no ways shore what she will do about me.”
After he had gone out Betsey took up an album and opened it at a collection of tintype pictures. On one of these her eyes rested long and mistily. Then she kissed it, wiped her eyes, and went to bed. Two hours later she heard the front door close and her brother creeping to his room.
“Oh, Joel!” she called out. “Come to my door a minute.”
His boots made a loud clatter in the dead stillness of the house, as he approached.
“Was it all right, brother?”
“You bet it was, Betsey!” He stood in the doorway. The darkness hid his face, but there was a note of boundless joy in his tone.
“I thought it would be, but I don’t yet understand why she come back so quick.”
“She don’t like city folks’ ways,” answered the storekeeper; “an’ then—”
“An’ then what?” broke in Betsey, impatiently.
“Well, you see, the—the notion seemed to strike both of us when we was travelin’ together, an’—an’ she admitted that she was a leetle grain afeered that ef we didn’t see one another ag’in fer three months that the notion might wear off. Railly, she’s tickled to death, fur now she says she kin give Amos an’ Sally a sensible reason fer wantin’ to git back home.”
Betsey was silent so long that Joel began to wonder if she had fallen asleep. Finally she said:
“Go to bed now, Joel. She’s the very woman fer you. I hain’t never had no rail happiness in my life sence Jim died, but I want them I love to git all they kin.”
They were expecting Jim Trundle at the Cross-Roads that spring morning. His coming had been looked for even more anxiously than that of Sid Wombley, the wag of the “Cove.” Sid himself, when he dragged his long legs into the store, forgot to think of anything amusing to say as he looked the crowd over to see if Jim had preceded him.
It was on the end of his tongue to ask if Trundle had come and gone, but for once he said nothing. He seated himself on the head of a soda-keg and began to whittle the edge of the counter. Sid Wombley, quiet, suited the humor of the group better on this occasion than the same voluble individual in his natural element, so no one spoke to him, and all continued to watch the road leading to Trundle’s cabin.
The silence and the delay were too much for the patience of Wade Sims, a bold, dashing young man in tight-fitting trousers, sharp-heeled boots, and a sombrero like an unroped tent. He was, as he often expressed it, “afraid o’ nothin’ under a hide,” and if “the boys” had seen fit to give Jim Trundle notification, in the shape of a letter he would shortly receive, that he was a disgrace to the community, he saw no reason for so much secrecy. He wasn’t afraid of the verdict of any jury that could be impaneled in the three counties over which he openly traded horses and secretly disposed of illicit whisky.
“I reckon thar’s no doubt about the letter bein’ ready fer ‘im,” he remarked to Alf Carden, who stood in the little pigeon-holed pen of upright palings which was known as “the postoffice.”
“I reckon not,” was the reply, “when it’s about the only letter I got on hand.”
“I could make a mighty good guess who drapped it,” said Sims, with a grin at a one-armed man who had once held the position of book-keeper at a cotton-gin, and who wrote letters and legal documents for half the illiterate community, “but I wouldn’t give ’im away if I was under oath.”
“I have an idee who’s goin’ to drap it,” spoke up Sid Wombley from his soda-keg, and his sudden return to his natural condition evoked the first laugh of the morning. At that moment a little boy, the son of the storekeeper, who had been playing on the porch, came in quickly. His words and manner showed that he knew who was in request, if his intellect could not grasp the reason for it.
“Mr. Trundle is comin’ acrost the cotton-patch behind the store,” he announced, out of breath. Then silence fell on the group, a silence so complete that Jim Trundle’s strides over the plowed ground outside were distinctly heard. The next moment Trundle had crawled over the low rail fence at the side of the store, and with clattering, untied brogans was coming up the steps.
The doorway, as his tall, lank figure passed through it, framed a perfect picture of human poverty. His shirt, deeply dyed with the red of the soil, was full of slits and patches worn threadbare. The hems of his trousers had worn away, revealing triangular glimpses of his ankles, and a frayed piece of a suspender hung from a stout peg in the waistband behind.
He greeted no one as he entered. A silent tongue was one of Jim Trundle’s peculiarities. Few people had ever gotten a dozen consecutive words out of him. He strode to the end of the store, thrust his hand into an open cracker-box, bit into a large square cracker, and sent his eyes foraging along both counters for something to eat with it—cheese, butter, a bit of honey, or a pinch of dried beef. He was violating no rule of country store etiquette, for Alf Carden’s customers all understood that those things left on the counters were to be partaken of in moderation. I think the habitués of the place had gradually introduced this custom themselves years before, when Carden was so anxious to draw people from the store across the river that he would willingly have given a customer bed and board for an indefinite time if by so doing he could have deprived his rival of the profit on a bag of salt.
Jim Trundle wasn’t going to ask if there was any mail for him, that was plain to the curious onlookers; and their glances began to play back and forth between Carden and the cracker consumer, making demands on the former and condemning the latter for not more readily walking into the trap set for him.
Wade Sims winked when he caught the storekeeper’s eye, and nodded toward the gaunt robber, who had squatted at the faucet of a syrup-barrel and was cautiously trailing a golden stream over an immaculate cracker.
“So you didn’t git no letter fer me, Alf,” said Sims, significantly. “Seems like no mail don’t come this way here lately hardly at all. I hope all the rest ’ll have their ride fer nothin’ too.”
Alf Carden understood, having given Sims a letter half an hour before, and he smiled. “No,” he said, “thar hain’t nothin’ fer any of you except Jim Trundle; has he come along yet?”
Jim stood up quickly, and laid his besmeared cracker on the barrel. “Me?” he ejaculated, and a white puff shot from his crunching jaws; “I—I reckon yo ‘re mistaken.”
“I reckon I kin read,” replied Carden, still acting his part nonchalantly, and glancing askance at Sims to see how that individual was taking it. “It is jest Jim Trundle in plain ABC letters. It is either from somebody that cayn’t write shore ’nough writin’ ur is tryin’ to disguise his handwrite.”
Carden threw the letter on the counter. It lay there fully a minute, while Jim Trundle wiped his hands on his trousers, gulped down a mouthful of cracker, and stared helplessly round at the upturned faces. Then he reached for the letter, and with trembling fingers tore it open and read as follows:
“Jim Trundle. This is to give you due notice. We the reglar organized band of Regulators of this settlement hav set on yore case an decided what we are goin to do about it. Time and agin good citizens have advised you to change yore way of livin’, but you jest went along as before, in the same old rut.
“You are no earthly account, an no amount of talkin seems to do you any good. Yore childern are in tatters an without food, an you jest wont do nothin fer them. This might hav gone on longer without our action, but last Wednesday you let yore sick wife go to the field in the hot brilin sun, an she was seed by a responsible citizen in a faintin condition, while you was on the creek banks a fishin in the shade.
“To night exactly at eight oclock we are comin after you in full force to give you a sound lickin. Yore wife an childern would be better off without you, and we advise you to leave the country before that time. If we find you at home at eight oclock you may count on a sore back.
“Yours truly, the secretary.”
The spectators observed that Jim Trundle had read every word of the communication. His eyes, in their sunken sockets, darted strange, hunted glances from face to face, as if seeking sympathy; then, as if realizing the futility of the hope, he looked down at the floor. He leaned back against the counter so heavily that Carden’s thread-case rattled its contents and the beam of the scales wildly swung back and forth.
The group furtively feasted themselves on his visible agony, but they got nothing more, for Jim Trundle did not intend to talk. Talking was not in his line. He knew that at eight o’clock that night he was going to be punished in a way that would be remembered against the third and fourth generation of his descendants—that is, if he did not desert his family and leave the country.
“Kin I do anything fer you in the provision line, Jim?” asked Carden, for the entertainment of his customers. “I’ve got some fresh bulk pork. Seems to me you hain’t had none lately.”
Trundle refused to answer. He only stared out into the golden sunshine that lay on the road to his home. He saw through Carden’s remarks, and his heart felt heavier under the thought that before him were some of the faces which would be masked later on. He wondered if those men knew that a lazy, worthless vagabond could feel disgrace as keenly as they could.
There was nothing left for him to do except to go home. He wanted to turn his mind-pictures of his wife and children into helpful realities. Somehow they had always comforted him in trouble. Oh, God! if only he could have foreseen the approach of this calamity! As he moved out of the store he felt vaguely as if his arms, legs, and body had nothing to do with his real, horrible self except to hinder it, to detain it near its spot of torture.
Outside he drew a long, deep, trembling breath. His breast rose and expanded under his ragged shirt and then sank like a collapsed balloon, and lay still while he thought of himself. He was a dead man alive, a moving, breathing horror in the sight of mankind.
He was sure that it was his strange nature that had brought him to it. Nature had, indeed, made him happy in rags, oblivious to material things. Had he been endowed with education he might have become a poet. He saw strange, transcendent possibilities in the blue skies; in the green growing things; in the dun heights of the mountains; in the depths of his children’s eyes; in the patient face of his wife.
What an awakening! A shudder ran over him. He felt the lash; he heard Wade Sim’s voice of command; then his lower lip began to quiver, and something rising within him forced tears into his eyes. He had begun to pity himself. If only those men really understood him they would pardon his shortcomings. No human being could knowingly lash a man feeling as he felt.
The road homeward led him into the depths of a wood where mighty trees arched overhead and obscured the sky. He envied a squirrel bounding unhindered to its sylvan home. Nature seemed to hold out her vast green arms to him; he wanted to sink into them and sob away the awful load that lay upon him. In the deepest part of the wood, where tall, rugged cliffs bordered the road, there was a spring. He paused, looked round him, and shuddered anew, for something told him it was at this secluded spot that he would receive his castigation.
He passed on. The trees grew less dense along the way, and then on a rise ahead of him he saw his cabin, a low, weather-beaten structure that melted into the brown plowed fields about it. He was anxious to see his wife. Could it be true that she had almost fainted while at work? If so, why had she not mentioned it to him? He had noted nothing unusual in her conduct of late; but how could he? She was as uncommunicative as he, and they seldom talked to each other.
As he passed the pig-sty in the fence-corner even the sight of the grunting inmate seemed to remind him that he was going to be whipped by his neighbors. He shuddered and felt his blood grow cold. He shuddered with the same thought again, as if he were encountering it for the first time, when he dragged open the sagging gate and looked about the bare yard. In one corner of it he had once started to grow some flowers, but his neighbors had laughed at his attempt so much that he allowed the bulbs to die and be uprooted by his chickens. His mind now reverted to that period, and he decided it was this and kindred impulses that had always kept him from being a good husband, father, and citizen like his sturdy, more practical neighbors.
Well, to-morrow he was going to turn over a new leaf—that is, if—but he could not look beyond the torture set for eight o’clock. He had imagination, but it could picture nothing but every possible detail of his approaching degradation—the secluded spot, the masked circle of men, a muffled talk by Wade Sims, the baring of his back,—the lash!
His wife was in the cabin. She held a wooden bowl in her lap and was shelling peas. As he towered up in front of her in the low-roofed room, for the first time in his life he noticed that she looked pale and thin, and as he continued to study the evidences against him in growing bewilderment he felt that even God had deserted him.
She looked up.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, in slow surprise.
“Nothin’.” But he continued to stare. How thin her hair seemed since she had recovered from the fever! Perhaps if he had insisted on having a doctor something might have been done for her then that was neglected. Poor Martha! how he had made her suffer! The whipping would not be so hard to bear now, except that—if she were to know—if she were to witness it. Ah, he had not thought of that! Yes, God had left him wholly at the mercy of Wade Sims and the rest of his neighbors.
Her eyes held a look of deep concern.
“What are you lookin’ at me that-a-way fer?” she asked.
He made no answer, but turned to a stool in the chimney-corner and sat down. She must not suspect what was going to happen. He would not escape it by deserting her, for he was going to be a better man, beginning with the next day. He would stay with her and protect her, but she must never hear of the whipping. He understood her proud spirit well enough to know that she could never get over such a disgrace.
Then out of the black flood of his despair a plan rose and floated into possibility before his mind’s eye. Sims’ men would gather at the store, and just before the appointed hour would march along the road he had just traversed. He would make some excuse to his wife for being obliged to absent himself for a little while and go to meet them. If he told them he had voluntarily come to be whipped, they might agree to keep the fact from his wife. Yes, God would not let them refuse that, for even Wade Sims would not want to pain an unoffending woman when he was told how Martha would take it. Then a sob broke from him, and he realized that his head had fallen between his knees, that tears were dripping from his eyes to his hands, and, moreover, that Martha was looking at him as she had never looked before. She wanted to ask him what was the matter, but she could not have done it to save her life.
“Are you ready fer dinner?” she asked, still with that look in her eyes.
“Yes, I reckon, ef—ef you are. Whar’s the children?”
“Behind the house, hoein’ the young corn. Do you want ‘em?”
“No; jest thought I’d ask.”
She emptied the peas from her apron into the bowl, and put it on a shelf. Then she walked across the swaying puncheon floor to a little cupboard, and began to busy her hands with some dishes, keeping furtive eyes the while on him. He evidently thought himself unobserved, for he allowed his head to fall dejectedly again, and stared fixedly at the hearth. Surely, thought Mrs. Trundle, Jim had never acted so peculiarly before. Wiping a plate with a dishcloth, she moved across the floor till she stood in front of him. He looked up. The gleaming orbs in their deep hollows frightened the woman into speech she might not have indulged in.
“Look y’ heer, Jim, has anythin’ gone wrong?”
“No.” He drew himself up, and rubbed his eyes. “Did you say dinner was ready?”
“You know the table hain’t set. Look y’ heer, are you sick, Jim Trundle?”
“No.” His eyes rested on her. There was much that he wanted to ask her, if only he could have found the words. She turned away unsatisfied. The next moment she fanned him with the cloth she was spreading for the meal, then she put a plate of fried bacon and a pan of corn bread on the table, went to the back door, and called the children from their work.
He studied them one by one with fresh horror as they filed in, wondering what this one or that one would think if they should learn that their father had been whipped for neglecting them and their mother. At the table, however, he studied his wife chiefly. The children were young and healthy, and devoured their food like famished animals, but she was only making feeble pretenses with the piece of bread she was daintily breaking and dipping into bacon-grease. The “Regulators,” as they called themselves, were right; he had allowed a sick wife to go into the hot sun to do work he ought to have done. He thought now of the lash again, but not with a shudder. It could never pain him more than the agony at his heart.
He spent that long afternoon under an apple-tree behind the cabin, mending a harrow that was broken, stealing glances at his wife, longing to open his heart to her, watching the progress of the sun in its slow descent to the mountain-top, and feeling the threatening chill of the lengthening shadows. All nature seemed mutely to announce the coming horror. At sundown he went to the shelf in the entry, filled a tin pan with fresh spring-water, and washed his face and hands. Then he went in to supper, but he did not eat heartily.
“Don’t you feel no better, Jim?” asked his wife, her manner softened by a vague uneasiness his actions had roused. A suggestion of his mute suppressed agony seemed to have reached her and drawn her nearer to him.
“No, I hain’t sick; I ’ll be all right in the mornin’.”
Through the open door he watched the darkness thicken and heard the insects of the night begin to chirp and shrill. He had the curse of introspective analysis, and resolved that they were happy. He used to whistle and sing himself when his youth rendered it excusable. How very long ago that seemed!
All at once he rose, pretended to yawn, and said something to his wife about going over to Rawlston’s a little while; he would be back by bedtime. She wondered in silence, and after he had passed through the gate she tiptoed to the door and looked after him uneasily.
The landscape darkened as he went along the road toward Carden’s store. It was quite dark in the wooded vale. When he reached the spring he stopped to await the coming of Wade Sims and his followers. He wondered if the spot was far enough from the cabin to prevent Martha from hearing the blows that were to fall. He hoped it was, and, more than anything else, that “the regulators” would not be drinking. They would be more apt to listen to his request if they were perfectly sober. The rising moon in the direction of the store now made the arched roadway look like a long tunnel.
It would soon be eight o’clock. He sat down on the root of a tree and tried to pray, but no prayer he had ever heard would come into the chaos of his mind, and he could not invent one to suit the occasion. By and by he heard voices down the road, then the tramp, tramp of footsteps. A dark blur appeared on the moonlit roadway at the mouth of the tunnel, and grew gradually into a body of men.
Jim Trundle stood up. They should find him ready.
“Hello! what have we heer?” It was the undisguised voice of Wade Sims. The gang of twenty men or more paused abruptly. There was a hurried fitting on of white cloth masks.
“Who’s thar?” called out the same voice, peremptorily, and the hammer of a revolver clicked.
“Me—Jim Trundle.”
“Huh!” Wade’s grunt of surprise was echoed in various exclamations round the group. “On yore way out ’n the county, eh? Seems to me yore time’s up. We ’ll have to put it to a vote. It’s a little past eight o’clock, an’ you’ve had the whole day to git a move on you. Whar you bound fer?”
“I ain’t on my way nowhar. I come down heer a half-hour ago to meet you-uns, an’ I’ve jest been a-waitin’.”
“To meet we-uns? Huh! Jeewhilikins!” It sounded like Alf Carden’s voice.
“I—I ‘lowed you-uns would likely want to do it heer, bein’ as it was whar you-uns tuck Joe Rand last fall.”
Silence fell—a silence so profound, so susceptible, that it seemed to retain Trundle’s words and hold them up to sight rather than to hearing for fully half a minute after they had ceased to stir the air. Even Wade Sim’s blustering equipose was shaken. His mask appealed helplessly to other masks, but their jagged eye-holes offered no helpful suggestions.
“Well, we are much obleeged to you,” said Wade, awkwardly; and he laughed a laugh that went little farther than his mask. “Boys, he looks like he’s actu’ly itchin’ fer it; you needn’t feel at all squeamish.”
“I’ve been studyin’ over it,” said Trundle, furnishing more surprise, “and I’ve concluded that I ort to be whipped, an’ that sound. In fact, neighbors, the sooner you do it an’ have it over the better I ’ll feel about it.”
The silence that swallowed up this clear-cut assertion was deeper than the one which had followed Trundle’s other remark. Seeing that no one was ready to reply, he went on, “I did come down heer, though, to see ef I couldn’t git you-uns to do me a sorter favor, ef you-uns jest would.”
“Ah!” Wade Sims was feeling better. “I must say I was puzzled about yore conduct in sa ‘nterin’ out to meet us. Well, what do you want?”
“I’m ready fer my whippin’,” said Trundle, “becase I think I deserve it. I’ve been so lazy an’ careless that I never once noticed till I got yore letter that my wife was a sick woman. Ididlet her go to the field in the hot sun when I was a-fishin’ on the creek-bank in the shade. I thought her an’ all of us would like some fresh fish, an’ I forgot that our corn-patch was sufferin’ fer the hoe. But she didn’t. She ‘tended to it. An’—now I come to the favor I want to ask. She hain’t done a speck o’ harm to you-uns, an’, as foolish as it may seem, it would go hard with her in her weakly condition to heer about me a-goin’ through what I ’ll have to submit to. She has got a mighty sight of pride, an’ it’s my honest conviction that she would jest pine away an’ die ef she knowed about it. I ain’t a-beggin’ off from nothin’, understand; it’s only a word fer her an’ the childern. You kin all take a turn an’ whip me jest as long as you want to, but when it’s over an’ done with I ‘lowed you mought consent to say nothin’ to nobody about it. Besides, I’ve made up my mind to lead a different sort of a life, friends, God bein’ my helper, an’ it would be easier to do it if I knowed Martha had respect fer me; an’, neighbors, I am actu’ly afeered she won’t have it if she diskivers what takes place to-night. I—I think you-uns mought agree to that much.”
Masks turned upon masks. Some of them fell from strangely set visages into hands that quivered and failed to replace them. It was plain to the crowd that they had not elected a leader who could possibly do justice to the infinite delicacy of the situation. In fact, something was struggling in Wade Sims that was humiliating him in his own eyes, making him feel decidedly unmanly.
“I think yore proposition is—is purty reasonable,” he managed to blurt out, after an awkward hesitation. “We hain’t none of us got nothin’ ag’in yore wife; an’ ef she is sick, an’ hearin’ about this—”
But his inability to continue was evident to his most sincere admirers. Trundle sighed in relief. He knew that not one in the gang could possibly be harder of heart than their blustering leader. “I wish, then, gentlemen,” he said, calmly, “that you’d git it over with. I don’t know how long it’s a-goin’ to take—that’s with you-uns; but Martha thinks I’ve gone over to Rawlston’s to set till bedtime, an’ it ’ll soon be time I was back.”
“That’s a fact,” admitted Wade Sims, slowly, as if his mind were on something besides the business in hand, and he looked round him. The band stood like rugged, white-capped posts.
Then it was proved that Sid Wombley, the wag of the valley, had more courage of his convictions than had ever been accredited to him. It sounded strange to hear him speak without joking. His seriousness struck a sort of terror to the hearts of some of the most backward. There was a suspicion of a whimper in the tone he manfully tried to straighten as he spoke.
“Looky’ heer, Jim,” he said, and he stepped forward and tore off his mask, I’ve got a sorter feelin’ that I want you to see my face an’ know who I am. Sence I heard yore proposal, blame me ef I hain’t got more downright respect fer you than fer any man in this cove, an’ I want to kick myself. You’ve got the sort o’ meat in you that ain’t in me, I’m afeered, an’ I take off my hat to it. I’m a member o’ this gang, an’ have agreed to abide by the vote of the majority, but they ’ll have to git a mighty move on theirselves an’ reverse the’r decision in yore case, ur I ’ll be a deserter. I’d every bit as soon whip my mammy as a body feelin’ like you do.”
“That’s the talk.” It was the voice of Alf Carden. All at once he remembered that Jim Trundle, after all that had been said against him, did not owe him a cent, while nearly every other man present had to be dunned systematically once a week. “Boys, let ’im go,” he said; “I’m a-thinkin’ we hain’t fully understood Jim Trundle.”
“I hain’t the one that got up this movement,” said Wade Sims, in a tone of defense. Where sentiment was concerned he was out of his element. “Ef you was to let ’im off with a word of advice, it wouldn’t be the fust time we conceded a p’int.”
That settled it. With vague mutterings of various sheepish kinds the crowd began to filter away. Some went down the road, and others took paths that led from it.
Sid Wombley lingered with Jim a moment. Not being able to turn the matter into a jest, and yet being a thorough man, he felt very awkward.
“Go on home, Jim,” he said, gently, his hand on Trundle’s arm. “Your wife ’ll never know a thing about it; they ’ll all keep it quiet, an’ the boys ’ll never bother you ag’in. I—I ’ll see to that.”
They shook hands. Trundle started to speak, but simply choked and coughed. Sid turned away. An idea for a joke flitted through his mind, but he discarded it as unworthy of the occasion.
Jim went slowly up the hill to his cabin. The moon was now higher up, and as he neared the gate he saw his wife walking about in the entry. She was not alone. A woman sat on the step. It was old Mrs. Samuel, the aunt of Wade Sims, a neighbor, who sometimes dropped in to spend the evening. Was it an exclamation of glad surprise that he heard as he opened the gate, and did his wife stand still and stare at him excitedly, or was the sound the voice of one of the children turning in its sleep? Was her cast of countenance a trick of the moonlight and shadows?
The eyes of both women fell as he approached them.
“Good evenin’, Jim,” was Mrs. Samuel’s greeting.
He nodded and sat down on the steps, his back to his wife. They were all silent. Mrs. Trundle stepped to the water-shelf at one side, and peered at his profile through the shadows, her face full of vague misgivings. Then she sat down in a chair behind him, and studied his back, his neck, the way his shirt lay, her hands clinched on her knees, the fury of a tiger in her eyes.
Ten minutes passed. Then Trundle roused himself with a start. He must not be so absent-minded; they must suspect nothing.
“Whar’s the children?” he asked, not looking toward his wife.
“In bed a hour ago.”
Her tone struck him dumb with apprehension. He stared over his shoulder at her. Her face was hidden in her hands. He glanced at the visitor, and saw her avert her eyes. Could she have heard of the plan to whip him, and revealed it to his wife? He felt sure of it; Wade Sims could not keep a secret. His wife thought he had been punished. No matter; it was the same thing. His heart was ice.
Mrs. Trundle bent nearer him. She was trying surreptitiously to see if there were any marks on his neck above his shirt-collar.
Presently her pent-up emotions seemed to overwhelm her. She began to sob and rock back and forth. Then she glared at Mrs. Samuel.
“I’d think you’d have the decency to go home,” she said, fiercely, “an’ not set thar an’—an’ gloat over me an’ him like a crow. It’s our bedtime.”
“Why, Martha, what’s the—” Trundle stood up in bewilderment.
“I was jest gettin’ ready to go,” stammered the visitor, humbly, and she hastened away. Trundle sank back on his seat. What was to be done now? He had never seen his wife that way, but he loved her more than ever in his life before. She watched Mrs. Samuel’s form vanish in the hazy moonlight; then she sat down on the step beside her husband.
“Jim,” she faltered, “I want you to lay yore head in my lap.” She had put her thin, quivering arm round his neck, and her voice had never before held such tender, motherly cadences.
“What do you want me to do that fer?’
“Jest becase I do. I hain’t never in all my life loved you like I do at this minute. I’d fight fer you with my last breath; I’d die fer you. Jim, poor, dear Jim! you needn’t try to hide it from me. Mis’ Samuel had jest told me what the Regulators was goin’ to do when you turned the corner. I know you went down to the spring to meet ’em so me an’ the childern wouldn’t know it. Many a man would ‘a’ gone away an’ left his family ruther than suffer such disgrace. Oh, Jim, I’d a million times ruther they’d whipped me! I ’ll never git over it. I ’ll feel that lash on my back every minute as long as I live. They hain’t none of ’em got sense enough to see what a good, lovin’ man you are at the bottom. I’d ruther have you jest like you are than like any one o’ that layout. We must move away somewhars an’ begin all over. I don’t want the childern to grow up under sech disgrace.”