For a moment she crouched, shivering, wet, bruised, trying to get to her feet, the breath sobbing through her parted lips; then somebody set a not-too-gentle grasp on her shoulder, and she looked up to divine in the dimness Flenton Hands's face above her. There was sufficient light from the noisy cabin behind to allow him to recognize her.
"Lord God—Callista!" he whispered, lifting her to her feet and supporting her with an arm under hers. "What in the world—"
"I—I—something scared me," she faltered. "It was that old Indian that Iley Derf married. He came right a-past where I was and, and—he scared me."
"Whar was you at?" inquired Hands blankly.
He placed the instrument in Ola's grasp.
"In there," returned Callista, pointing toward the Derf yard,203beginning to cry like a child. "I was looking through the window at them dance, and—and that old Indian scared me."
Twang—twang—twang, across the gusty blackness of the night came the jeer of Lance's banjo. There was no whisper now of "How many miles—how many years?" but the sharp staccato of "Cripple Creek," punctuated by the thudding of dancers' feet as they pounded out the time. Callista felt her face grow hot in the darkness. She knew that Flenton was listening, and that he must guess why she should hang outside the window looking in.
"Come on," said Hands suddenly, almost roughly. "This ain't no fit place for you,—a woman like you,—my God! Callista, I'll put you on my horse and take you home."
There was a new note in his voice, a new authority in his movements, as he lifted her to the saddle and, plodding beside her in the dark, wet road, made no further offer of question or conversation.
In spite of herself, Callista felt comforted. She reached up and gathered her hair together, wringing the rain from it and redding it with the great shell comb which always held its abundant coils in place. She could not in reason tell Flenton to leave her—she needed him too much. When they turned in at the ill-kept lane which led to Lance's cabin. Lance's wife caught204her breath a little, but said nothing. Flenton lifted her gently down at her own door-stone, and, opening the door for her, followed her in and, with a match from his pocket, lit a candle. He looked at the cold ash-heap on the fireless hearth, whistled a bit, and went out. She heard him striking matches somewhere about the wood-pile, and directly after came the sound of an axe. It was not long before he returned, his arms piled high with such bits of dry wood as he could find, split to kindling size.
"It looks like it's a shame for me to have you waitin' on me this-a-way," Callista began half-heartedly. She had taken counsel with herself, during his absence, and resolved to make some effort to keep up appearances.
"Hit don't look like anything of the sort," protested Flenton Hands. "You needed me, and that's all I want to know."
He had laid his fire skilfully, and now the blaze began to roar up the big chimney.
"My feet ain't been warm this whole blessed day," Callista said, almost involuntarily, as she drew nearer the fascinating source of both warmth and light. "My, but that does feel good!"
"You pore child!" Flent muttered huskily, turning toward her from the hearth where he knelt. "You're e'en about perished."
He went out then, only to come hurriedly back, reporting,
"I cain't find any wood—whar does Lance keep it?"205
Lance's wife hung her head, lips pressed tight together, striving for resolution to answer this with a smooth lie.
"He don't go off and leave you in this kind of weather without any wood?" inquired Hands hoarsely.
"Yes—he does," Callista choked. And, having opened the bottle a bit, out poured the hot wine of her wrath. All the things that she might have said to her mother had she been on good terms with that lady; the taunts that occurred to her in Lance's absence and which she failed to utter to him when he came; these rushed pell-mell into speech. She was white and shaking when she made an end.
"There," she said tragically, getting to her feet. "I reckon I had no business to name one word of this to you, Flenton; but I'm the most miserable creature that ever lived, I do think; and I ain't got a soul on this earth that cares whether or not about me. And—and—"
She broke off, locking her hands tightly and staring down at them.
Flenton had the sense and the self-control not to approach her, not to introduce too promptly the personal note.
"Callista," he began cautiously, assuming as nearly as possible the tone of an unbiased friend to both parties, "you ort to quit206Lance. He ain't doin' you right. There's more than you know of in this business; and whether you stay thar or not, you ort to quit him oncet and go home to yo' folks."
Callista made an inarticulate sound of denial.
"I never will—never in this world!" she burst out. "I might quit Lance, but home I'll never go."
Flenton's pale gray eyes lit up at the suggestion of her words, but she put aside the hand he stretched out toward her.
"I've been studying about it all day, and for a good many days before this one," she said with slow bitterness. "Lance Cleaverage gives me plenty of time to study. If I leave this house, I'm goin' straight to Father Cleaverage."
Hands looked disappointed, but he did not fail to press the minor advantage.
"If you want to go to-night, Callista," he suggested, "I'd be proud to carry you right along on my horse. Lance needs a lesson powerful bad. You go with me—"
"Hush," Callista warned him. "I thought I heard somebody coming. Thank you, Flent. You've been mighty good to me this night. I'll never forget you for it—but I reckon you better go now. When a woman's wedded, she has to be careful about the speech of people; and—I reckon you better go now, Flent."
The rain had ceased. A wan moon looked out in the western sky207and made the wet branches shine with a dim luster. Callista stood in the doorway against the broken leap and shine of the firelight. Hands went to his horse, and then turned back to look at her.
"And you won't go with me?" he repeated once more. "Callista, you'd be as safe with me as with your own brother. I've got that respect for you that it don't seem like you're the same as other women. I wish't you'd go, if for nothin' but to learn Lance a lesson."
The girl in the doorway knew that there was no wood for any more fire than that which now blazed on the hearth behind her; she was aware that there was scarcely food in the house for three days' eating; yet she found courage to shake her head.
"Thank you kindly, Flent," she said with a note of finality in her tone. "I know you mean well, but I cain't go."
Then she closed the door as though to shut out the temptation, and, dressed as she was, lay down upon the bed and pulled the quilts over her.
She listened to the retreating hoofs of Flenton's horse, dreading always to hear Lance's voice hailing him, telling herself that his presence there at that hour alone with her was all Lance's fault, and she had no reason for the shame and fear which possessed her at thought of it. But the hoofs passed quite208away, and still Lance did not make his appearance. She could not sleep. She judged it was near midnight. Pictures of Lance teaching Ola Derf her chords on the banjo flickered before her eyes. Pictures of Lance dancing with Ola as he had at the infare followed. She had a kind of wonder at herself that she was not angrier, that she was only spent and numbed and cowed. Then all at once came a light step she knew well, the sudden little harmonious outcry of the banjo as Lance set it down to open the door, and Lance himself was in the room.
She thought she would have spoken to him. She did not know that the Indian had gone in and announced her presence outside the window at the Derfs. As she raised her head she got his haughty, lifted profile between herself and the light of the now dying fire. She knew that he was aware of her presence; but he looked neither to the right nor to the left; he made no comment on her fire, but strode swiftly through the room, across the open passage, and into the far room. She heard him moving about for a few moments, then everything was silent.
All that numbing inertia fell away from her. She sat up on the edge of the bed as she had once before that evening, and her eyes went from side to side of the room, picking out what she wanted to take with her. A few swift movements secured her shawl and sunbonnet. Without stealth, yet without noise, she opened209the door and stepped forth.
She stood in the open threshing-floor porch between the two rooms, a very gulf of shadow, into which watery moonlight struggled from the world outside. A long while she stood so, looking toward the far room, her hands clenched and pressed hard against her breast. Those hands were empty. She had shut the door of her girlhood home against herself unless she returned, a gift in them. No—she would not go back there.
All at once she became aware of a rhythmic sound, which made itself heard in the utter stillness of the forest night—Lance's deep breathing. He slept then; he could go to sleep like that, when she—. Callista faltered forward toward the front step; and as she did so, another sound overbore the slighter noise; it was the hoofs of an approaching horse.
She checked, turned, flung the sunbonnet from her and dropped the shawl upon it, then, with a quick, light step, crossed the porch and noiselessly pushed open the door of the room in which Lance lay. The little pale moon made faint radiance in the room, and by its light she saw her husband lying on that monster spare bed which is the pride of every country housewife. He had folded and put aside the ruffled covers of her contriving, and lay dressed as he was, with only his shoes removed. On tiptoe she210drew near and stood looking down at him. They said if you held a looking-glass over a sleeping person's face and asked him a question, he'd tell you the truth. What was it she wanted to know of Lance? Not whether he loved her or no, though she said to herself a dozen times a day that he cared nothing about her, and had never really cared.
The sleeper stirred and turned on his pillow, offering her a broader view of that strangely disconcerting countenance of slumber, as ambiguous well-nigh as the face of death itself.
She wheeled and fled noiselessly, as she had come in. The light, approaching horse's hoofs had ceased to sound some moments now. At the gate a mounted figure stood motionless within the shadow of the big pine. She ran down the path to find Flenton Hands.
"I—Callista," he faltered in a low voice, "don't be mad. I—looks like I couldn't leave you this-a-way. I was plumb to the corner of our big field, and—I come back."
He glanced with uncertainty and apprehension toward the house; then, as he noted her shawl and bonnet, got quickly from the saddle, saying hurriedly, eagerly,
"I 'lowed maybe you might change your mind—and I—I come back."
"Yes," said Callista, not looking at him. "I'm ready to go now, Flent."
211
IT was a strange day whose gray dawn brought Callista to her father-in-law's door. Where she had wandered, questioning, debating, agonizing, since she dismissed Flenton Hands at the corner of old Kimbro's lean home pasture, only Callista knew. The Judas tree down by the spring branch might have told a tale of clutching fingers that reached up to its low boughs, while somebody stood shaking and listening to the sound of the creek that came down the gorge past that home Callista was leaving. The mosses between there and the big road could have whispered of swift-passing feet that went restlessly as though driven to and fro over their sodden carpet for hours. The bluff where a trail precariously rounds old Flat Top kept its secret of a crouching figure that looked out over the Gulf, black in the now moonless night, of a sobbing voice that prayed, and accused and questioned incoherently.
The household at Kimbro Cleaverage's rose by candle-light. Sylvane, strolling out to the water bucket, barely well awake, caught sight of his sister-in-law at the gate, gave one swift glance at her face as it showed gray through the dim light,212wheeled silently and hurried ahead of her into the kitchen to warn his sister not to betray surprise. So she was received with that marvelous, fine courtesy of the mountaineer, which proffers only an unquestioning welcome, demanding no explanations of the strangest coming or of the most unexpected comer. She answered their greeting in a curious, lifeless tone, said only that she was tired, not sick at all, and would like to lie down; and when Roxy hastened with her to the bed in the far room and saw her safely bestowed there, the girl sank into almost instant slumber so soon as she had stretched herself out.
"She's went to sleep already," whispered Roxy to Sylvane, stepping back into the kitchen, and, while she quietly carried forward the breakfast preparations, the boy crept up to the loft where Mary Ann Martha and Polly slept and whence the little one's boisterous tones began to be heard. Later he came down with the two, holding the five-year-old by the hand, imposing quiet upon them both by look and word; maintaining it by constant watchfulness.
They ate their breakfast, speaking in subdued voices, mostly of indifferent matters. Roxy, who, woman fashion, would have made some comment, inquiry or suggestion, was checked whenever she looked at the faces of her men folk. The meal over, Sylvane and her father went out to the day's work. Roxy cleared away the213dishes and set the house in order, returning every little while to hover doubtfully above that slim form lying so silent and motionless in the bed. She was frightened at the way the girl slept, unaware that Callista had not closed her eyes the night before, and that she was worn out, mind and body, with weeks of fretting emotions.
The morning came on still, warm and cloudy. There was silence in the forest, the softened loam making no sound under any foot, last year's old leaves too damp to rustle on the oak boughs. It was a day so soundless, stirless, colorless, as to seem unreal, with a haunting sadness in the air like an undefined memory of past existences, a drowsiness of forgotten lands. Even the hearth fire faded faint in that toneless day, which had neither sun nor moon nor wind, neither heat nor cold indoors or out. Again and again, as the hours wore on, the Widow Griever stole in and looked upon her sleeping guest with a sort of terror. She sent Polly away with Mary Ann Martha to look for posies in the far woods that the house might be quiet. Quiet—it was as if the vast emptiness which surrounds the universe had penetrated into the heart of that day, making all objects transparent, weightless, meaningless, without power of motion. She would stand beside the bed, noting the even breathing of the sleeper, then go softly to the door and look out. The trees rose into the214stillness and emptiness and spread their branches there, themselves thin shadows of a one-time growth and life. The water of the pond below lay wan and glassy, unstirred by any ripple. The very rocks on its edges appeared devoid of substance. From ten o'clock on seemed one standstill afternoon, lacking sign of life or the passage of time, until the imperceptible approach of dusk and the slow deepening of a night which might to all appearances be the shadow of eternal sleep.
Kimbro and his son had taken their bit of dinner with them to their work of clearing and brush-burning in a distant field. At dusk they came quietly in to find the supper ready, Polly still herding Mary Ann Martha to keep her quiet, Roxy Griever putting the meal on the table, worried, but saying nothing. On their part, they asked no questions, but each stole an anxious glance at the shut door behind which was the spare bed. As they sat down to eat, Roxy said to her father:
"I don't hardly know, Poppy—She's a-sleepin' yit—been a-sleepin' like that ever sence she laid down thar. Do you reckon I ort—"
"I'd jest let her sleep, daughter," put in the old man gently. "I reckon hit's the best medicine she can get. The pore child must be sort of wore out."
After supper, while Roxy, with Polly's help, was washing the dishes, Kimbro and his younger son held a brief consultation out215by the gate, following which the boy moved swiftly off, going up Lance's Laurel.
A little later Callista waked briefly. She sat listlessly upon the side of the bed, declining Roxy's eager proffer of good warm supper at the table, and took—almost perforce—from the elder woman's hand the cup of coffee and bit of food which Roxy brought her.
"No, no, nothing more, thank you, Sister Roxy!" she said hastily, almost recoiling. "That's a-plenty. I ain't hungry—just sort o' tired." And she turned round, stretched herself on the bed once more, and sank back into sleep.
The next morning, when the breakfast was ready, although Roxy had listened in vain for sounds from the small far room, Callista came unexpectedly out, fully dressed. She sat with them at the table, pale, downcast, staring at her plate and crumbling a bit of corn pone, unable to do more than drink a few swallows of coffee. She did not note that Sylvane was missing. Later the boy came back from Lance's Laurel, to tell his father and sister that he had spent the night with his brother, that the cabin in the Gap was now closed and empty, and Lance gone to work at Thatcher Daggett's sawmill, some twelve miles through the woods, out on North Caney Creek, where several men of the neighborhood were employed.
"That's the reason Callista come over here," old Kimbro said216mildly. "She and Lance have had a difference of opinion, hit's likely, about whether or no he should go there. Well, I'm sure glad to have her with us. She'd 'a' been right lonesome all to herself."
"Would you name it to her?" asked the widow anxiously.
Kimbro shook his head. "Don't you name nothin' to the girl, except that she's welcome in this house as long as she cares to stay—and don't say too much about that—she knows it."
"Lance has fixed it up with old man Daggett so that Callista can get what she wants from the store—Derf's place," put in Sylvane.
An expression of relief dawned upon Roxy's thin, anxious face. The Kimbro Cleaverages were very poor. Truly, Callista, the admired, was welcome, yet the seams of their narrow resources would fairly gape with the strain to cover the entertainment of such a guest. If she could get what she wanted from Derf's, it would simplify matters greatly.
"Well, you'll tell her that, won't ye, Buddy?" his sister prompted Sylvane.
He nodded.
"I've got some other things to tell her from Lance," he said, boyishly secretive. "I'm goin' over to see him at the mill come, Sunday, and she can send word by me. I'll be passin' back and forth all the time whilst he's workin' there."
But when this easy method of communication was brought to the217notice of Callista, she made no offer toward using it.
It was mid-afternoon of the day following her arrival. The rain was intermitted, not definitely ceased; there would be more of it; but just now the air was warm and the sun brilliant. Mountain fashion, the door of the cabin stood wide. Mary Ann Martha had a corn pone, and she took occasional bites from it as she circled the visitor, staring at her with avid, hazel eyes, that troubled Callista's calm whenever she caught the fire of them, so like Lance's. Marauding chickens came across the door-stone and ventured far on the child's trail of crumbs; the light cackle of their whispered duckings, the scratch of their claws on the puncheons, alone broke the stillness. Callista sat by the doorway, a dead weight at her heart. The pallor, the weariness of it, were plain in her face.
"Good land, Polly—cain't you take this chap over yon in the woods and lose her?" demanded the widow in final exasperation, as Mary Ann Martha turned suddenly on the chicken that was stalking her, and shooed it, squalling, from the door. "I want to get out my quilt and work on it."
All unconscious that these things were done on her behalf, Callista saw the unwilling Mary Ann Martha marched away. She beheld the gospel quilt brought out and spread on the widow's218knees quite as some chatelaine of old might have produced her tapestry for the diversion of the guest. Over the gulf of pain and regret and apprehension—this well of struggling, seething emotion—lightly rippled the surface sounds of life, material talk, bits of gossip, that Callista roused herself to harken to and answer.
Roxy spoke in a solemn, muffled tone, something the voice she would have used if her father or Sylvane were dead in the house. She would have been more than human, and less than woman, had she not to some degree relished the situation. She remembered with deep satisfaction that, though she was his own sister, she had always reprehended Lance publicly and privately, holding him unfit to mate with this paragon. Callista had the sensation of being at her own funeral. She drooped, colorless and inert, in her chair, and stared past everything the room contained, out through the open door and across the far blue rim of hills.
"I believe in my soul these here needles Sylvane got me is too fine for my cotton," Roxy murmured, by way of attracting attention. "I wonder could you thread one for me, Callisty? Your eyes is younger than mine."
Callista took the needle and threaded it, handing it back with a sigh. As she did so, her glance encountered Roxy's solicitous gaze, then fell to the quilt.
"You—you've done a sight of work on that, haven't you, Sis' Roxy?" she asked gently.
The widow nodded. "An' there's a sight more to do," she added.219
"This is a pretty figure," Callista said, pointing at random, but producing a kindly show of interest.
Roxy brightened.
"Can you make out what it's meant for?" she inquired eagerly. Then, for fear Callista should attempt and fail, "I aimed it for a Tree of Life, with a angel sorter peerched on it, an' one standin' un'neath. But," deprecatingly, "hit looks mo' like a jimpson weed to me. An' pears like I 'don't never have no luck with angels."
Callista's absent gaze rested upon the unsatisfactory sprigged calico and striped seersucker version of members of the heavenly host.
"Them Jacob's-ladder angels—you hain't never seen them, Callisty, sence I sorter tinkered they' wings. Look! 'Pears to me like it's he'ped 'em powerful. But these—I vow, I don't know what is the matter of 'em, without it's the goods. That thar stuff, is 'most too coarse for angels, I reckon. Or it might be the color. 'Warshed whiter'n snow—without spot or, stain—' that's what the Good Book says, whilst all these is spotted and figured. But ye see white on white wouldn't never show. I might 'a' used blue-and-white stripe. And then again, the sayin' is, 'Chastised with many stripes'—that'd never be angels, no how."
Once more Callista made an effort to bring her mind to the220problem in hand.
"The sky is blue," Roxy adduced somewhat lamely. "Do you reckon blue angels would be more better?"
"Maybe purple," hesitated the visitor. "The Bible names purple a heap in regards to Heaven—purple and gold. I've got a piece of purple calico at—at home." Her voice trailed and faltered huskily over the words. Then she set her lips hard, crested her head in the old fashion, and went on evenly. "I've got a piece of mighty pretty purple, and one as near gold as ever goods was, that you're welcome to, Sis' Roxy, if—if you or Polly would go over and get 'em."
Again thought of where those treasured rolls of calico were to be found lowered the clear, calm, defiant voice. Roxy noted it; but the magnum opus, brought out to cheer and divert Callista, had laid its unfailing spell upon the widow; the lust for quilt pieces, rampant in all mountain women, wakened in her, aggravated in her case by the peculiar needs, the more exacting demands of her own superior artistry.
"Yes—shore, honey; I'll be glad to go any time," she said, "ef you'll jest tell me where to look."
So life went on at the Kimbro Cleaverage place, a curious interlude, and still no word was said to Callista of the221strangeness of her advent, and no explanation vouchsafed, till on the evening of the third day the girl herself sought her father-in-law and opened the matter haltingly, timidly. They were out at the chip-pile where Kimbro was cutting the next day's wood for Roxy's use. He dropped his axe to the chopping log and stood leaning on it, peering at her with mild, faded, near-sighted eyes.
"Well now, Callisty," he began gently, "I'm glad you named this to me, becaze I've got a message for you from Lance, and I didn't want to speak of it for fear it would seem like hurrying you away, or criticising any of your actions. I want you to know, daughter, that I don't do that. Lance is a wild boy, and he's got wild ways. But he has a true heart, honey, and one of these days you'll find it. Now, I reckon, you might be having some trouble with him."
"A message," repeated Callista in a low tone. "Is he gone away?"
"Well, he's out on North Caney," old Kimbro told her, "a-workin' at Thatch Daggett's sawmill. Lance can make good money whenever he'll work at his own trade, and I doubt not he'll do right well at this sawmill business, too. He hain't got the land cleared over where you-all was livin' that he ought to have, an' I think it's better for you to stay on with us a while—we're sure proud to have you."
Callista's eyes filled with a sudden rush of tears. Kimbro did222not explain to her that Sylvane had gone to see his brother. He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a little roll of money.
"Lance sent you this," he said. "He never had time to write any letter. My son Lance is a mighty poor correspondent at the best; but he sent you this, and he bade Sylvane to tell you that you was to buy what you needed at Derf's store, an' that he'd hope to send you money from time to time as you should have use for it."
Callista looked on the ground and said nothing. And so it was settled. The comfortable, new, well-fitted home at the head of Lance's Laurel was closed, and Callista lived in the shabby, ruinous dwelling of her father-in-law. The help that she could offer in the way of provisions was welcome. To Roxy Griever, she had always been an ideal, a pattern of perfection, and now they made a sort of queen of her. The widow begrudged her nothing and waited on her hand and foot. Polly followed her around and served her eagerly, admiringly; but most astonishing of all, Mary Ann Martha would be good for her, and was ready to do anything to attract her notice. Sometimes Callista seemed to want the child with her; and sometimes when the little girl looked at her with Lance's eyes, and spoke out suddenly in his defiant fashion, Callista would wince as though she had been struck at, and send Mary Ann Martha away almost harshly.
223
CALLISTA never referred to what Kimbro Cleaverage had told her; but she presently began, of necessity, to buy some things at the store for her own use, where she had formerly purchased only that which would make good her stay with her father-in-law.
The wild, cool, shower-dashed, sun-dappled, sweet-scented, growing days of spring followed each other, passing into weeks, months, until midsummer, with its pause in rural life, was come. Octavia Gentry, who was a little out of health, had sent word again and again that she wanted Callista to come home. It was a Sunday morning in the deep calm of July when she finally came over herself to the Cleaverage place to try to fetch her daughter.
The thrush's song that waked Callista that morning at sunrise, rang as keenly cool as ever; but the frogs were silenced, and the whirr of the "dry-fly" was heard everywhere instead. Gloss of honey-dew was on the oak and hickory leaves, and the blue air veiling the forest shadows spoke of late summer. The morning was languid with heat; the breakfast smoke had risen straight into224the dawn, and the day burnt its way forward without dew or breeze; hills velvet-blue, clouds motionless over the motionless tree-tops, toned with mellow atmospheric tints that were yet not the haze that would follow in autumn. One or two neighbors had strolled in, and about mid-forenoon Ajax Gentry and his daughter-in-law drove up in the buckboard and old Kimbro and Sylvane went out trying to pretend surprise, yet Callista knew all the time that the meeting had been arranged—that her people were expected.
"Honey!" Her mother took her into a reproachful embrace, and then held her back and looked at her, tears streaming down her face, "honey—I've come for you. Me and gran'pappy is a-goin' to take you right home with us when we go this evenin'. Git your things a-ready. Me with but one child on this earth, and her a-lookin' forward to what you air, and to stay with—well, of course, not strangers—but with other folks!"
But Octavia Gentry's pleadings were hushed in her throat—the preacher's tall old gray mule and dilapidated wagon was seen stopping at the gate. He had not been expected, and his arrival brought a sense of apprehension—almost of dismay. Every one dreaded lest the dour old man comment openly and bitterly upon the pitiful state of Callista's affairs. Not often had he been known to spare the "I told you so." Drumright had brought his wife and brood of younger children, and from the moment of their225advent the house was vocal with them from end to end. Elvira Drumright inevitably reminded one of a small clucking hen with a train of piping chickens after her. The deep male note was missing in the whiffle of sound that fretted Callista's ear; after unhitching the preacher's mule and turning him in the lot, the men had loitered—no doubt because of a lingering dread of the women's activities in the house—to lean against trees and the fences, talking of neighborhood matters. Some of the elders sauntered over to inspect a wrongly dished wheel on a new wagon, and talked for twenty minutes of this phenomenon alone. They were joined here by Flenton Hands, who came riding down the road, and went so wistfully slow as he passed the place that Kimbro could not forbear to hail him and bid him light and come in.
It was a typical summer Sunday at Kimbro Cleaverage's, and did its part at explaining the always cruelly straitened means of the household. Boys were pitching horseshoes in the open space beyond the barn, uncertain whether or not to quit on account of the preacher. The hot, white dust lay in the road; the hot, clear air brooded above the tree-tops.
Inside the house, the women in the kitchen compared quilt patterns and talked chickens, combining much gossip with the dinner getting.
Finally it became unbearable to Callista to feel that her affairs were being more or less covertly inspected from all the226different angles and points of view possible to the visitors. Passing through the kitchen, she possessed herself of the water bucket and slipped off down to the far spring. People did not often bring water from this place. Its clear, cool trickle had a medicinal tang, and there was red iron-rust around the edges of its basin. She sat down in the spring hollow on the cool moss with big ferns coming up about her. Remembrance was strong within her of that black, raw morning in April when she had lingered desperately here, and she looked long at the Judas tree beneath which she had stood.
The alders raised a tent over the basin, a tenderly shadowed dome, through the midst of which the little-used spring-path made a bright green vista like a pleached alley. And down this way she was presently aware of Sylvane walking, his head thrown back, his clear whistle coming to her before she got the sound of his feet. She shivered a little. The tune he whistled had in it reminiscences of Lance's "How many years, how many miles?"
"You here, Callisty?" asked the boy, parting the branches, and finally coming shyly closer to seat himself on the bank below her.
"I wanted to get shut of all the folks," she said, her brooding eyes on the ground at her feet. "Oh, not you, Sylvane—the rest of them talk so much."
The boy smiled uncertainly.
"Well, I—reckon I was aimin' to sorter talk, too, Callisty," he227began timidly. "I 'lowed to tell you about that place where Lance is a-workin'. Hit's been some time now, an' I ain't never said nothin' to ye—I didn't want to pester ye."
Poor Sylvane was trying, in the mountain phrase, "to make fine weather, an' hit a-rainin'." She made no movement to hush him, and he even thought she listened with some eagerness.
"They," he began with hesitation, watching her face, "they're a-gettin' out railroad ties now. That makes the work mighty heavy. It takes Lance and Bob and Andy to run the mill—and sometimes they have to have help. They've got generally as many as eight or ten loggers and woodsmen. They just get the logs up any way they can. Last week Lance got his foot hurt in a log bunk that he fixed up on the running gears of two wagons. They wanted me to come and drive. They do a lot of snaking out the logs without any wagon at all. Reelfoot Dawson is the best teamster they've got. That yoke of steers he has can snake logs out of places where a team of mules or horses couldn't so much as get in."
Callista sighed and turned impatiently towards her young brother-in-law.
"Where do the men live?" she asked finally, very low, as though half-unwilling to do so.
"Well, Daggett ain't makin' what he expected to, and first they had to camp and cook and do for theirselves. Now they've built228shacks—out'n the flawed boards, you know—and all of 'em fetched a quilt or a blanket or such from home, so they can roll up at night on the floor. Fletch Daggett's wife is cooking for 'em. The day I was there they had white beans and corn bread—and a little coffee. She's a mighty pore cook, and she's got three mighty small chaps under foot."
Callista's mind went to the new, clean, well-arranged little home on Lance's Laurel. Did old Fletch Daggett's slovenly, overworked young wife cook any worse than she, Callista, had been able to?
"It's hot in them board shacks," Sylvane went on reflectively; "the hottest place I ever was in. Somebody stole Lance's comb. There ain't but one wash pan—he goes down to the branch—and he hid his comb. It's a rough place. They fight a good deal."
And this was what Lance had preferred to her and to the home he had built for her. She fell into such a study over it that Sylvane's voice quite startled her when he said,
"I—I aimed to ask ye, Callisty—did you want me to take word for Lance to come home?"
"No," she answered him very low. "It ain't my business to bid Lance Cleaverage come to his own home. Don't name it to me again, Sylvane, please."
The lad regarded her anxiously. More than once he opened his229lips to speak, only to close them, again. Slowly the red surged up over his tanned young face, until it burned dark crimson to the roots of his brown hair.
"I—you—w'y, Callisty," he faltered in a choked, husky whisper, his eyes beseeching forgiveness for such an offense against mountaineer reserve and delicacy.
Her own pale cheeks flushed faintly as she began to see what was in the poor boy's mind; but her eyes did not flinch, while in an agony of sympathy and burning embarrassment he whispered,
"After a while—Sis' Callie—you'll have obliged—after a while you'll surely send such word."
There was silence between them for a long minute, then,
"I never will," said Callista, in a low, dreary, implacable voice. "You can fill my bucket and carry it up for me if you're a mind, Sylvane, I'll set here a spell."
Callista appeared only briefly at the dinner table, where she said little and ate less, soon slipping away again to her retreat by the far spring.
After the meal, the dark court-like vista of the entry invited the guests; from thence a murmur of conversation sounded through all the drowsy afternoon,—the slow desultory conversation of230mountaineers. Even the play of the children was hushed. It was one of the few hot days of the mountain season. All the forest drowsed in a vast sun-dream. The Cleaverage place itself, for all its swarming life, seemed asleep too. Chickens picked and wallowed in the dust; there were no birds, except a cardinal whistling from the hill. The loosed plow-horses drooped in the stable shadow, listless andennuyé, looking as if they would rather be at work. Only wandering shotes seemed undisturbed by the broad white glare of the sunlight.
Octavia Gentry went home that day from the Cleaverage cabin in tears. She waited long and patiently an opportunity to speak alone with her daughter; but when, toward evening, enormous flowers of cumuli blossomed slowly, augustly, in the west, flushed petal on petal opening, to be pushed back by the next above it, and rolling gently away into shadows delicately gray, she went uneasily out into the yard and called to old Ajax. While they were talking a heavier cloud, crowding darkly against the western sun, began to send forth long diapason tones of thunder. Drumright got suddenly to his feet and hurried to "ketch out" his mule, while his wife rounded up the children. At noon the heat had been palpitant. Now a shadow bore relief over all the land; a breeze flew across the wood, turning up the whitish under sides of the leaves; and before they could get started there was a quick thrill of rain—tepid, perpendicular—231and then the sun looking out again within twenty minutes.
The shower brought them all indoors. Callista came reluctantly from the thicket by the far spring-branch where she had been lingering. Octavia made her last appeal publicly, since it might not otherwise be spoken—and was denied. As old Ajax helped her into the buckboard, something in her tear-disfigured face seemed to anger him.
"Well, ye spiled the gal rotten!" he said testily, without introduction or preface, climbing meanwhile to his seat beside her. "Ye spiled Callisty rotten, that's what ye did! And then ye give her to one of the cussedest highheaded fellers I ever seen—a man that'd as soon take a charge o' buckshot as a dare—a man that'd die before he'd own he's beat. Lance Cleaverage ain't the meanest man in the world, and Callisty would do very well if she could be made to behave; but the two of 'em—"
He sighed impatiently, shook his head, and flogged the old horse gently and steadily without in the least affecting its gait. Suddenly he spoke out again with a curious air of unwillingness and at much more length than Grandfather Gentry usually did.
"Them two was borned and made for each other. Ef they can ever fight it out and git to agree, hit'll be one o' the finest matches anybody ever seed. Butwhilstthey're a fightin' it232out—huh-uh,"—his face drew into a look of wincing sympathy—"I don't know as I want ary one of 'em under my roof. I used to raise a good deal of Cain o' my own—yes, I played the davil a-plenty. I got through with that as best I might. I'm a old man now. I like to see some peace. I did tell you that you could bid Callisty come home with us; but she's done told you no—an' I ain't sorry. She's the onliest gran'child I've got left, an'—I think a heap of her. If she was to come on her own motions—that would be different. But having spiled her as you have did, Octavy, best is that you should let her and Lance alone for a spell."
His daughter-in-law looked at him mutely out of her reddened eyes, and the balance of the drive was made in silence.
And so the slow summer drew forward, Callista in her father-in-law's house, never going back to the cabin at the head of Lance's Laurel, sending Polly or the Widow Griever to get things which she now and again needed from the place; Lance over in the sawmill camp, working brutally hard, faring wretchedly, and eating his heart out with what he hoped was a brave face.
Sylvane brought him almost weekly news. He understood that Callista's foot never crossed the threshold of the home he had built for her. Ola Derf hinted that the young wife bought recklessly at the store—and got snubbed for her pains. She233rode out once or twice to try to get him to come and play for a dance; but he shunned the neighborhood as though pestilence were in it, and gave her short answers. No one else importuned him. Lance, the loath, the desired and always invited, found that in his present mood people fell away from him. He was good company for nobody, not even for the rough and ready crowd amongst which he found himself. True, he had lived hard, and been a famous hunter, able to care for himself in any environment; but the squalid surroundings of the sawmill camp were almost as foreign to his fastidious man's way of doing things, as they would have been to a neat woman.
So he grew to avoid and to be avoided; to sit at a little distance from his mates in the evening; to drop out of their crude attempts at merrymaking, to hold aloof even from the fighting. He was neither quarrelsome nor gay, but sat brooding, inert yet restless, interrogating the future with an ever sinking heart. Here was come a thing into his life at which he could not shrug the shoulder. He could not fling this off lightly with a toss of the head or a defiant, "Have it as you please." What was he to do? Was he not man enough to rule his domestic affairs? Could he not command the events and individuals of his own household by simply being himself? To go to Callista and exert authority in words, by overt actions, by234use of force—this was not his ideal. It was impossible to him. Well, what then? Must his child be born under the roof of another?
Summer wore to autumn with all its solemn grandeur of coloring, all its majestic hush and blue silences over great slopes of tapestried mountains, and still the question was unanswered. Callista herself was in the mood when she found it hard to think of anything beyond her own body, the little garment she was fashioning, the day which rounded itself from morning into night again.
And now came a new complication. Daggett asserted that he had no money to pay. "I'm a-dickerin' with the company," he told his men. "I've got good hopes of sellin' out to 'em. Them that stays by me, will get all that's due an' comin'; but I hain't got a cent now; an' a feller that quits me when I cain't he'p myse'f—I'll never trouble to try to pay him."
Now what to do. Credit at the store was all very well for Callista's present needs; but Lance Cleaverage's wife must have a sum of money put at her disposal for the time which was approaching. Lance walked from North Caney to Hepzibah one Saturday night to offer Satan for sale, and found the black horse lame. The man who had agreed to buy him expressed a willingness to take Cindy in his place—the black filly which he had, in the first days of their marriage, given to Callista for235her own use—presented with sweet words of praise of his bride's beauty and her charming appearance on the horse—a lover's gift, a bridegroom's. Yet the money must be had, and the next time Sylvane came across to the lumber camp, he carried back with him and put into his young sister-in-law's listless hand the poor price of the little filly.
Nothing roused Callista these days, not even when Flenton Hands went down to the Settlement and bought Cindy from the man who had purchased her. That was his account of the transaction, but Sylvane said indignantly to his father that he believed Flenton Hands got that feller to buy Lance's filly. Flenton rode up on his own rawboned sorrel, leading the little black mare who whinnied and put forward her ears to Callista's caresses.
"Yes, I did—I bought her," he repeated. "I hadn't nary bit of use for such a animal, but I couldn't see yo' horse—yo's, Callista—in the hands of a man like Snavely."
Callista held a late apple to the velvety, nuzzling mouth that came searching in her palms for largess. She made no inquiry, and Flenton Hands went on.
"Snavely's the meanest man to stock that I ever did see. He overworks and he underfeeds, and he makes up the lack of oats with a hickory—that's what he does. He'd nigh about 'a' killed this little critter, come spring."
And still Callista had nothing to offer.236
"How's all your folks, Flent?" she said finally.
"Tol'able—jest tol'able," Hands repeated the formula absently. "Callisty, ef you'll take the little mare from me as a gift, she's yourn."
Lance's wife drew back with a burning blush.
"Take Cindy—from you?" she echoed sharply. There rushed over her heart, like an air from a kinder world, memory of that exquisite hour when Lance had given Cindy to her—Lance whose words of tenderness and praise, his kiss, the kindling look of his eye, could so crown and sceptre her he loved. Her lips set hard.
"I'd be proud to have ye take her," Flenton repeated.
"Thank you—no," returned Callista, briefly, haughtily.
Her small head was crested with the movement that always fascinated the man before her. That unbending pride of hers, to him who had in fact no real self-respect, was inordinately compelling. He had felt sure she would not take the horse, and he was the freer in offering the gift.
"Well, ef ye won't, ye won't" he said resignedly. "But ef you ever change yo' mind, Callisty—remember that Cindy and me is both a-waitin' for ye." And with this daring and enigmatic speech, he wheeled the sorrel and rode away, the little black's light feet pattering after the clumsier animal.
237
SUMMER lasted far into fall that year, its procession of long, fair, dreamful days like a strand of sumptuous beads. At the last of November came a dash of rain, frost, and again long, warm days, with the mist hanging blue in the valleys as though the camp-fires of autumn smoked in their blaze of scarlet and gold, their shadows of ochre and umber.
"But we're goin' to ketch it for this here," Roxy Griever kept saying pessimistically. "Bound to git about so much cold in every year, and ef you have summer time mighty nigh on up to Christmas, hit'll freeze yo' toes when it does come."
Callista held to her resolution to send no message to the sawmill on North Caney. But the family had debated the matter, consulting with Lance himself, and agreeing to summon him home, if possible, in ample season. At his sister's gloomy weather predictions, Sylvane grew uneasy lest the time arrive and Lance be storm-stayed in Dagget's camp. He almost resolved to go and fetch him at once, and run the chance of good coming from it. But the spell of pleasant weather and a press of work put it out238of his mind. Then came a day when the sun rose over low-lying clouds into a fleece of cirri that caught aflame with his mounting. The atmosphere thickened slowly hour by hour into a chill mist that, toward evening, became a drizzle.
"This here's only the beginning of worse," said Kimbro at the supper table. "Looks to me like we're done with Fall. To-morrow is the first day o' winter—and you'll see it will be winter sure enough."
At dawn next morning the wind rose, threshing the woods with whips of stringing rain. Stock about the lean little farms began to huddle into shelter. Belated workers at tasks which should have been laid by, found it hard to make head against the wild weather. The men at the sawmill kindled a wonderful radiance of hickory fire in the great chimney which Lance had built more to relieve his own restlessness than with any thought of their comfort.
"Why, consarn yo' time!" Blev Straley deprecated as he edged toward it. "A man cain't set clost enough to that thar fire to spit in hit!"
Sylvane knew when this day came, that he must go for his brother. About noon the rain ceased, and, with its passing, the wind began to blow harder. At first it leaped in over the hills like a freed spirit, glad and wild, tossing the wet leaves to the flying clouds, laughing in the round face of the hunter's moon which rose that evening full and red. But it grew and grew like the bottle genii drunken with strength; its laughter became239a rudeness, its pranks malicious; it was a dancing satyr, roughly-riotous, but still full of living warmth and glee. It shouted down the chimney; it clattered the dry vines by the porch, and wrenched at everything left loose-ended about the place; it whooped and swung through the straining forest. But by night it sank to a whisper, as Sylvane finally made his way into the camp. The next morning dawn walked in peace like a conquering spirit across the whiteness of snow, wind-woven overnight into great laps and folds of sculpture. As the day lengthened the cold strengthened. Again the wind wakened and now it was a wild sword song in the tree tops. Ice glittered under the rays of a sun which warmed nothing. It was a day of silver and steel. The frost bit deep; under the crisping snow the ground rang hard as iron. Wagons on the big road could be heard for a mile. As the two brothers passed Daggett's cow lot on setting forth, with its one lean heifer standing humped and shivering in the angle of the wall, Sylvane spoke.
"Reckon we'll have pretty hard work gettin' crost the gulch." He glanced at Lance's shoes. "This here snow is right wet, too—but hit's a freezin'. Maybe we'd better go back an' wait till to-morrow—hit'll be solid by then."
"I aimed to go to-day," said Lance, quite as if Sylvane had not come for him. "I'll stop a-past Derf's and get me a pair of shoes, Buddy."
No more was said, and they fared on. There was no cheerful sound240of baying dogs as they passed the wayside cabins. The woods were ghostly still. The birds, the small furry wild creatures crept into burrow and inner fastness, under the impish architecture of the ice and snow. Going up past Taylor Peavey's board shanty, they found that feckless householder outside, grabbling about in the snow for firewood.
"My wife, she's down sick in the bed," he told them; "an' I never 'lowed it would come on to be as chilly as what it is; an' her a-lyin' there like she is, she's got both her feet froze tol'able bad."
The Cleaverage brothers paused in their desperate climb to help haul down a leaning pine tree near the flimsy shack. They left the slack Peavy making headway with a dull axe whose strokes followed them hollowly as they once more entered the white mystery and wonder of the forest.
Arrival at Derf's place was almost like finding warmer weather. The half dozen buildings were thick and well tightened, and the piles of firewood heaped handy were like structures themselves.
"It's sin that prospers in this world," jeered the gentle Sylvane, blue with cold, heartsick as he looked at his brother's set face, poor clothing and broken shoes. Lance stepped ahead of the boy, silent but unsubdued, bankrupt of all but the audacious spirit within him.
Garrett Derf admitted them to the store, which was closed on241account of the bitter weather that kept everybody housed. But there was a roaring fire in the barrel stove in its midst, and after a time the silent Lance approached it warily, putting out first one foot and then the other. Derf, in an overcoat, stood across by the rude desk, fiddling somewhat uneasily.
"I hain't figured out your account, Cleaverage," he observed at last; "but I reckon you hain't much overdrawn. Likely you'll be able to even it up befo' spring—ef Miz. Cleaverage don't buy quite so free as what she has been a-doin'."
There was a long, significant silence, the wind crying at the eaves, and bringing down a fine rattle of dry snow to drum on the hollow roof above their heads. At first, neither of the half-perished men looked up, but Sylvane instinctively drew a little nearer to his brother.
"W'y—w'y, Mr. Derf," he began, with an indignant tremble in his boyish voice, "I've fetched every order for Sis' Callie, and packed home every dollar's worth she bought. Hit don't look to me like they could amount to as much as Lance's wages. Lance is obliged to have a pair of shoes."
Lance cast a fiery, silencing glance at his brother.
"I ain't obliged to have anything that ain't comin' to me," he said sharply. "Callisty's bought nothin' that wasn't proper. Ef she needed what was here—that's all right with me," and he turned and walked steadily from the room.
"Hey—hold on, you Lance Cleaverage!" Derf called after him.242"Thar you go—like somebody wasn't a-doin' ye right. I'll trust you for a pair of shoes."
In the wide-flung doorway, Lance wheeled and looked back at him, a gallant figure against the flash of snow outside—gallant in spite of his broken shoes and the tattered coat on his back.
"Go on. Buddy," he said gently, pointing Sylvane past him. Then he turned to Derf.
"You will?" he inquired of the man who, he knew, was trying to rob him. "You'll trust me? Well, Garrett Derf, it'll be a colder day than this when I come to you and ask for trust." And without another word he stepped out into the snow and set his face toward his father's house. He even passed the boy with a kind of smile, and something of the old light squaring of the shoulder.
"It ain't so very far now. Buddy," he said.
Sylvane followed doggedly. The last few miles were merely a matter of endurance, the rapid motion serving to keep the warmth of life in their two bodies.
Octavia Gentry, coming to the back door of the Cleaverage home, found Lance sitting on a little platform there, rubbing his feet with snow, while Sylvane crouched on the steps, getting off his own shoes.
"I thought I'd be on the safe side," Lance said in an unshaken voice. "They might be frost-bit and then they might not. No need243to go to the fire with 'em till I can get some feeling in 'em. How"—and now the tones faltered a little—"how is she?"
Octavia's horrified eyes went from the feet his busy hands were chafing with snow, to his lean, brown, young face, where the skin seemed to cling to the bone, and the eyes were quite too large.
"She's doin' well," choked the mother. "The doctor's been gone five hours past. It's a boy, honey. They're both asleep now. Oh, my poor Lance—my poor Lance!"
A sudden glow shone in the hazel eyes. Lance turned and smiled at her so that the tears ran over her face. He set down the lump of snow he had just taken up in his hand, and rising began to stamp softly.
"It's all right, mother," he said, in a tone that was almost gay. "I'm 'feared Sylvane's worse off."
But it appeared on inquiry that Sylvane's shoes had proved almost water tight, and that a brief run in the snow was all he wanted to send him in the house tingling with warmth. Roxy Griever, hearing the voices, had hurried out. Her troubled gaze went over Lance's half perished face and body, the whole worn, poor, indomitable aspect of him, even while she greeted him. With an almost frightened look, she turned and ran into the house, crying hastily,
"I'll have some hot coffee for you-all boys mighty quick." And244when he came limping in, a few minutes later, there was an appetizing steam from the hearth where Polly crouched beside Mary Ann Martha, whispering over a tale.
Dry foot-wear was found for the newcomers, and when they were finally seated in comfort at their food, both women gazed furtively at Lance's thin cheeks, the long unshorn curls of his hair, and Octavia wept quietly. When he had eaten and sat for a little time by the fire, he caught at his mother-in-law's dress as she went past, and asked with an upward glance that melted her heart,
"How soon may I go in thar?"
They both glanced toward the door of the spare room.
"I reckon you could go in right now, ef you'd be mighty quiet," Octavia debated, full of sympathy. "What do you say, Miz. Griever?"
"Well, we might take him in for a spell, I reckon," Roxy allowed dubiously, more sensible to the importance of the occasion, when men are apt to be hustled about and treated with a lack of consideration they endure at no other time.
Lance rose instantly; his hand was on the knob of the door before Roxy and Octavia reached him. When they did so, he turned sharply and cast one swift look across his shoulder. Without a word his mother-in-law drew the Widow Griever back. Lance245Cleaverage entered alone the chamber that contained his wife and son.
Closing the door softly behind him, he came across the floor, stepping very gently, lest he waken the sleepers in the big four-poster bed. When he stood at last beside the couch and looked down at them, something that had lived strong in him up to this moment died out, and its place was taken by something else, which he had never till then known.
He gazed long at Callista's face on the pillow. She was very thin, his poor Callista; her temples showed the blue veins, the long oval of her cheek was without any bloom. Beside her, in the curve of her arm, lay the little bundle of new life. By bending forward, he could get a glimpse of the tiny face, and a sort of shock went through him at the sight. This was his son—Lance Cleaverage's son!
With deft fingers he rolled the sheet away from the baby's countenance, so that he had a view of both, then sinking quietly to his knees, he studied them. Here was wife and child. Confronting him whose boyish folly had broken up the home on Lance's Laurel, was the immortal problem of the race. A son—and Lance had it in him, when life had sufficiently disciplined that wayward pride of his, to make a good father for a son. Long and silently he knelt there, communing with himself concerning this new element thrust into his plan, this candidate for citizenship on that island where he had once figured the bliss of dwelling246alone with Callista. Gropingly he searched for the clue to what his own attitude should now be. He had lived hard and gone footsore for the two of them. That was right, wasn't it? A man must do his part in the world. His own ruthers came after that.
He recognized this as the test. Before, it had been the girl to be won; the bride, still to be wooed. In outward form these two were already his; could he make and hold them truly his own? Could he take them with him to that remote place where his spirit abode so often in loneliness?
Callista's eyes, wide and clear, opened and fixed themselves on his. For some time she lay looking. She seemed to be adjusting the present situation. Then with a little whispered, childish cry, "Lance—oh, Lance!" she put out feeble arms to him, and he bent his face, tear-wet, to hers.