SWEETNESS
Time, 1855
Amberlight in the dense Ohio woods receded slowly from the path which a woman ascended. The earth was frozen, and glazed puddles stood in cow tracks. But this woman loved to climb from the valley farms and her day’s sewing, of chill December evenings, and feel that she approached her heaven and left the world behind. The year had just passed its shortest day. Neighborhood custom allowed her to leave her tasks early in the evening, because she came to them with a lantern in the morning. She hastened as you may have noticed a large-eyed anxious cow cantering toward its nursling; but stopped to breathe, half ashamed of herself, in sight of a log-house known through the Rocky Fork settlement as Coon’s.
All the Coons had been queer little people, but this last daughter of them exceeded her forefathers in squatty squareness of stature and Japanese cast of feature. As she was quite thirty-five her friends called her an old maid, according to the custom of that remote period. Yet there was not a girl on all the windings of the Rocky Fork who had more laughter in her eyes, or smoother cheeks, or darker polished hair.
“Sure’s my name is Wilda Coon,” said the small woman beneath her breath, “yonder comes Lanson Bundle.”
The man she saw was yet far off, plodding across the valley toward her hillside; and as he had taken that walk nearly every evening for a dozen years, it should have ceased to surprise her. Yet as shadows thickened among rock and naked trees, it was always a satisfaction to turn and look back from that particular point and exclaim, “Yonder comes Lanson Bundle!”
Wilda’s log-house had a clearing andsome acres of trees around it, standing like a German principality or an oasis in the midst of Alanson Bundle’s great farm. The Bundles had vainly tried in times past to buy out the Coons. But Alanson had other views. He had courted Wilda twelve years, and he calculated in time to wear her out. She could not go on forever raising patches of truck in the summer, and quilting and sewing in the winter.
Alanson was not uncomfortable while he waited. His aunt kept house for him at his homestead, where he had several barns, a milk-house, a smoke-house and all modern conveniences around him. He felt his value with everybody but Wilda. The youngest girls showed him no discouragement. There was a sonorous pomp about his singing in meeting which affected every rural nature, while his Adam’s apple, like a sensitive lump of mercury, trembled up and down its inclosure. Some folks thought Alanson Bundle ought to have been a preacher. Hewould look so nice standing in a pulpit, with his hair sleeked up in a straight roach, saying, “Hence we discover, my brethren.” But Wilda Coon never had made any fuss over him. And for that reason he followed her with abject service.
In that early year of the fifties a great many people about the Rocky Fork had locks on their doors. But a tow latch-string hung out for Wilda Coon, and with it she lifted the wooden latch of her dwelling. At night, for security, she would draw the string inside, and slip a wooden bar into staples across the thick board portal.
The tight-chinked cabin had the strangest interior on the Rocky Fork. There was only one room, and the hollow of the roof rose up in a cavernous arch without joists. Two wooden bars were, indeed, set high across one corner, but they served as roosts for chickens who had already taken to them for the night, and who stirred quavering as Wilda shut the door and emptied a gourd.
Before the fire, yet not too near it, was a trundle-bed which could be pushed anywhere on wheels.
She dropped her hood and shawl upon a chair and slipped toward the trundle-bed, motioning back a great mastiff who kept guard at the hearth. He sat down again and licked his lips; the glory of burning logs in the fireplace was enough to content any dog, for that cabin seemed to have the sunset imprisoned within it. Calico curtains on the four-paned windows hid darkening woods outside.
“O Sweetness!” whispered Wilda, bending over the trundle-bed and scarcely daring to touch the patchwork quilt. Her eyes were full of kisses and fondling for her only baby, the helpless being who reversed for her the maternal relations. It was a little old woman, whose apple face had shriveled into puckers only around the corners of the eyes and mouth. A dimity nightcap tied it in, almost covering white silk threads ofhair. This helpless mother, lying in the dead alive state we now call paralysis, and the Rocky Forkers then called palsy, was the secret delight of Wilda’s heart, and Alanson Bundle’s only rival. But she concealed her fondness like a crime. The name of Sweetness was sacred to that hollow cabin. Bounce could make no remark about it, and he was the only safe auditor in an age when excess of loving was considered weakness.
Wilda hung her supper kettles on the hooks of the crane, and made biscuits, and raked out coals to bake them in a Dutch oven. Alanson Bundle would not appear until the evening meal was over. He pottered around in his woods or went across the ridge to look after cattle.
The log-house was exquisite with cleanness, even in that corner where the fowls roosted. No cobwebs or dust marred the rich brown of its upper depth. The floor and stone hearth were scoured white. Wilda’sspinning-wheel stood beside one wall. Her own apartment was an oblong space curtained with homespun which had been dyed a dull red. Some red and gilt chairs, a pine table and a red and gilt cushioned settee on rockers, furnished the house. The log wall between hearth and door held gay trappings of tinware and pewter, all shining in the mighty blaze.
The table was spread and a perfume of coffee filled the place. Wilda had turned the fried eggs and lifted them carefully to a platter before she heard the usual sounds her mother made to call her.
Sweetness was wide awake and smiling like a baby. The Rocky Fork people said she had her faculties but couldn’t make no use of them. Unabated intelligence looked through her eyes and her face never distorted itself, although she could not talk.
“Have you been lonesome to-day, Sweetness? No? Have you slept much? Yes? That’s good. Did Speckle and Banty siton Bounce’s back and keep you company? They’ve gone to roost now. They’re going to wake up about midnight and crow for Christmas, and wake you up—the bad chickens.—Now supper’s ready. Folks round here thinks I starve you because you never eat in the middle of the day. ’Tain’t no use for me to say anything. But if you don’t want me to be clean disgraced, you must eat hearty when you do eat.”
She fed the helpless being with long and patient use of a spoon. The fire roared. Bounce rose up and yawned, stretching his limbs, to hint that his own plate had been empty since morning. But Wilda never hurried this important part of her day’s business. The food which she must eat became overdone. She sat on the trundle-bed, giving her mother with the spoon meat all the life and doings of that small world on the Rocky Fork.
“Gutteridges were going to have a turkey-roast to-morrow. The presiding elder wasat their house. Yes, their sewing was done; she finished Mandy’s black quilted petticoat to-day. Mandy and ’Lizabeth both had new shawls that their father had paid six dollars apiece for, at the woolen factory in Newark; stripes and crossbars. Ridenour’s little boy was so he could sit up; the doctor thought the fever was broke. The Bankses were all going to take dinner at granny’s. And some folks said one of Harris’s girls was to be married to-morrow, but it might be all talk. There wasn’t much chance of snow, but it was a cold night outside. Didn’t Sweetness hear the wind across the roof? It was a good thing our clapboards were on so tight.”
So this one-sided conversation went on until the little old woman was quite filled. Then Wilda made her snug, as if attending an infant, and fed Bounce, and sat down alone at the table.
Scarcely were the clean pewter and crockery in place again, and the wheel set out where the table had been, and Wilda bundledready to go out, when a knock sounded on the door.
She opened it, and exclaimed as she always did,—
“Well, I declare! here’s Lanson. Come in, Lanson, and take a chair.”
“Gimme your milk bucket,” responded Alanson.
“I was just starting to milk, Lanson. Don’t you bother yourself with it to-night.”
But he took her pail. And Wilda, smiling, laid off her wraps and made the hearth very clean, and plumped up the settee cushions.
When Alanson handed the frothing pail into the door, without putting foot over the threshold, he glanced at the fireplace.
“Want another log brought in to-night?”
“Law, Lanson! that one ain’t half burnt.”
“But it’ll settle down before another twenty-four hours. I ’low I’d better fetch a few sticks.”
So he came in laden with sections oftrees, and built them handily upon the structure of the fire.
“Do you want ary bucket of water?” was his next inquiry.
“No, I’m obleeged to you, Lanson,” replied Wilda. “I fetched a big gourdful from the spring as I come uphill. It saves steps.”
Alanson now unbelted and took off his butternut-colored wamus, and Wilda hung it with his hat on a peg. He had a fine black blanket shawl for meeting, but he was not so reckless as to scratch it through hill underbrush every evening.
Feeling himself now ready for society, Alanson walked over to the trundle-bed and greeted the invalid.
“Good even’, Mis’ Coon; it’s right wintry outdoors.”
She gave him an approving smile. He sat down in the settee and rocked himself, while Wilda pulled a long thread from her spindle, stepped back and gave the wheel awhirl. The trundle-bed, as usual, stood between her and her besieger. A hum, rising and rising like some sweet tune through the pines, filled the room. The great wheel blurred all its spokes, and found them again, and slackened to a slow revolution, as Wilda came back to the spindle.
“How’s your aunt to-day?” she inquired.
“Middling,” replied Alanson. Again the music of the spinning arose. Alanson warmed his feet and hands, and felt comforted after his tramp through the vast chill woods.
When the silent companionship which he enjoyed with Wilda had quite filled its measure, he took from his pocket and unfolded a large newspaper.
“I’ll light a candle,” said Wilda, with that eagerness for romance which the simplest lives manifest.
“’Tisn’t needed,” said Alanson. What was a candle’s star to that blazing sun in the fireplace? He turned his shoulder sothe light fell upon the “Saturday Evening Post,” and read a harrowing installment about some Bride of the Wilderness. There was domestic bliss in this snug cabin, the wind-song of the wheel, and the winter night with its breath of Christmas. Alanson droned on in a high key, the mother watching him as long as she was able to resist so many monotones. She went to sleep before Wilda’s stint of spinning was done, and before Alanson read with impressive voice, “To be con-tin-u-ed.”
That wary inspection of each other which people of that time called courting had varied its routine so little for twelve years betwixt this pair, that Alanson felt bound to make his usual remark as Wilda sat down to knit.
“Well, folks is still talking about us getting married, Wilda.”
“Let them talk,” said Wilda, putting her hair behind her ear, and smiling while she looked at Sweetness.
“I come here pretty regular. Don’t you think it’s about time we set the day?”
Wilda answered, without moving her eyes from the trundle-bed, “Don’t you think we better let well enough alone, Lanson?”
“Well, now, ’tisn’t well enough,” argued Alanson, and to the sylvan mind there is accumulated force in an oft-used argument. “You’ve got these woods lots and the house and a cow”—
“Yes, I’m well fixed,” murmured Wilda.
—“but you have to leave your mother and go out among the neighbors to airn a living. How do you know sometime the house won’t burn down?”
“I am jub’ous about it often,” owned Wilda, biting the end of a knitting-needle. But catching the yarn over her little finger she drove it ahead with her work.
“Then eventually she might die.”
“I’ve thought of that,” sighed Wilda. “And I’ve thought what’d become of her if I’s to be taken and her left. Then who’dlet her pet rooster and hen—that she’s just as tickled with as a child—roost in the house, and clean after them without fretting her?”
Alanson glanced at Speckle and Banty sticking like balls to their perch, and he volunteered some discreet possibilities.
“When folks begins to get used to such things before they’re too old and sot in their ways, seems to me like chickens in the house would be natteral enough—though not brought up to it.”
Whenever Alanson made this great concession, Wilda always fell back upon her observations of marriage.
“But there’s Mary Jane Willey. She had fifteen hundred dollars in her own right, and was well fixed with bedding and goods—six chairs and a bread-trough and a cupboard. And all that didn’t satisfy her, but she must have a man to speckalate with her money and lose it; and now he’s took to drinking, her and her children are like to go on the county.”
Alanson interlaced his fingers across his chest and set his thumbs to whirling.
“She ought to got a man like me,” he observed humorously.
Then the topic was usually diverted into the lives of other Rocky Forkers until Alanson felt it was time to go home.
But to-night, after drawing out his silver watch by its steel log-chain, he lingered uneasily instead of rising from the settee and saying, “Well, I better be moseying towards home.”
The flashing of Wilda’s needles went on. She had a leather stall pinned to her waist, in which she braced and steadied the most rampant needle as he led the gallop around the stocking. Sweetness slept as a spirit may sleep who has escaped the bounds of care, her sunken little mouth and wrinkled eye-corners steadily smiling.
“Going to have any Christmas up here to-morrow?” inquired Alanson, with a sheepish look at Wilda.
“I got a Christmas gift for her,” replied Wilda fondly. Alanson understood the pronouns which always stood for mother.
“Well, now, it’s funny,” said he. “But I got something for her, too.”
“Why, Lanson! What ever put you up to do such a thing?” Wilda paused with her needle held back in mid plunge.
“’Tisn’t much,” apologized Alanson, and he brought his wamus from the peg to the hearth. Wilda had noticed it was laden when she hung it up, but she always discreetly overlooked the apples he brought until he made his offering.
There were no apples in the wamus pockets this time. Alanson took out two packets, and opened one which he laid on Wilda’s knee. It was a pound of red hearts.
“The other’s for her,” he said “and it’s all white ones.”
“Why, Lanson Bundle!” exclaimed Wilda.
But he had yet another paper, and it disclosed the yellow coats of tropical fruit.
“What’s them?” breathed Wilda, bending over in admiration. “Why, Lanson Bundle! If them ain’t lemons and oranges! Where in this world did you get them?”
“I sent clean to Fredericktown for them,” confessed the suitor with an apologetic grin. “I thought her being bedfast so steady all the time, she’d like something out of the common.”
“You arerealclever,” spoke Wilda with trembling voice. “She’ll be so tickled! I been making her two fine caps with hem-stitching around the border;—but this does beat all!”
“I done something else,” Alanson ventured on, “that you’ll think is simple;—I’ve never seen such a thing, but I’ve read about it. Coming along through the pines I took my jack-knife out and cut a little one off close to the ground; and it’s laying outside the door.”
“What for, Lanson?”
“A Christmas-tree.”
“What’s that?”
“Why, in a foreign place they call Germany, I’ve read they take an evergreen and make it stand like it growed in the house, and hang gifts on it, and if I don’t disremember, they fix candles into it and light them.”
“I should think that would be pretty,” said Wilda in some excitement. “Law, Lanson! If we could fix it at the foot of her trundle-bed!”
Alanson thought they could fix it, and he set vigorously about the task. He ran out to the ash-hopper and brought in the keg which in summer time caught the lye. The evergreen tree, beautifully straight, and tasseled at the top, he fastened in the keg ingeniously, without clamor of nails and pounding.
Then maid and bachelor trimmed the Christmas-tree for their old sleeping child. A dexterous use of string hung all the hearts to the boughs, as well as oranges and lemons.One cap was put on the top tassel, and the other dropped from a branch by its ties. Wilda brought out her candle box and recklessly cut the moulded tallow into short tapers. This part of the decoration greatly taxed both Alanson and her. But they finally pinned all the tapers in place, and concluded to light the wicks for a trial.
Alanson carried a brand from point to point. Wilda was frightened at the beauty of the thing and their unusual occupation. Her eyes and cheeks were vivid. She had never been so wildly excited in her life before. Thought and resolution, which had battled for years, bounded forward with the bounding of her blood.
“Lanson Bundle!” she laughed, “what do you suppose folks would say if they peeked in and seen us at this!”
“I ’low they’d want to have a Christmas-tree themselves,” responded the bachelor. “You and me will have one next year at our own house, won’t we, Wilda?”
“Well, I don’t know but we will. I don’t know as I can hold out much longer. You’re a real good man, Lanson, and if I’ve got to get married, there ain’t nobody I’d have as quick as you.”
At that admission Alanson laid the brand on the fire, wiped his lips carefully with a red cotton handkerchief, and came expectantly round the Christmas-tree. But with the recoil of a middle-aged girl from dropping man a word of encouragement, Wilda flew behind the trundle-bed and kept her lover warned by an uplifted palm.
“I haven’t made up my mind to no kissing yet, Lanson Bundle! I ain’t used to kissing anybody but her.”
Alanson looked at the little mother in the trundle-bed, and she opened her eyes, disturbed by such scampering. The pet chickens were roused also, and Speckle crowed on his perch with a vigor which belongs only to the midnight of Christmas eve.
“Look there, Sweetness,” Wilda whisperedkneeling. “Do you see what Lanson’s fixed for you? That’s a Christmas-tree.”
The mother’s eyes caught the Christmas-tree, and snapped with astonishment and delight. The tapers were dripping tallow, but firelight shone through the boughs, and all the wonderful hearts and yellow fruit hung like a fairy picture. Her grateful look finally sought Alanson, and he also knelt down, at the opposite side of the trundle-bed, and with reverence which brought a rush of tears to Wilda’s eyes, kissed Sweetness on the forehead.
Wilda furtively gathered her tears on her finger-tips, and hid them in her linsey dress, but she said impressively to Alanson,—
“Now, that kiss will make you a better man all your life.”