It was a relief to her when they reached the fence, and he stepped out to help her down and tie his horse. There had been some uncertainty up to the last as to whether Preacher Drumright could be got for the occasion, but the sound of his voice from the press of calico-clad and jeans-covered shoulders and backs, reassured Flenton.
"I'm mighty glad Drumright's thar," he said to Callista, as he lifted her down. "He'll preach Granny's funeral come Sunday, he said; but thar ain't anyone can pray like he can. I do love a good servigorous prayer."
Callista's anxious eyes were searching the animals tethered about for sight of the two black horses that stepped together "like a couple of gals with their arms around each other's waists." At last she found them in the grove, and hastily turned with her escort to go through the gap in the fence to where the preacher was, where yawned the open grave, and stood the coffin.47A tangle of dewberry vines, with withering fruit on them, here and there, and beginning even in their mid-summer greenness to show russet and reddened leaves, scrambled all over the poor soil. Most of the graves were unmarked, some had a slab or block of wood; only here and there gleamed a small stone.
Callista passed that of her father, good-looking, ne'er-do-well Race Gentry, whom the romantic young Octavia Luster had run away to marry. A honeysuckle vine covered it with a tangle of green, offering now its bunches of fawn and white, heavy-scented blossoms from a closely compacted mound.
"I'm a-goin' to have a real monument put up for Granny," Flenton whispered to her as they went forward together. "I wish't she'd lived to be a hundred, so I could have put that on the stone; but we're mighty proud of her holdin' out to ninety."
Quite against her will, Callista found herself taken up to the front of the gathering, placed between Ellen and Flenton Hands beside the coffin. Preacher Drumright was speaking with closed eyes; he had embarked on one of those servigorous prayers which Hands admired. The two girls, Ellen and Jane, were sobbing in long, dry gasps. After the prayer came a hymn, the lulls in the service being filled in by the sobs of the Hands girls, little48responsive moans from some woman in the assembly, and the purr of the wind in the young pines, where scared rabbits were hiding; and by the far, melodious jangle of Old Piedy's bell—Old Piedy, dispossessed and driven away.
With the appearance of Callista and her escort on the scene, a young fellow who had been lying full length on the top of the ruining stone wall tilted his hat quite over his eyes and relaxed a certain watchfulness of demeanor which had till then been apparent in him. When the girl was finally ensconced in the middle of the lamenting Hands family, this person leaned down and whispered to Ola Derf, whose square little back was resting against the wall close beside him,
"Come on, let's go. Haven't you had about enough of this?"
"Uh-huh," agreed Ola in a whisper, "but we mustn't git our horses till the preacher quits prayin'. Hit'll make too much noise."
Again Lance relaxed into his quiescent attitude, and had to be roused when the hymn began, with,
"He's done finished, Lance. Do you want to go now?"
The wind soothed its world-old, sighing monody in the young pines overhead; beneath the waxing warmth of the morning sun faint whiffs, resinous, pungent, came down from their boughs, to mingle with the perfume from the vagrant honeysuckle that flung a long green arm toward the trunk of one of them. Suddenly a49woman's tenor, wild and sweet, rose like a winged thing and led all the other voices.
"Huh-uh," grunted Lance, from his sun-warmed couch. "Let's wait awhile now."
After the hymn, Drumright read from the Scripture. Even his rasping voice could not disguise the immemorial beauty of the sombre Hebrew imagery, "Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken."
Lance drew a long quivering breath. Something in the sounds, the hour and the occasion, had appealed to that real Lance Cleaverage, of which the man Ola Derf knew was only custodian, to whose imperious needs the obvious Lance must always bend.
Yet, long before poor Callista could be released and allowed to ride home, by her own earnest petition, in the buckboard with Jane and Ellen, the two by the stone wall had found their way across to the black horses in the grove, and were scurrying down the dusty summer road, racing as soon as they were out of sight of the graveyard.
50
THE Derfs occupied a peculiar position among their Turkey Track neighbors. They had a considerable tincture of Cherokee Indian blood, no discredit in the Tennessee mountains, or elsewhere for that matter. One branch of the family had received money compensation for their holdings from the Government. Leola's father had at that time taken possession of an allotment of land in the Indian Territory. The eldest daughter, Iley, married out there, and brought back her Indian husband when Granny Derf, pining for her native mountains, had to be carried home to Big Turkey Track.
It was not the blood of another race that set the Derfs apart; but it may have been traits which came with the wild strain. There was a good deal of money going among the clan. Old man Derf was a general trader; also he engaged in tanbark hauling in the season, and some other contracting enterprises such as required the use of ready cash. In the back room of the main house there was quite a miscellaneous stock of provisions, goods, and oddments for sale. Derf was more than suspected of being a moonshiner or of dealing with moonshiners. He gave51dances or frolics of some sort at his house very frequently, and there was always plenty of whisky. At one time or another the family had lived in the Settlement a good deal, and come off rather smudged from their residence in that place. Indeed, your true mountaineer believes that sin is of the valley, and looks for no good thing to come out of the low ground. In a simple society, like that of the mountains, the line is drawn with such savage sharpness that the censors hesitate to draw it at all. Yet a palpable cloud hung over the Derfs. While not completely outcast, they were of so little standing that their house was scarcely a respectable place for a young, unmarried woman to be seen frequently. Ola, Garrett Derf's second daughter, a girl of twenty, and a homely, high-couraged, hard muscled little creature, was permitted in the neighborhood circle of young girls rather on sufferance; but she did not trouble them greatly with her presence, preferring as a rule her own enterprises.
Lance Cleaverage, a free, unfettered spirit, trammeled by no social prejudices, came often to the frolics at Derf's. He seldom danced himself, whisky he never touched; but he loved to play for the others, and he got all the stimulation which his temperament and his mood asked out of the crowd, the lights, the music, and some indefinable element into which these fused for him.
It was nearly two months after the incident at the church and52the funeral of Granny Yearwood, that Ola was redding up and putting to rights for a dance. She had hurried through an early supper; the house was cleared, like the deck of a ship for action, of all furniture that could not be sat upon. What remained—a few chairs and boxes, and the long benches on which, between table and wall, the small fry of the family crowded at meal time—were arranged along the sides of the room out of the way. The girl herself was wearing a deep pink calico dress and a string of imitation coral beads. Generally, she gave little thought to her appearance; but everybody believed now that the time was set for the marriage of Lance Cleaverage and Callista Gentry; neither of the young people denied it, Callista only laughing scornfully, and Lance lightly admitting that there was a mighty poor chance for a fellow to get away when a girl like Callista made up her mind to wed him. In the face of these things, the little brown girl clad her carefully, laboring with the conscienceless assiduity of Nature's self to do her utmost to get her chosen man away from the other woman—to get him for herself. She went out past the wood-pile to view the evening sky anxiously, and seeing only a few cloud-roses blooming in the late light over the hills, came back with satisfaction to attempt once more putting her small brothers and sisters out of the way.
A little after dark her guests began to arrive, coming in by53ones and twos and threes, some of the boys in mud-splashed working clothes, some in more holiday attire. About moonrise Lance strolled down the road, and by way of defending himself from the importunities of Ola's conversation, if one might guess, kept his banjo twanging persistently. There was a certain solemnity over the early comers, although Derf roared a hearty greeting from his door of the cabin, and occasionally some of the men adjourned to his special room and came out wiping their mouths.
"Ain't nobody never goin' to dance?" inquired Ola impatiently. "Here's Lance a-playin' and a-playin', and nobody makin' any manner of use of the music."
There was nearly ten minutes of hitching and halting, proposals and counter propositions, before a quadrille was started. It was gone through rather perfunctorily, then they all sat down on the boxes and benches and stared into the empty middle of the room.
"Good land!" cried Ola, coming from the other side of the house, "play 'Greenbacks', Lance—let's dance 'Stealing partners'."
The new amusement—half dance, half play—proved, as she had guessed, a leaven to the heaviness of the occasion. People began to laugh a little, and speak above their breath. Two awkward boys, trying to "shoot dominickers" at the same moment, collided54under the arch and went sprawling to the floor. The mishap was greeted with a roar of mirth in which all chill and diffidence were drowned.
And now the arrivals from the far cabins were on hand. Small children who had been allowed to sit up and look on nodded in corners, or stretched themselves across their fathers' knees and were tumbled just as they were upon a pallet in the loft. The usual contingent of bad little boys collected outside the door and began to shout at the dancers by name, calling out comments on personal peculiarities, or throwing small chips and stones under foot to trip up the unwary. These were finally put down by the strong hand.
Clapping and stamping increased as the dancers moved more rapidly; calls were shouted; the laughter was continuous. Lance Cleaverage leaned forward in his place, striking the humming strings with sure, tense fingers, his eyes aglow, and on his mouth a half smile. The fun waxed furious; the figures whirled faster and faster, gathering, disparting, interweaving, swinging and eddying before his eyes. Coats were thrown off, the feet thudded out the measure heavily. This was his dissipation, the draught that the mirth of others brewed for him. Its fumes were beginning to mount to his brain, when Ola's hard brown little hand came down across his strings and stopped the music. There55was an instant and indignant outcry and protest.
"Consarn yo' time, Ola! What did you want to do that for?" demanded a tall young fellow who had broken down in the midst of a pigeon wing, as though he drew his inspiration from the banjo and could not move without its sound.
"I want to hear Buck play on his accordion—and I want Lance to dance with me," Ola said petulantly. "What's the use of him settin' here all the time playin' for you-all to have fun, and him never gettin' any? Come on, Lance."
Ola Derf was not used to the consideration generally accorded young women. When she made a request, she deemed it well to see that her requirements were complied with. Deftly she lifted the banjo from Lance's lap and passed it to someone behind her, who put it on the fireboard. Then laying hold of the young man himself, she pulled him out into the middle of the room.
"Play, Buck, play," she admonished Fuson, who had his accordion. "You made yo' brags about what fine music you could get out of that thar box,—now give us a sample."
Buck played. When a dance has swung so far as this one had, nothing can check its rhythmic movement. The notes dragged wheezily from the old accordion answered as well to the gathering's warm, free, fluent mood as the truer harmonies of56Lance's banjo. Hand clasping hand, Ola and Lance whirled among the others, essaying a simple sort of polka. She was a tireless dancer, and he as light footed as a panther. The two of them began to feel that intoxication of swift movement timed to music which nothing else in life can quite furnish, intensified in the girl by a gripping conviction that this was her hour, and she must make the most of it. She was aflame with it. When Buck broke down she instantly proposed a game of Thimble. Boldly, almost openly, she let herself forfeit a kiss to Lance.
There was a babble of tongues and laughter, a hubbub of mirth, a crossfiring and confusion of sound and movement which wrought upon the nerves like broken chords, subtle dissonances, in music. Buck was trying to play again, some of the boys were patting and stamping, others remonstrating, jeering, making ironic suggestions, when Lance, a bit flushed and bright of eye, dropped his arm around the brown girl's waist to take his forfeit. As in duty bound she pulled away from him. He sprang after, caught her by the shoulders, turned her broad little face up to his and kissed her full on the laughing, red mouth.
Then a miracle! Kissing Ola Derf was not a serious matter; indeed common gossip hinted that it was a thing all too easily accomplished. But tonight the girl was wrought beyond herself—57a magnet. And Lance's sleeping spirit felt the shock of that kiss. But alas for Ola, it was for her rival's behoof the miracle was worked; it was in her rival's cause she had labored, enlisting all her primitive arts, all her ingenuity and resolution! The lights, the music, the movement, the gayety of others, these had, so far, pleased and stimulated Lance as they always did. But the unaccustomed warmth and contact of the dance; the daring and abandon of the kissing game afterward; finally the sudden ravisher's clasp and snatched kiss—these set free in him an impulse which had slumbered till now. To this bold, aggressive, wilful nature it was always the high mountain, the long dubious road, the deep waters—never the easy way, the thing at hand; it was ever his own trail—not the path suggested to his feet. And so, in this sudden awakening, he took no account of Ola Derf, and his whole soul turned toward Callista—Callista the scornful, whose profile, or the side of whose cheek, he was always seeing; Callista who refused to lift her lashes to look at him, and who was ever saying coolly exasperating things in a tone of gentle weariness. If Callista would look at him as Ola Derf had done—if he might catch her thus in his arms—if those lips of hers were offered to his kiss—!
Without a word of excuse or explanation he dropped the girl's hand as he stood in the ring of players, caught his banjo down58from the shelf, and leaving open mouths and staring eyes behind him, strode through the door. A moment later he was footing it out in the moonlight road, walking straight and fast toward the church where protracted meeting was going on, and where he guessed Callista would be with her family. A javelin, flame-tipped, had touched him. Something new and fiery danced in his veins. He would see her home. They would walk together, far behind the family group, in this wonderful white moonlight.
When he reached Brush Arbor church he avoided the young fellows lounging about the entrance waiting to beau the girls. He moved lightly to a window at the back of the building and looked in. There sat Octavia Gentry on the women's side, and old Ajax, her father-in-law, on the men's. Callista he could not find from his coign of vantage. An itinerant exhorter was on his feet, preaching loud, pounding the pulpit, addressing himself now and again to the mourners who knelt about the front bench. Lance cautiously put his head in and looked further. Somehow he knew, all in a moment, that this was what he had expected—what he had hoped for; Callista was at home waiting for him. Yet none the less he carefully examined the middle seats where might be found the courting couples. He would not put it beyond his Callista to59go to church with some other swain and sit there publicly advertising her favor to the interloper.
When he was at last satisfied that she was not in the building, he turned as he had turned from Ola Derf, and made a straight path for himself from Brush Arbor to the Gentry place. Scorning the beaten highway of other men's feet, he struck directly into the forest, and through a little grove of second-growth chestnut, with its bunches of silver-gray stems rising slim and white in the light of the moon. Moonshine sifting through the leaves changed his work-a-day clothing to the garb of a troubadour. The banjo hung within easy reach of his fingers; he took off his old hat and tucked it under his arm, striking now and again as he went a twanging chord.
It was an old story to him, this walking the moonlit wild with his banjo for company. Many a time in the year's release, the cool, fragrant, summer-deep forest had called him by its delicate silver nocturnes, its caverns of shadow and milky pools of light, bidden him to a wild spring-running. On such nights his heart could not sleep for song. Sometimes, intoxicated with the rhythm, he had swung on and on, crashing through the dew-drenched huckleberry tangles, rocking a little, with eyes half closed, and interspersing the barbaric jangle of his banjo with quaint jodeling and long, falsetto-broken whoops, the heritage that the Cherokee left behind him in this land. But now it was60no mere physical elation of youth and summer and moonlight. It was the supreme urge of his nature that sent his feet forward steadily, swiftly, as toward a purpose that might not be let or stayed. Speed—to Callista—that was all. He fell into silence, even the banjo's thrumming hushed to an intense quivering call of broken chords, hardly to be distinguished from the insect cries of love that filled the summer wood about him.
All the fathomless gulf of the sky was poured full of the blue-green splendors that flooded the night world of the mountains. Drops of dew spilled from leaf to leaf; down in the spring hollow he was spattered to the knees by the thousand soft, reaching fronds of cinnamon fern. Wild fragrances splashed him with great waves of sweetness. So the lords of the wild, under pelt and antler, have ever been wont to rove to their wooing; so restless are the wings that flutter among summer branches and under summer moons.
Between the banjo's murmuring chords, as he neared the Gentry clearing, once more a melody began to stray, like smoke which smoulders fitfully and must presently burst into flame.—Thrum-dum, thrum-dum, and then the tune's low call. It was a gypsy music, that lured with vistas of unknown road, the glint of water, and the sparkle of the hunter's fire; a wildly sweet note that asked, "How many miles?"—and again, out of colorless61drumming, "How many years? . . . how many miles?" . . . a song shadow-like in its come-and-go, rising at intervals to the cry of a passion no mortality has power to tame, and then, ere the ear had fairly caught its message, falling again into dim harmonies as of rain blown through the dark;—a question, and the wordless, haunting refrain for all answer. Just above his breath Lance voiced the words:
"How many years, how many miles,Far from the door where my darling smiles?How many miles, how many years.Divide our hearts by pain and fears?"
"How many years, how many miles,Far from the door where my darling smiles?How many miles, how many years.Divide our hearts by pain and fears?"
"How many years, how many miles,
Far from the door where my darling smiles?
How many miles, how many years.
Divide our hearts by pain and fears?"
The melody sank and trailed, drowned in a cadence of minors that sobbed like the rush of storm. Out of this, wild, as the wind's pleading, it rose again;
"It may be far, it may be near,The water's wide and the forest drear,But somewhere awaiting, surely IShall find my true love by and bye."
"It may be far, it may be near,The water's wide and the forest drear,But somewhere awaiting, surely IShall find my true love by and bye."
"It may be far, it may be near,
The water's wide and the forest drear,
But somewhere awaiting, surely I
Shall find my true love by and bye."
The lithe limbs threshed through the dew-drenched, scented undergrowth. The trees grew more openly now; clearing was at hand.
"—My true love—by and bye,"
"—My true love—by and bye,"
"—My true love—by and bye,"
hummed the light, sweet baritone.
Callista had petulantly refused to go to church with her mother and grandfather. For no reason which she could assign, she62wanted to be alone. Then when they were all gone, she wished she had accompanied them. An indefinable disquiet possessed her. She could not stay in the house. Candle in hand she sought an outside cabin where stood the loom. Climbing to the loft room of this she set her light down and began to search out some quilt pieces, which she figured to herself as the object of her present excursion. Though she would have denied it with scorn, the idea of Lance Cleaverage filled her completely; Lance, the man who was preparing to marry her, yet upon whom—of all those who had come near her, in the free, fortuitous commerce of marriageable youth in the mountains—she had, it seemed to her, been able to lay no charm, to exert no influence. He met her; he exchanged cut and thrust with her, and he went his ways after their encounters, neither more nor less than he had been before. He came back seemingly at the dictates of time and chance only, and never hotter nor colder, never hastening to nor avoiding her. A bitterness tinged all her thought... She wondered if she would have seen him had she gone to meeting . . . She reflected jealously that he was much more likely to be at the frolic at Derf's. . . . She wished she knew how to dance.
All at once, on the vague introspection of her mood, she became aware of the recurrent stroke of a soft musical note—the humming of Lance's banjo. Crouching rigidly by the little chest63that held her quilt scraps, she listened. It was a trick of the imagination—she had thought so much about him that she fancied him near. Then, with a sudden heavy beating of the heart, she realized that if he had been at the dance and gone home early he might be passing now on the big road. She smiled at her own folly; this tremulous low call could never be heard across two fields and the door-yard.
And it was a banjo . . . it was Lance's banjo . . . he was playing whisperingly, too, as he loved to do.
Then the strings ceased to whisper. Clearer came their voice and louder. Without thinking to extinguish her candle, she ran to the window and knelt hearkening. She looked down on the moonlit yard. All was silent and homely . . . but that was Lance's banjo. Even as she came to this decision. Lance himself broke through the greenery at the edge of the near field, vaulted a low fence, and emerged into the open. He came on in the soft light, singing a little, apparently to himself.
Spellbound she listened, gripping the window ledge hard, holding her breath, choking, wondering what this new thing was that had come to her. Above him she was set like a saint enshrined, with the moonlight to silver her rapt, shining face, and the glow of the candle behind making a nimbus of her fair hair. Yet never at64all (or she thought so) did Lance look up. Light footed, careless of mien, he circled the house once, still humming under his breath, and striking those odd, tentative chords on the banjo. Then, abruptly, when she had realized her position and would have hidden herself, or put out the candle which betrayed her, he stopped under her window and with upflung head was smiling straight into her eyes. She rallied her forces and prepared for the duel which always ensued when she and Lance met. She would give him as good as he sent. She would tell him that she had stayed away from church for fear she should see him. If he hinted that she had expected this visit, she would—she would say—
But this was a new Lance Cleaverage looking into her eyes—a man Callista had never seen before. Subtly she knew it, yet scarcely dared trust the knowledge. The young fellow below in the moonlight sent up no challenge to a trial of wits; he offered her no opportunity for sarcastic retort. Tossing aside his hat, making ready his banjo, he lifted his head so that the lean, dark young face with its luminous eyes was raised fully to her in the soft radiance, and struck some chords—strange, thrilling, importunate chords—then began to sing.
The serenade is a cherished courtship custom of primitive societies. Lance Cleaverage, the best banjo player in the Turkey Tracks, with a flexible, vibrant, colorful baritone voice, had65often gone serenading with the other boys; but this—tonight—was different. He felt like singing, and singing to Callista; for the moment it was his form of expression. What he sang was his own version of an old-world ballad, with his love's name in place of the Scottish girl's to whom it was addressed three hundred years ago in the highlands of another hemisphere. Unashamed, unafraid—would anything ever make Lance either ashamed or afraid?—he stood in the white moonlight and sent forth his passionate, masterful call of love on the wings of song.
Callista's heart beat wildly against her arms where she rested on the window sill. Her lips were apart, and the breath came through them quick and uneven. Despite herself, she leaned forward and looked back into the eyes that gazed up at her. Was this Lance, the indifferent, taunting, insouciant, here under her window alone, looking up so at her—playing, singing, to her? Oh, yes, it was Lance. He wanted her, said the swift importunate notes of the banjo, the pleading tones of his voice, the bold yet loverlike attitude of the man. He wanted her. Well—a flood of tender warmth rose in her—she wanted him! For the first time probably in her life—misshapen, twisted to the expression of the coquette, the high and mighty, scornful miss who finds no lover to her taste—Callista was all a woman. The66fires of her nature flamed to answer the kindred fire of his. The last, teasing note of the banjo quavered into silence. Lance pulled the ribbon over his head, laid the instrument by—without ever taking his eyes from her face—and said, hardly above a whisper,
"Callista, honey, come down."
No retort was ready for him.
"I—oh, I can't, Lance," was all Callista could utter.
With a "Well, I'm a-comin' up there, then," he sprang into the muscadine vine whose rope-like trunks ran up around the doorway below her. She only caught her breath and watched in desperate anxiety the reckless venture. And when he reached the level of her window, when, swinging insecurely in a loop of the vine, he stretched his arms to her, ready arms answered him and went round his neck. A face passion pale was raised to him, and eager, tremulous lips met his.
They drew apart an instant, then Callista—overwhelmed, frightened at herself—with a swift movement hid her face on his breast. He bent over her, and laid his dark cheek against hers, that was like a pearl. His arms drew her closer, closer; the two young hearts beat plungingly against each other. The arms that strained Callista so hard to Lance's breast trembled, and her slender body trembled within them. Lance's shining eyes closed.
A face passion pale. . .
67"Callista—honey—darlin'," he whispered brokenly, "you do love me."
"Oh, Lance—Oh, Lance!" she breathed back.
And then his lips went seeking hers once more. She lifted them to him, and the lovers clung long so. The world swung meaninglessly on in space. The two clasped close in each other's arms were so newly, so intensely, blindingly, electrically awake to themselves and to each other, that they were utterly insensible to all else.
Finally Lance raised his head a bit. He drew a long, sobbing breath, and laying his face once more against the girl's murmured with tender fierceness,
"An' we ain't going to wait for no spring, neither. You'll wed me to-morrow—well, next week, anyway"—as he felt her start and struggle feebly.
"Oh, Lance—honey—no," she began. But he cut her short with vehement protestations and demands. He covered her face, her hair, her neck with kisses, and then declared again and again, in a voice broken with feeling, that they would be wedded the next week—they wouldn't wait—they wouldn't wait.
Shaken, amazed by her own emotions, terrified at the rush of his, Callista began to plead with him; and when that availed nothing, save to inflame his ardor, her cry was,
"Yes, Lance. Yes—all right—we will. We will, Lance—whenever68you say. But go now, honey, won't you—please? Oh, Lance! They'll be coming home any minute now. If they was to find you here. Lance—Won't you go now, please, honey? Lance, darlin', please. I'll do just like you say—next week—any time, Lance. Only go now."
There was no sense of denying, or drawing herself back, in Callista's utterance. It was only the pleading of maiden terror. When Lance acquiesced, when he crushed her to him in farewell, her arms went round him once more, almost convulsively; with an equal ardor, her lips met the fierce, dominating kiss of his.
He got down from the window, his head whirling. Mechanically he found his banjo, flung the ribbon over his neck and turned the instrument around so that it hung across his shoulders. Thus, and with his hat again tucked under his arm, without ever looking back toward the house, he walked swiftly and unsteadily away, once more through the young chestnut wood, with its dapplings of shadow and moonlight. He dipped into the hollow where the spring branch talked to itself all night long in the silence and the darkness under the twisted laurel and rhododendrons; once more he stood on the little tonsured hill above the church. The lights were out; they had all gone home.
Below him was spread his world; the practised eye of this free69night rover could have located every farm and cabin, as it all lay swimming in this wonderful, bewitched half-light. Those were his kindred and his people; but he had always been a lonely soul among them. The outposts of levity which he had set about the citadel of his heart had never been passed by any. Tonight, with an upheaval like birth or death, he had broken down the barriers and swept another soul in beside him; close—close. He would never be alone again—never again. There would always be Callista. In the intoxication, the ravishment of the moment, he made no reckoning with the Callista he had heretofore known, the Lance that had been; they should be always as now on this night of magic.
70
ON the comb of a tall ridge back of the Cleaverage place, Ola Derf caught up with Lance at last.
"I got to set down awhile till I can ketch my breath," the girl said jerkily. "I reckon I run half a mile hollerin' yo' name every step. Lance Cleaverage—and you never turned yo' head. I believe in my soul you heared me the first time I called."
Cleaverage did not take the trouble to affirm or deny. He flung himself back on the fern and pine needles with his hat over his face, and remarking, "Wake me up when you get your breath," affected to go to sleep. Ola Derf was as comfortable a companion as a dog, in that you could talk to her or let her alone, as the humor ran.
A cicada's whir overhead swelled to a pulsating screech and died away. The woods here opened into calm and lofty spaces which at a little distance began to be dimmed as with vaporized sapphire—the blue that melted the hills into the sky. His eyes were caught by an indigo-bird in the branches—a drop of color71apparently precipitated by this marvel of azure held in solution by the summer air.
It was the morning after Lance had sung to Callista under her window, and his mind was yet swimming in dreams of her. He was roused from these by Ola's voice.
"Lance," she began and broke off. "Oh, Lance, I want to talk to you about—about—" Again her voice lapsed. She could see nothing of his face. His chest rose and fell rhythmically. "Lance—air you asleep?"
"Huh-uh. But if you keep on talkin' right good maybe I'll get to sleep."
She paid no attention to the snub, but addressed herself once more to what seemed a difficult bit of conversational tactics.
"Lance," came the plaint for the third time, "I wanted to name Callista Gentry to you. I—I—that thar gal don't care the rappin' o' her finger about you, nor any man."
Cleaverage, with the memory of last night warm at his heart, smiled under his hat brim and made no answer, save a little derisive sound which might have meant denial, indifference, or mere good-humored contempt of Ola herself.
"Oh, yes, I know," Ola nodded to her own thought, "they's a heap of 'em lets on not to like the boys; but with Callista Gentry hit goes to the bone. She don't care for nary soul in this round world but her own pretty self. She 'minds me of a snake—a white72snake, if ever there was such a thing. You look at her. You ain't never seen her change color, whatever came or went."
The picture evoked of Callista's flushed, tender face lying upon his breast made the pulses of the man on the warm pine needles leap.
"Well," he prompted finally, "what's the trouble? Are you a true friend, that doesn't want me to get snake bit?"
Ola laughed out a short laugh.
"No," she said, drearily, "I'm just a fool that's got yo' good at heart, and don't like to see you get a wife that cares nothin' for you. Thar—I've said my say. Thar's no love in her, and thar's no heart in her. But if a pretty face and high and mighty ways is what takes you, of course you can follow yo' ruthers."
"Uh-huh," agreed Lance, pushing his hat back and sitting up. He cast a laughing, sidelong glance in her direction. "Ola," he said softly, "I'm a goin' to let you into a secret. The gals has pestered me all my life long with too much lovin', and my great reason for bein' willin' to have Callista Gentry is that she seems like you say, sorter offish."
To his intense surprise (he had been wont to jest much more hardily with her than this), Ola's face flushed suddenly a dark, burning red. She jumped to her feet like a boy.
"All right," she said in a throaty tone, her countenance turned73away from him. "If that's so, I'm sorry I spoke. Tell Miz. Cleaverage all about it—and all about me and the other gals that run after you so turrible. I don't care."
But half way down the ridge her swift, angry, steps began to lag, and a little further on Lance overtook her.
"They's a-goin' to be a dance at our house a-Wednesday," she said in a penitent voice. "You're a-comin', ain't you, Lance?"
"Nope," returned the invited guest briefly.
He volunteered no excuse or explanation; and so, when the parting of their ways was reached, she demanded with imploring eyes on his face,
"Ye ain't mad with me, air ye. Lance? Why won't you come to my party?"
"Got somethin' else to do," Cleaverage returned nonchalantly. "Callista and me is goin' to be married a-Wednesday night."
Ola fell back a step, and clutched the sunbonnet which she carried rolled in her hands.
"You're a—w'y, Lance—you're jest a foolin'," she faltered.
Lance shook his head lightly, without a word.
"But—why, I was over at Gentry's this morning," she exclaimed finally. "Nobody thar said anything about it." She still watched his face incredulously. "They shorely would have said somethin', if Callista had named the day."
"She never named it," said Lance easily. "I named it myself,74back there on the ridge whilst you was catchin' your breath—or wastin' it. We had allowed that a week from yesterday would do us, but it sort of come over me that Wednesday was the right time, and I'm goin' along by there right now to settle it all. Reckon if you folks are givin' a dance you won't heed a invite? Good-bye," and he turned away on his own trail.
Swift, unsmiling, preoccupied as a wild thing on its foreordained errand—the hart to the spring, the homing bird—Cleaverage made his way to the Gentry place. Callista felt him coming before he turned into the big road; she saw him while yet the leafage of the door maples would have confused any view less keen. She longed to flee. Then in a blissful tremor she could do nothing but remain. Octavia Gentry, carrying hanks of carpet chain to the dye-pot in the yard, caught sight of him and called out a greeting.
"Is Mr. Gentry about the place?" Lance asked her, as he lingered a moment with Callista's eyes on him from the doorway.
"Yes, Pappy's makin' ready to go down to the Settlement, and he ain't been to the field to-day. He's in the house somewhar's. Did you want to see him special, Lance?"
Cleaverage made no direct reply; and the widow added,
"Thar he is, right now," as Ajax Gentry stepped out into the75open passage with a bit of harness in his hand which he was mending. A certain gravity fell on her manner as the two walked toward the house. It went through her mind that Cleaverage had never formally asked for Callista, and that now he was about to do so. She lifted her head proudly and glanced round at him. Lance Cleaverage was not only the best match in the whole Turkey Track region, but he had been the least oncoming of all "Sis's love-yers." You never could be sure whether Lance wanted the girl or was merely amusing himself; and Octavia had always been strongly set upon the match. When they came to the porch edge, Lance seated himself upon it and looked past the old man to where Callista's flower face was dimly discernible in the entry beyond.
"Good morning," he said impersonally. "I'm glad to find you at home, Mr. Gentry. I stopped a-past to name it to you-all that Callista and me has made up our minds to be wed a-Wednesday evening."
There was a soft exclamation from within; but mother and grandfather remained dumb with astonishment. Cleaverage glanced round at them with a slight impatience in his hazel eyes that held always the fiery, tawny glint in their depths. He detested having people receive his announcements as though they were astonishing—that is, unless it was his humor to astonish.
"Well," Grandfather Gentry began after a time, "ain't this76ruther sudden?"
"Marryin' has to be done all of a sudden," Lance remarked without rancor. "I never yet have heard of gettin' married gradual."
"Why, Lance, honey," said the widow in a coaxing tone, "you ain't rightly ready for a wife, air ye? Ef you two young folks had named this to me—well, six months ago—I'd 'a' had Callista's settin' out in good order. Looks like Pappy 's right, and it is sorter suddent."
"What do you say, Callista?" inquired the postulant bridegroom without looking up.
In the soft dusk of the interior the girl's face was crimson. Here came the time when she could no longer pretend to be urged into the marriage by her mother, her grandfather, the course of events; but must say "yes" or "no" openly of her own motion. Last night's startling accost yet shook her young heart; the glamour of that hour came back upon her senses.
"I say whatever you say, Lance," she uttered, scarcely above a whisper.
Ajax Gentry laughed out.
"Well—I reckon that settles it," he said, jingling his harness and turning to leave.
"No—it don't settle nothin'," broke in Octavia anxiously. "Lance ain't got any land cleared to speak of over on his place, and he ain't put in any crop; how air the both of 'em to live?77They'll just about have obliged to stay here with us. You can find work for Lance on the farm, cain't ye, Pappy?"
Old Ajax measured his prospective grand-son-in-law with a steady eye, and assured himself that there was not room on the farm nor in the house for two masters. He read mastery in every line of face and figure. Lance got to his feet so suddenly that he might have been said to leap up.
"I've built me a good cabin, and it's all ready. Callista and me are goin' into no house but our own," he said brusquely. "Ain't that so, Callista?"
Again the girl within the doorway answered in that hushed, almost reluctant voice,
"Just as you say. Lance."
And though grandfather laughed, and Mother Gentry objected and even scolded, that ended the argument.
"I'll stop a-past and leave the word at Hands's," Lance told them as he turned to go. "Is there anyone else you'd wish me to bid, mother?"
That "mother," uttered in Lance's golden tones, went right to the widow's sentimental heart. She would have acceded to anything he had proposed in such a way. Old Ajax smiled, realizing that Lance meant to triumph once for all over Flenton Hands.
As Cleaverage walked away, the mother prompted, almost indignantly.
"Why didn't ye go down to the draw-bars with him, Callista? I78don't think that's no way to say farewell to a young man when you've just been promised."
Gentry looked at his daughter-in-law through narrowed eyes, then at Callista; his glance followed Lance Cleaverage's light-footed departure a moment, and then he delivered himself.
"I ain't got nothing agin your marryin' Lance Cleaverage Wednesday evening," he said concisely to Callista. "I ain't been axed; but ef I had been, my say would still be the same. All I've got to tell you is that thar was never yet a house built of logs or boards or stones that was big enough to hold two families."
"Why, Pap Gentry!" exclaimed Octavia in a scandalized tone. "This house is certainly Callista's home, and I'm sure I love Lance as well as I ever could a own son. If they thought well to live here along of us this winter, I know you wouldn't hold to that talk."
"I reckon you don't know me so well as ye 'lowed ye did," observed Gentry; "for I would—and do. Lance Cleaverage has took up with the crazy notion of marryin' all in haste. He ain't got no provision for livin' on that place of his. Well, I tell you right now, he cain't come and live in my house. No, nor you cain't pack victuals over to 'em to keep 'em up."
A coquette according to mountain ideals, carrying her head high79with the boys, famous for her bickerings with Lance, Callista Gentry had always been a model at home, quiet, tractable, obedient. But the face she now turned upon her grandfather was that of a young fury. All her cold pride was up in arms. That secret, still spirit of hers, haughty, unbent, unbroken, reared itself to give the old man to understand that she wanted nothing of him from this on. She—Lance's wife—the idea of her begging food from Grandfather Gentry!
"If you two'll hush and let me speak," she said in an even tone, "I reckon I'll be able to set grandpappy's mind at rest. You can give me the wedding—I reckon you want to do so much as that for your own good name. But bite or sup I'll never take afterwards in this house. No, I won't. So far from carryin' victuals out of it, you'll see when I come in I'll have somethin' in my hand, grandpap. I invite you and mother right now to take yo' Sunday dinners with me when you want to ride as far as the Blue Spring church. But,"—she went back to it bitterly—"bite or sup in this house neither me nor Lance will ever take." Then, her eyes bright, her usually pale cheeks flaming, she turned and ran up the steep little stairs to her own room. Octavia looked reproach at her father-in-law; but Ajax Gentry spat scornfully toward the vacant fireplace, and demanded,
"Now she's a pretty somebody for a man to wed and carry to his80home, ain't she? I say, Sunday dinners with her! Can she mix a decent pone o' corn bread, and bake it without burnin' half her fingers off? She cain't. Can she cut out a hickory shirt and make it? She cain't. Could she kill a chicken and pick and clean it and cook it—could she do it ef she was a starvin'? She could not. She cain't so much as bile water without burnin' it. She don't know nothin'—nothin' but the road. She's shore a fine bargain for a man to git. To have a passel o' fool boys follerin' after her and co'tin' her, that's all Callisty's ever studied about, or all you ever studied about for her."
"Well, pappy," Octavia bridled, considerably stung, "I don't think you' got much room to talk. In yo' young days, from all I ever heared—either from you or from others—you was about as flighty with the gals, and had about as many of 'em follerin' after you, as Sis is with the boys."
She looked up at her father-in-law where he lounged against the fire-board. Grandly tall was old Ajax Gentry, carrying his seventy years and his crown of silver like an added grace. His blue eye had the cold fire of Callista's, and his lean sinewy body, like hers, showed the long, flowing curves of running water.
"O-o-o-oh!" he rejoined, with an indescribable lengthened circumflex81on the vowel that lent it a world of meaning. "O-o-o-oh! . . . a man! Well—that's mighty different. If a feller's got the looks—and the ways—he can fly 'round amongst the gals for a spell whilst he's young and gaily, and it don't do him no harm. There's some that the women still foller after, even when he's wedded and settled down" (Ajax smiled reminiscently). "But when a man marries a gal, he wants awomern—a womern that'll keep his house, and cook his meals, and raise his chillen right. The kind o' tricks Callisty's always pinned her faith to ain't worth shucks in wedded life. Ef I was a young feller to-morrow, I wouldn't give a chaw o' tobaccer for a whole church-house full o' gals like Callisty, an' I've told you so a-many's the time. Yo' Maw Gentry wasn't none o' that sort—yo' mighty right she wasn't! She could cook and weave and tend a truck patch and raise chickens to beat any womern in the Turkey Tracks, BigandLittle. I say, Sunday dinner with Callisty!" he repeated. "Them that goes to her for a dinner had better pack their victuals with 'em."
Octavia gathered up her hanks of carpet-warp and started for the door.
"All right, Pappy," she said angrily. "All right. I raised the gal best I knowed how. I reckonyouthink the fault—sence you see so much fault in her—comes from my raisin'; but I know mighty well an' good that the only troubleIever had with Sis, was 'count o' her Gentry blood. How you can expect the82cookin' o' corn pones and makin' o' hickory shirts from a gal that's always got every man in reach plumb distracted over her, is more'n I can see." Octavia went out hastily before her father-in-law could make the ironic reply which she knew to expect; and after a moment or two, Ajax himself moved away toward the log stable to begin his harnessing.
Callista had hurried to her bedroom, slammed the door, and was alone with her own heart. As for Lance, walking beneath the chestnuts, he had no wish to have her beside him under the old man's humorous, semi-sarcastic gaze and his prospective mother-in-law's sentimental, examining eye. He wanted her to himself. He thought with a mighty surge of rapture of the approaching time when they could shut out all the world and find once more that island of delight where they should dwell the only created beings. He, to share his honeymoon with the Gentry family! He laughed shortly at the thought.
It was Little Liza that opened the Hands door to him, and her light eyes softened unwillingly as they beheld his alert figure on the step. Little Liza was tormented with an incongruously soft heart, painfully accessible to the demands of beauty and charm.
"Howdy," she said. She had not seen Lance Cleaverage since the day of the funeral; but she had heard from her brother and her83sisters that his behavior on that occasion was unseemly, if not positively disrespectful.
Lance barely returned her greeting, then he broached his errand.
"Jane! Ellen! Oh, Flent!" she called distressfully, when she had his news, "Come on out. Lance Cleaverage is here, waitin' to invite you to his weddin'."
The two sisters came out on the porch, but Flenton did not make his appearance.
"Howdy, Lance. Who is it?" inquired Ellen Hands. "Callista Gentry hasn't took you, has she?"
"Well," drawled Lance, lifting a laughing eye to the line of big, gray-faced women on the rude, puncheon-floored gallery, "you can make it out best way you find. The weddin' is to be held at the Gentry place. If it ain't Callista, it's somebody mighty like her."
Little Liza's lip trembled.
"You Lance Cleaverage," she said huskily, "you're a-gettin' the sweetest prettiest thing that ever walked this earth. I do know that there ain't the man livin' that's fit for Callisty. I hope to the Lord you'll be good to her."
Again Lance regarded the doleful visages before him and laughed.
"You-all look like I'd bid you to a funeral rather than to a weddin'," he said, lingering a bit to see if Flenton would show himself.
Hands was just inside the window. He knew well what had been84said. Nothing could have been less to his taste than the going out to receive such an invitation.
"Thar—you see now, Flent," said Little Liza tragically, as she encountered her brother when they turned from watching Lance away. "You've lost her. Oh, law! I always thought if I could call Callisty Gentry sister, it would make me the happiest critter in the world."
"You may have a chance so to call her yet," said Hands, who showed any emotion the announcement may have roused in him only by an added tightening of lip and eye. "Wednesday ain't come yet—and hit ain't gone."
"Well, hit'll come and hit'll go," said Ellen heavily. "Lance Cleaverage gits what he starts after, and that's the fact."
"Yes," agreed Little Liza, "he shore does. I don't reckon I could have said no to him myself."
"Lance Cleaverage!" echoed her brother. "Well, he's born—but he ain't buried. I never did yet give up a thing that I'd set my mind on. I ain't said I've given up Callista Gentry."
The three looked at him rather wildly. Talk of this sort is unknown among the mountain people. Yet they could but feel the woman's admiration for his masculine high-handedness of speech.
At the Cleaverage place they were making ready for the noonday meal when Lance brought his news home. The table, with its85cloth of six flour-sacks sewed end to end, was set in the cool entry. The Dutch oven, half buried in ashes, was full of buttermilk-dodgers, keeping hot. At the other side of the broad hearthstone, Roxy Griever bent above a dinner-pot dishing up white beans and dumplings. Beside her Mary Ann Martha held a small yellow bowl and made futile dabs with a spoon she had herself whittled from a bit of shingle, trying to get beans into it. Her mother's reproofs dropped upon her tousled and incorrigible head with the regularity of clockwork.
"You, Mary Ann Marthy, I do know in my soul you' the worst child the Lord ever made: Where do you expect to go to when you die? Look at that thar good victuals all splattered out in the ashes. That's yo' doin'. You' jest adzackly like yo' uncle Lance."
Then Sylvane, who was shaping an axe-helve in the doorway, looked up and said, "Here comes Lance himself." And Kimbro Cleaverage pushed another chair towards the table.
"Well," said the bridegroom expectant, looking about on the shadowed interior of the cabin, dim to his eyes after the glare outside, "I've got a invite for you-all to a weddin'."
"Not you and Callista?" exclaimed Sylvane, his boyish face glowing. "Oh, Lance—she ain't said yes, has she?"
"No, Buddy," Lance flung over his shoulder, and you saw by his86smile the strong affection there was between them, "she ain't said yes—but I have. I've set the time for Wednesday, and the Gentry place is all uptore right now getting ready for it. I reckon"—his eye gleamed with the mischievous afterthought—"I reckon they'll clear the big barn for dancing."
As though the word had been a catch released in her mechanism, Roxy Griever straightened up, spoon in hand, with a snort.
"You Lance Cleaverage—you sinful soul!" she began, pointing her bean spoon at him and thus shedding delightful dribblings of the stew which Mary Ann Martha instantly scraped up, "you air a-gettin' the best girl in the two Turkey Tracks—and here you take the name of dancin' on yo' sinful lips at the same time!"
"I reckon you'll not come if there's goin' to be dancin'," remarked Lance, hanging up his hat and seating himself at the table. "I hadn't thought of that. Well—we'll have to get along without you."
Roxy snorted inarticulate reprobation. Suddenly she demanded.
"Sylvane, whar's that branch of leaves I sent you after?"
With the words, Mary Ann Martha, unnoticed by her mother, abruptly dropped her shingle spoon, scrambled across Sylvane's87long legs, and galloped wildly out into the bit of orchard beside the house, her mass of almost white curling hair flying comically about her bobbing head, a picture of energetic terror. Her young uncle looked after her, smiling tolerantly, and said nothing.
"The flies'll git more of this dinner than we'uns, if we don't have something. Why'n't you git me that branch o' leaves, Sylvane?" persisted his sister.
"Well, Sis' Roxy, I wanted to finish my axe-helve, so I sub-contracted that order o' yourn," answered Sylvane, deprecatingly. "Sent Ma'-An'-Marth' out to git a small limb."
"For the land's sake! An' her not taller than—" began Roxy querulously. But her father put in, with pacific intention,
"Here's the chap now with her peach-tree branch. Come on, Pretty; let Gran'pappy put it up 'side o' him at the table. Now sons, now daughter, air ye ready? This is a bountiful meal; and Roxy's cooked it fine as the best; we're mightily favored. We'll ax God's blessing on the food."
88
WEDNESDAY came, a glamorous day in early September. A breath of autumn had blown upon the mountains in the night, leaving the air inspiring—tingling cool in the shade, tingling hot in the sun. The white clouds were vagabonds of May time, though the birds were already getting together in flocks, chattering, restless for migration. Now at night instead of the bright come-and-go of fireflies there was a mild and steady lamping of glowworms in the evening grass. The katydids' chorus had dwindled, giving place to the soft chirr of ground and tree-crickets. There was a pleasant, high-pitched rustle in the stiffening leaves; the dew was heavy in the hollows, gray under the moon.
All day the woods were silent, except for the mocking whirr of grasshoppers rising into the sunshine, and an occasional squabble of crows in pursuit of a hawk.
Wild grapes were ripe—delicious, tart, keen-flavored things. In the pasture hollow a fleece of goldenrod, painted on the purple distance along with the scarlet globes of orchard fruit, was stripped by laughing girls for Callista's wedding decorations.89Yes, summer was definitely departed; a new presence was here, an autumn wind in the treetops, an autumn light on the meadow, an autumn haze on the hills—a fine luminous purple, flecked with lights of rose and gold.
The Gentry place, with its central house of some pretensions and its numerous outlying cabins, presented on Wednesday afternoon something the appearance of a village undergoing sack. Open doors and windows, heaps of stuff, or bundles of household gear, or sheaves of garments being carried from place to place, suggested this impression, which seemed further warranted by the female figures emerging suddenly now and again from one cabin or another and fleeing with disheveled hair, wild gestures and incoherent babblings as of terror, to some other refuge. The girls had not come in yet from the pasture with their armloads of goldenrod and wild aster; but all three of the Hands sisters—good, faithful souls, neighborhood dependences for extra help at weddings and funerals—were hard at work in the very heart of the turmoil.
"Liza, have you seed Callista anywhar's?" panted Octavia Gentry, appearing in the main house, laden with a promiscuous assortment of clothing.
"Yes, I did," rumbled Little Liza from the chair on which she stood adjusting the top of a window curtain.
"I thought I heared Lance's banjo awhile ago," added the widow90as she folded and disposed of the garments she had brought in, "and then I didn't hear it any more. I have obliged to get hold of Callista to tell me whar she wants these things put at."
"Yes, and you did hear Lance Cleaverage's banjo," confirmed Little Liza sadly. "Callisty heared it, too. She come a-steppin' down from her room like as if he'd called her, and she's walked herself out of the front door and up the road alongside o' him, and that's why you don't hear the banjo no more."
"Good land!" cried the mother-in-law that was to be. "I don't know what young folks is thinkin' of—no, I don't. It ain't respectable for a bride and groom to walk side by side on their weddin' day. Everybody knows that much. And I've got to have Callista here. Roxy Griever's sent word that she cain't come to the weddin' because its been given out to each and every that they'd be dancin'. I want Callista to see Lance and have that stopped. Hit's jest some o' Lance's foolishness. You know in reason its got to be stopped. Oh, Sylvane!" as a boyish figure appeared in the doorway. "Won't you go hunt up Callista and tell her I want her? And you tell yo' sister Roxy when you go home that there ain't goin' to be any dancin' here tonight. And just carry these here pans out to the springhouse whilst you're about91it, Sylvane. And if you find Ellen Hands there tell her to come on in to me, please. I vow, nobody's been for the cows! Sylvane, whilst you're out you go up to the milk gap and see are they waitin' thar. Let down the draw-bars for 'em if they are."
Fifteen-year-old Sylvalnus Cleaverage laughed and turned quickly, lest further directions be given him.
"All right," he called back. "I'll 'tend to most of those things—as many of 'em as I can remember."
A privileged character, especially among the women, Sylvane made willing haste to do Octavia's errands. The boy was like his brother Lance with the wild tang left out, and feminine eyes followed his young figure as he hurried from spring-house to pasture lot. When he found Lance and Callista walking hand in hand at the meadow's edge he gave them warning, so that the girl might slip in through the back door, innocently unconscious of any offence against the etiquette of the occasion, and the bridegroom pass on down the big road, undiscovered.
"I reckon it's jest as well as 'tis," commented old Ajax from the security of the front door-yard, to which he had been swept out and cleaned out in the course of the preparations. "Ef92Octavy had been give a year's warnin', she would have been jest about tearin' up Jack this-a-way for the whole time."
As evening fell, teams began to arrive, and the nearer neighbors came in on foot, with a bustle of talk and a settling of the children. Old Kimbro Cleaverage brought his daughter, Roxy Griever, with little Polly Griever, a relative of Roxy's deceased husband, and Mary Ann Martha.
"I knowed in reason you wouldn't have dancin' on yo' place," the widow shrilled, as she approached. Then as she climbed out over the wheel, she added in a lower tone to Little Liza Hands, who had come out to help her down, "But that thar sinful Lance is so pestered by the davil that you never know whar he'll come up next, and I sont Miz. Gentry the word I did as a warnin'. Tham men has to be watched."
Callista was ready, dressed in a certain white lawn frock—not for worlds would she have admitted that she had made it with secret hopes of this occasion. The helpers were still rushing to and fro, getting the wedding supper on the long tables, contrived by boards over trestles, on the porch and in the big kitchen, when Preacher Drumright rode sourly up.
It was Octavia Gentry who had been instrumental in bespeaking Drumright's services for the marriage, and indeed he was the only preacher in the Turkey Track neighborhoods at the moment or anywhere nearer than the Settlement itself. The church-going93element of the region stood before this somewhat cantankerous old man in the attitude of confessed offenders. He was famous for raking the young people over the coals, and he arrogated to himself always the patriarch's privilege of scolding, admonishing, or denouncing, whenever the occasion might seem to him fit. For ten years Drumright had longed to get a fair chance at Lance Cleaverage. Ever since the boy—and he was the youngest in the crowd—joined with a half dozen others to break up a brush meeting which Drumright was holding, the preacher's grudge had grown. And it did not thrive without food; Lance was active in the matter of providing sustenance for the ill opinion of the church party, and he had capped his iniquities by taking his banjo as near the church as the big spring on that Sunday in mid-July. Drumright had prepared the castigating he meant to administer to Lance almost as carefully as he would have gotten ready a sermon.
With the advent of the preacher the last frantic preparations were dropped, and it was suddenly discovered that they were not absolutely necessary for the occasion. The guests gathered into the big front room, where the marriage was to be. Drumright took his stand behind a small table at its further end; Callista came down the stairs, joined Lance in the entry, and the two stepped into the room hand in hand.
That was a daunting front to address with reproof. People said94that they were the handsomest couple that ever stood up together in the two Turkey Tracks. But after all, it was something more than physical beauty that arrested the eye in that countenance. Lance's face was lifted, and his eyes apparently saw not the room, the preacher, nor even the girl whose hand he held. He moved a thing apart, his light, swift step timed to unheard rhythms, a creature swayed by springs which those about him knew not of, addressed to some end which they could not understand. And Callista seemed to look only to him, to live only in him. Her fair face reflected the strange radiance that was on his dark, intense young visage.
It was Drumright's custom to make a little talk when about to perform the marriage ceremony, so there was neither surprise nor apprehension as he began to speak.
"Befo' I can say the words that shall make this here man and this here woman one flesh, I've got a matter to bring up that I think needs namin'."
The old voice rasped aggressively, and a little flutter of concern passed over Drumright's hearers.
"The Gentry family air religious, church-goin' people. Why Callista Gentry ain't a perfessin' member in the church this day is more than I can tell you-all here and now. Like enough some will say hit is the influence of the man a-standin' beside her;95and supposin' this to be so, hit cain't be too soon named out to 'em."
If Lance heard any word of Drumright's harangue, he gave no sign; but Callista stirred uneasily, her nostrils flickered, and she glanced from the preacher to her bridegroom.
"I wonder in my soul," Drumright went on, "that any God-fearin' family would give they' child to a man that has been from his cradle up, as a body may say, the scoffer that you air, Lance Cleaverage."
Thus pointedly addressed, a slight start passed through the bridegroom's taut body, and Cleaverage turned a half-awakened eye upon the preacher.
"Are you aimin' to get 'em to stop the marriage?" he inquired bluntly. As he spoke, he dropped Callista's hand, caught it once more in the grasp of his other, and put his freed arm strongly about her waist. Thus holding her, he turned a little to face her mother and grandfather as well as the preacher.
A shock went through, the crowded room; pious horror and amaze on the part of the older people; among the younger folk a twittering tremor not unmixed with delight at the spirit of the bridegroom. You might wince beneath the preacher's castigations; you might privately grumble about them, and even refuse to pay anything toward his up-keep, thereby helping to starve his wife96and children; but that you should presume to answer a preacher in the pulpit or elsewhere in the performance of his special office, was a thing inconceivable.
The bridegroom's family drew together at one side of the room, Kimbro Cleaverage, in his decent best, looking half affrightedly at the man who was miscalling his son; Roxy Griever, divided between her allegiance to the caste of preachers, all and singular, and tribal pride; Sylvane clutching his hands into fists, and hoping that Buddy would get the better of the argument; while Mary Ann Martha, in the grasp of Polly Griever, glowered and wondered.
"Lance Cleaverage," returned Drumright ponderously, "I respect yo' father, for he's a good man. I respect yo' sister—she's one too; for their sake I come here to perform this marriage, greatly agin my grain."
He was taking a long breath, having barely got under way, when Lance stopped him with a curt,
"Well,—are you goin' to do it—or are you not?"
People gazed with open mouths and protruding eyes. Where were the lightnings of Heaven, set apart for the destruction of the impious? Drumright himself was momentarily staggered.
"Er, yes—I am," he said finally, wagging his head in an obstinate, bovine shake. "After I've said my say, I aim to marry ye."
The little points of light that always danced deep down in Lance97Cleaverage's eyes, flamed up like clear lamps at this statement.
"No, you'll not," he said promptly. "You'll marry us now—or not at all. If I wanted any of your talk, I'd come to your church and get it. I don't want any."
All this time his arm had been round Callista, the hand closed on her slim waist gently, but with a grip of steel. Had she wished to stir from his side, she could scarcely have done so. Now he turned toward the door and moved quietly away from the astonished preacher, taking her with him.
"Whar—whar you goin'?" faltered Drumright, dumbfounded.
"Down to Sourwood Gap to be wedded," the bridegroom flung back in his face. "Squire Ashe is up there from Hepzibah—he'll marry us without haulin' us over the coals first." And he made his way through the roomful of mute, dazed, unprotesting people. At the door he paused, and, with the air of a man alone with his beloved in desert spaces, bent and murmured something in the ear of his bride, then ran lightly down the steps and out into the dark to where the horses were tethered. He returned quickly, leading his two black ponies.