He gazed at Callista's face.
247
LANCE Cleaverage remained at his father's house for a week, saying little, assisting deftly and adequately in the care of Callista, wondering always at the marvelous newcomer, and so rulable, so helpful and void of offense, that Roxy had her rod broken in her hand, and was forced to an unwilling admiration of him.
"Looks like Sis' Callie is about to be the makin' o' Lance," she told her father. "I believe in my soul if she was a church member she'd have him convicted of sin at the next quarterly."
Conviction of sin was always sadly lacking in Lance; he was aware that the cards sometimes went against him in the game of life, but to hint that he could himself be blamed with it was to instantly rouse the defiant devil that counseled his soul ill. At the end of the week, there was a little family conference, very sweet and harmonious, with Callista lying propped in her bed, the baby beside her, and old Kimbro sitting by the fire, while Octavia and Roxy worked at a little garment which the former had made and brought over, and which did not quite fit the boy. Mary Ann Martha, absolutely good because absolutely248happy, lolled luxuriously in her Uncle Lance's lap, and took the warmth of the fire on her fat legs, while she occasionally rolled a blissful eye toward the face above her, or suddenly shot up a chubby hand to flap against his cheek or chin in a random caress. Uncle Lance had in her eyes no flaw. Others might criticise him, to Mary Ann Martha it was given to see only his perfections.
"Yes, son," old Kimbro concluded what he had been saying, "I surely would go back to Daggett's and work out my time. Derf can't hold to what he said. I had Sylvane bring me every one of those orders before he carried them to the store, and I copied them off in a book. Garrett Derf will have obliged to back down from that talk he had the day you was there—likely he'll say he was jest a-funnin'. As for Thatch Daggett, the Company is behind him now, and he'll have obliged to pay, come Spring. You need the money. You can't do nothin' on your place now. I'd go back and work it out at Daggett's."
Like many another man with the reputation of being impractical, old Kimbro's advice on financial matters was always particularly sound. From his warm place by the fire. Lance flashed a swift glance across at his wife and child. Callista was so absorbed in the baby that she had paid small attention to what her father-in-law was saying. Well—and the color deepened on Lance's brown cheek—if it was a matter of indifference to her, he would not249urge it upon her attention. But Sylvane, watching, came to the rescue.
"What do you think about it, Sis' Callie?" he suggested gently.
"About what?" inquired Callista; and then when she was enlightened, "Oh, I reckon Father Cleaverage knows best. I shouldn't want to move the baby in cold weather. If you're a mind to go over and finish out, Lance, I'll be in the house and ready for you, come Spring," and she looked kindly at her husband.
And so it was settled. Lance went back to the gross hardships of the sawmill camp, the ill-cooked food, the overworked little woman in the dingy cabin with the fretting children under foot, the uncongenial companionship of the quarreling men.
In early spring he came home, still thin and worn, and even more silent than was his wont. Callista had kept her word; she was domiciled in the cabin on Lance's Laurel, and she had Sylvane get her truck patch almost ready. In the well nigh feverish activity of first motherhood, she had learned in these few months to be a really superior housewife, and a master hand at all that a mountain housekeeper should know. Roxy Griever was but too willing to teach, and Callista had needed only to have her energies and attention enlisted. She had a sound, noble physique; maternity had but developed her; and she was very obviously mistress of herself as well as of the house when Lance250came over from the sawmill cabin to find her there with his son, awaiting him.
He stopped a moment on the threshold. His appreciative glance traveled over the neat interior, and he sniffed the odors of a supper preparing. This was a homecoming indeed. Here, surely, were the coasts of his island; and Callista, bending over his child, drawing the cover around the baby before she turned to greet Lance, a figure to comfort a man's heart.
"You look fine here," he told her, entering, hanging up his hat, and disposing of the bundles he had been carrying.
Callista advanced smiling to him and lifted her face to be kissed. Self-absorbed, wholly pleased with her house and her baby, and her newly discovered gift for work, and for administration, she never noted the quick, wild question of his eyes, which was as swiftly veiled.
"The baby's asleep already," she announced softly. "We got to be right quiet."
Nodding silently. Lance picked up some of the things he had brought, and carried them out to the shed, whence Callista, later, summoned him to supper.
Old Kimbro proved to be right. Lance, having held by his contract till Spring, was able to collect the poor little balance of his wages, and on this they proposed to live while he got the place in the Gap in some shape to support them. Satan was well now, but it fretted Lance unreasonably that he could251not buy Cindy back from Flenton Hands.
With characteristic insouciance and unusual energy, he set to work on the gigantic task of subduing his large tract of steep, wild, mountain land. No doubt he worked too hard that summer; people of Lance's temperament are always working too hard—or not working at all. As for Callista, the first eagerness of her mere passion for Lance was satisfied. She was no more the warm, tender, young girl, almost pathetically in love,—even though proud and wilful and somewhat spoiled—but the composed, dignified mother of a son and mistress of a home. She had once been too little of a house-mother for her man, and now she was rather too much.
Yet Lance went no more abroad for consolation. After his settlement with Derf, he had refused to put foot on their place again. This was not the season for hunting. He comforted himself with his banjo, and enjoyed too, in its own measure, the well-kept home, the excellently prepared food, the placid, calm, good-will of his mate.
And the child was Callista over again; big blue eyes, a fuzz of pale gold down, and an air of great wisdom and dignity. As he grew able to sit up alone on the floor and manage his own playthings, one saw laughably enough his mother's slant glance of scorn, that which had been considered her affectation of252indifference, reproduced in the baby's manner. Between mother and son, Lance sometimes felt himself reduced to his lowest terms.
Yet they thrived, for the welfare of a primitive; household still depends more upon the woman than on the man. If Lance's restless fancy—that questioning, eager heart of his—lacked something of full satisfaction, his body was well fed, his household comfort was complete, and his material work laid out plainly before him. And Lance could work so well and to such good purpose that at midsummer his clearing had assumed very respectable size, and the small crop he had made was laid by. Even Callista agreed that they might now make the trip Lance had proposed more than a year ago, over to the East Fork of Caney.
That camping trip was well thought of. It instantly reversed the family balance, and sent Lance's end swinging higher. If Callista dominated the house, and her spirit was coming to pervade the farm as well. Lance was supreme in this matter of the gipsying excursion.
"You needn't bother your head about what to pack," he told her. "I reckon I'll know better than you do what we'll need, exceptin' the things for that young man you make so much of."
So Callista concerned herself with the baby's outfit and her own, with assurance that her jars were in order, and that she had enough sugar to put up jam. The other berries could be253canned without sugar, and sweetened when they came to use them. A joyous bustle of preparation pervaded the place; that play spirit which was necessary to Lance Cleaverage, and which Callista would quite innocently and unconsciously have crushed out of him if she could, was all alert and dancing at the prospect. He came into his wife's kitchen and packed flour and meal, frying pan and Dutch oven, with various other small matters necessary, observing as the bacon went in,
"We won't need much of that, excepting to fry fish and help out with wild meat. The law's off of pa'tridges in the Valley next month, and it's sure off of 'em up here now."
Callista, sitting on the table, swinging a foot to keep the baby trotted on her knee, looked on smilingly.
"When Blev Straley and his wife camped out and canned blackberries, they hadn't any nag," she commented. "He had to take the things in a wheelbarrow, and it looked like some places he couldn't hardly get acrost; but Miranda said she had the best time she ever had in her life."
Kimbro Cleaverage was teaching school over in the Far Cove. For fifteen years he had taught this little summer school; his pupils now were the children of the first boys and girls who came under his rule. His neighbors held toward the gentle soul a patronizing, almost tolerant attitude. True, he managed the winter school nearer home, having little trouble with the big254boys, the bullies, the incorrigibles; while it was well understood that the peaceful, who wanted to learn, could get on powerful fast under his tuition. Yet there were those who deprecated the mildness of his sway, and allowed that he was really better suited to the small children, the anxious-faced little boys, too young yet to follow the plow, the small girls who had just finished dropping corn or "suckering the crop." That these dearly loved the master was held to be an unimportant detail, and his aversion to plying the hickory was always cited in regard to Lance's misdoings.
When his father was away teaching, the management, and all the labor of the wornout little farm fell on Sylvane's young shoulders. Lance had promised his brother the use of Satan for the week when they should be in camp. The boy came over to help them pack.
It was a July morning without flaw, blue and green and golden, and brooded upon by the full-hearted peace of ripe summer. Bedding and kitchen supplies were put in two big bundles arranged pannier fashion on the black horse, and firmly lashed in place by a pair of plow lines.
"Why don't you put it up on his back?" Callista asked them, coming out with her eight month's old baby, all in order for the journey.
"That's to leave place for you to ride part of the time," Lance255told her. "It's a right smart ways we're going, and that son of yours is tol'able heavy, and half the time you won't let me tote him."
So they set off, Sylvane walking ahead at Satan's bridle, whistling and singing by turns, Lance with his banjo on his back, Callista at first carrying the boy because he wanted her to, and afterward relinquishing him to Lance or Sylvane. The route lay over springy leaf-mold, under great trees for the most part, leaving the main road, and taking merely an occasional cattle-path, while always it wound upward. After a time, the timber became more scattered, and from going forward under a leafage that shut out the rising sun, there were patches of open, meadow-like grasses, called by the mountain dweller, balds, interspersed with groups of cedars and oaks. The last mile was up the dry bed of Caney, and it consisted of a scramble over great boulders, where only a mountain-bred horse might keep his footing. Turning suddenly and scaling a bank that was like a precipice, one came on Lance's find, a cup-like hollow between the cleft portions of a mountain peak, where the great gray rocks lay strewn thick, the ferns grew waist high, and the trickling spring-branch was so blue-cold that it made your teeth ache to drink of it even on a summer's day.
The three stood for a moment silent, on the edge of the miniature valley, studying its perfections with loving eyes; the mountaineer leads all others in passionate admiration for the256beauty of his native highlands.
"Oh, Lance!" Callista said at length, very softly. "You never told me it was as sightly as all this."
"Couldn't," murmured Lance, pleased to the soul. "I ain't got the words by me."
Sylvane helped them unpack, waited for a hasty dinner for himself and Satan; then having agreed to return for them at the end of a week, he went back, leading his black horse, looking with boyish envy over his shoulder at the happy little group in the hidden pocket of the hills. When he was out of sight of them, he could still see the blue smoke of their camp fire rising clear and high, and stopping to mount Satan, when the trail became fit for it, he hearkened a moment, and thought he heard the sound of the banjo.
It was Lance who made the camp, deftly, swiftly; Callista looked after her baby and explored their new domain, moving about, girlish, light-footed, singing to herself, so that the eyes of the man bending over his task followed her eagerly. Two great boulders leaning together made them a rock house. Lance soon had a chimney up, of loose stones to be sure, but drawing sufficiently to keep the smoke out of your eyes unless the wind was more perverse than a summer breeze is apt to be. That evening they ate a supper of the cooked food they had brought and rested as the first pair might have done in Eden, sleeping257soundly on their light, springy couch of tender hemlock tips. But next day Lance fished in the little stream and came up with a wonderful catch of tiny silver-sided, rainbow trout, cleaned and laid in a great leaf-cup ready for the frying pan.
"Lance, oh Lance!—ain't it too bad?" Callista greeted him from the fire where she had her cornbread nearly ready to accompany his fish. "I believe in my soul we've come clean over here and forgot the salt—the salt! I put some in my meal, or the bread wouldn't be fit to eat. Do you reckon the meat fryings will make your fish taste all right? No—of course it won't. I'm mighty sorry. Looks like that is certainly the prettiest fish I ever saw in my life, and they're so good right fresh from the water."
"It is too bad," agreed Lance, with a very sober countenance, going ahead however with his preparations. "'Pears as if somebody in this crowd is a pore manager."
"It's me. Lance," Callista hastened to avow, kneeling by their primitive hearthstone to tend her bread. "It was my business to see that the salt was in; but I got so took up with the baby that I left everything to you; and a body can't expect a man—"
She broke off; Lance, kneeling beside her, engaged in his own enterprise of fish-frying had suddenly turned and kissed her258flushed cheek. There was always a sort of embarrassment in this unusual demonstrativeness of her husband's; and yet it subdued her heart as nothing else could, as nothing had ever done. That heart beat swiftly and the long fair lashes lay almost on the glowing cheek above where Lance had kissed.
A few moments later, when the primitive meal was spread under the open sky, Callista tasted her fish.
"Lance!" she looked at him reproachfully. "You rogue! You had salt along with you all the time! Why didn't you tell me, and put my mind at rest?"
"I'm not so terrible sure that a restful mind is what's needed in your case," Lance teased her. "I thought you looked mighty sweet and sounded mighty sweet, too, when you was a blamin' yourse'f."
Lance had spoken truly when he praised the huckleberries that grew in the little valley where nobody came to pick them. They stood thick all over its steep, shelving sides, taller bushes than those of the lowland, with great blue berries, tender of skin, sun sweetened, bursting with juice. Callista was almost wearisome in her triumph over the fruit. Forest fires and drought had made the berry crop nearer home a failure this year; she would be the only woman in the neighborhood with such canned huckleberries to boast of. She picked them tirelessly, making258work of her play, Callista fashion, spreading her apron under the bush and raking down green ones, leaves and all, into it, then afterward harrying Lance into helping her look them over while the baby played near by or slept. This gipsying was not her plan; she had come along in mere complaisance; yet in the simple outdoor life she throve beautifully; her cheeks rounded out, and her temples lost their bleached look; she was the old delicious Callista, with an added glow and bloom and softness.
It was in the early days of their stay, that Lance, with the air of a boy disclosing to some chosen companion a long-cherished treasure, took her by a circuitous way up the steep wall of their little valley, and helping her around a big boulder and through a thicket of laurel, showed her the opening of a cave. Man-high the entrance was, with a tiny cup of a spring in its lap; but six or eight feet in there was an abrupt turning so that the cave's extent was entirely hidden. He stood smilingly by, enjoying her astonishment.
"Why, Lance!" she cried. "Well, I vow! Why, no one in the world would ever suspicion there was a cave here!"
The two turned to look back at their camp, only to find themselves wholly screened by the oblique side of the great boulder and the laurel bushes, cut off from sight and sound of all that went on in the little valley.
"They sure never would," Lance assented. "And I've never told a260soul—_but_ Sylvane—about the place. I was even kind o' duberous about showing you," and he laughed teasingly. "Might need a hide-out some time, that nobody didn't know where to find."
There was a Phoebe-bird's nest just at the opening of the cave. Lance drew Callista back, both of them standing half crouched, while the mother, returning home, flitted past them and fed her babies.
"Mighty late for that business," whispered Lance.
"Second brood, I reckon," Callista murmured back.
"Or maybe got broke up with the first brood," Lance added.
The little dell was so remote that the birds were less shy than where they have been intruded upon by man and civilization, and the mother betrayed little uneasiness when the two visitors crept closer.
"My, ain't it scairy!" Callista said, peering beyond into the cave. Then, as they descended the bank once more, "Hit looked like there might be wildcats in it."
"I aimed to explore it this time and get to the end if I could," Lance replied. "I was fifteen year old when I found that place, and I used to scheme it out, like a boy will, that if I'd ever go with the Jesse James gang, or kill a man, or anything to get the law out after me, I'd hide there; and then, oncet Caney was261up, all the world couldn't find me."
"What'd you eat?" objected practical Callista.
Lance smiled. "I could take care of myself in the woods about as well as any of the critters," he told her.
"I reckon I'd have to come and bring you a pone," bantered Callista. And they turned and smiled happily into each other's eyes, all in the blue, unclouded summer, with the baby asleep back in the rock house, and the two of them climbing down to him and their gipsy home hand in hand.
And now perfect day followed perfect day. The work of the camp was frolic to Lance; he did it laughing, as he would have gone through a game, and then tolerantly helped Callista with the play of which she made work. The high noon of summer brooded over the mountains, with a wonderful blue haze and a silence that was almost palpable. In their little cup of the hills, there was a hoarded wine of coolness. The drowsy tinkle of the tiny branch that ran from their spring backgrounded the rare sound of their voices. And Lance would lie full length on the earth as he loved to do, strumming sometimes on his banjo, drowsing a little, amusing and being amused by the baby. Callista, her head bent, her face intent above the work, would262be picking over her berries. The boy was intensely, solemnly interested in the banjo; but when its music ceased, he would roll away from his father's arm and creep to his mother's skirts, there to cuddle down and sleep, a dimpled picture of infantile perfection.
Lance would regard them both from under his lashes. Beauty-worshipper that he was, they satisfied every whim and caprice of longing, so far as the eyes spoke. And they were his. Callista was his own, she had come with him to the place he found for her; she was an amiable, complying companion. And yet—and yet—
The birds were all silent now, except for an occasional chirp or twitter in among the leafage. The little breeze that seemed to live only in their high eyrie went by softly, making its own music. "How many miles, how many years?" But there were no longer miles and years between him and his beloved. No, she was within hand-reach. He could stretch forth his fingers and touch the hem of her skirts. With an impatient sigh he would turn over and take up his banjo.
"Don't play now, Lance—you'll wake the baby," Callista would murmur half mechanically, in that hushed tone mothers learn so soon.
One day Lance snared a couple of partridges, and, cleaning and salting them, roasted them with the feathers on, by daubing each with the stiff, tough blue clay of the region, and burying the balls in the embers. They came out delicious. When the clay263coating was broken off, feathers and skin went with it, leaving all the delicate juices of the meat steaming, His helpmate praised his skill generously.
"Ola Derf showed me that trick," Lance said, in fairness, clearing a dainty little drumstick with his teeth. "We was fishing over on Laurel one day, and we didn't get no fish. So she caught a couple of chickens, and cooked them that-a-way. Good, ain't they?"
Callista nodded.
"Whose chickens were they—them you and Ola Derf caught?" she asked, after a moment's silence.
Lance laughed long and uproariously.
"Whose chickens?" he repeated. "Our'n, I reckon, oncet we'd cooked 'em and et 'em. I never axed 'em their names. They tasted all right. I ain't got no objections to strangers—in chickens that-a-way."
"I don't think that was right," Callista-told him with great finality. "It's likely some poor old woman had her mouth all fixed for chicken dinner, or was going to have the preacher at her house, and then you and Ola stole her chickens and she never knew what became of them. I think it was right mean."
"So do I," agreed Lance lightly. "That's the reason I enjoyed it. I get mighty tired of bein' good."
"You do?" inquired his wife with gay scorn. "I didn't know you'd264ever had the chance."
Yet of this conversation remained the knowledge that such gipsying meals as this had been eaten with Ola Derf before she and Lance cooked for each other. Had he found Ola an entirely satisfactory companion? Evidently not, for he could have had her for the asking. Did she, Callista, compare in any way unfavorably with the Derf girl? Such questionings were new to Callista, and they were decidedly uncomfortable. She resented them; yet she could not quite put them by.
Lance was used to sleeping the deep and dreamless slumber of those who labor much in the open air; but on the last night of their stay in the little hollow by the spring, he lay long awake.
"Callista, air you asleep?" he inquired with caution.
"N—no," murmured Callista drowsily.
"Well, somehow I cain't git to sleep," said Lance. "I feel like this rock house was goin' to fall down on me. I believe I'd like to take my blanket out there on the grass if you won't be scared to be alone. You could call to me."
Callista assented, only half awake. Once sprawled at ease under the stars, sleep seemed definitely to have forsaken him. He lay and stared up into the velvety blue-black spaces above him. His mind went dreamily over the past few days. How good it had been. And yet—he broke off and ruminated for awhile on whether or265no a body should ever cherish a plan for years as he had cherished this plan of camping out some time in the rock house with Callista. It seemed to him that if a man had planned a thing for so long, it was better not to bring it to pass, for the reality could never compare favorably with the dream. He sighed impatiently, and turned his face resolutely down against the grass, dew-wet and cool. But there was no sleep for him in the earth, as there had been none in the heavens. Before his eyes, quite as real as daylight seeing, came the vision of Callista and his boy. There was not such a woman nor such a child in all his knowledge. He had chosen well. Idle dreams of Callista as a girl among her mates; of Callista lying spent and white in her bed with his child, new born, on her arm; of Callista kneeling flushed and housewifely by this outdoor hearth to prepare his meal—these strung themselves into an endless, tantalizing line, a shadowy gallery of pictures, a visioned processional, each face in some sort a stranger's. What was it he had thought to compass by coming here with her? Why was the realization not enough?
Through dreams and waking this question followed him, giving him no deep rest; and dawn found him already afoot and busy with the preparations for their return home.
266
CALLISTA roused that morning, to see Lance moving, light-footed, a shadow between her and the first struggling blaze of the fire he had kindled. With sleepy surprise she noted his activities. When she observed that he was packing her canned fruit, with quick, deft fingers, she inquired,
"What you doin' there. Lance? No use fixin' them up now. Sylvane won't be here till in the morning."
Lance broke off the low whistling which had wakened her, and turned to regard his wife for a moment before he spoke.
"I thought I'd get this packing done," he said non-committally. "If we was to go home to-day I could tote whatever we needed, and Buddy could fetch over the heaviest stuff to-morrow."
Callista dozed a little luxuriously, and woke to a smell of boiling coffee and frying pork.
"You've got breakfast enough there for three people," she commented, when she finally drew near the fire.
"Uh-huh," assented Lance. "I 'lowed Sylvane might come to-day, place of Saturday. Anyhow, we'll need something for a bite on267the way." And Callista realized that her husband was indeed making the final preparations for their return.
As they sat down either side the frying pan, and Callista lifted the lid from the Dutch oven to take the bread out, they became aware of the sound of scrambling hoofs and parting branches. Whenever there was high water in Caney, this little valley was cut off, it was a retreat unknown, unvisited; the newcomer could be nobody but Sylvane. A moment later the boy made his appearance, clambering over the rocks, leading Satan by a long line.
"I 'lowed you-all wouldn't mind coming back a day sooner," he apologized, as he gratefully seated himself for an addition to his hastily snatched breakfast eaten by candle-light. "They's a feller that the Company has sent up to look over lands, and he's a-buyin' mineral rights—or ruther, gettin' options—on everybody's farms. They'll pay big prices, and Sis' Roxy said I ought to come and tell Lance of it."
The man listened indifferently, but the woman was all aglow. The touch of practical life had dissolved whatever of the gipsy mood Lance's nature had been able to lend hers. She questioned the boy minutely. Lance listening with ill-concealed impatience; and when the subject was exhausted, began to ask him with great particularity concerning her truck patch at home and whether268Spotty, the young cow Lance had traded with Squire Ashe for, was doing well in her milk.
In spite of Lance's packing, there was much to do before camp could be struck, and on account of the canned fruit they moved so slowly that noon saw them still in the wilderness, dropping down by the stream's side to eat the snack they had brought with them. They went around by Father Cleaverage's this time, and stopped there, since Callista intended to present a few of her cherished huckleberries to Roxy, and they reached the cabin at the head of Lance's Laurel late in the afternoon.
For some reason which he could not himself have told you, Lance felt strangely wearied and dissatisfied. He looked back to the week past, and admitted that all had gone well; days of fishing and dreaming, evenings under the open sky with the banjo humming, the not unwelcome fire leaping up, and the baby asleep on Callista's lap. Could a man have asked more?
The son of the house had thriven amazingly on it, and this evening he was assuming airs so domineering that his father professed fear of him.
"Look a here, young feller," Lance said, as the big eight-months-old came creeping across the floor and hammered on his knee to be taken up, "you're about to run me out o' the house." He lifted his son on his arm, and, carrying the banjo in the other hand, beyond reach of the clutching, fat fingers, went to the doorstone with them. "Oh, you're your mammy over again," he269admonished the baby. "You don't own up to me at all. I wisht I had me a nice gal o' your size, that would admit I was her daddy."
Callista had her supper nearly ready. Growing now, with motherhood, intensely material,—or, as Lance had more than once jokingly declared, a trifle grasping,—the selling of the land to the Company for a big price occupied all her thoughts.
"You'll go over to Squire Ashe's soon in the morning, won't you Lance and see about the land?" she questioned. "Sylvane said the man was stayin' at Ashe's."
"I don't know as I want to sell," the owner of Jesse Lance's Gap hundred observed indifferently, running random little chords on his banjo. "I ain't rightly studied about it."
"Well, I wish you would study about it," urged Callista. "I think it's your duty to."
"I think it's your duty to, duty to, dute,"
"I think it's your duty to, duty to, dute,"
"I think it's your duty to, duty to, dute,"
hummed Lance to a twanging accompaniment from the strings. "Looks like I've heard them words before somewheres. I'll be blessed if that ain't Sis' Roxy's tune you've took up, Callista!"
"Your sister does her duty in this world," asserted Callista tartly. "It's nothing but the mineral rights, they'll want. All that talk you had this mornin' about the land coming from your270gran'pappy, and your not wanting to leave it, is just to—to have your own way."
Lance raised his eyebrows.
"Would you say so?" he debated, his voice quiet, but the spark shining deep in his hazel eye. "Well now, I'd have said—if you'd axed me—that I've had my own way most generally without resorting to such. I'm ruther expectin' to have my own way from this time out, and take no curious methods of gettin' it."
"Well, what are you going to do about selling the land?" she persisted.
Lance lifted the baby's fat hand and pretended to pick the banjo strings with the pointed, inadequate fingers, to the young man's serious enjoyment. Callista waited for what she considered a reasonable time, and then prompted.
"Lance. Lance, did you hear me?"
"Oh, yes, I heared you well enough," Lance told her composedly. "I was just a-studyin' on the matter."
Again silence, punctuated by the aimless twanging of the banjo strings, the little sounds from the summer world without, the quick, light tapping of Callista's feet and the little whisper of her skirts as she moved about her task.
"Well—have you studied?" she inquired abruptly at length.
"Uh-huh," agreed Lance negligently, curling himself down on the271doorstone a little further, "an' I'm studyin' yet. Ye see that there feller they sent out for an agent met me on the big road one day about a month ago and bantered me to trade. I told him I'd let him know, time I got back."
"And you never named it to me!" Callista said sharply, pausing, dish in hand by the table side, and staring at her husband with reprehending eyes. "You never said a word to me about it; and you went off on that foolish camping trip! For the good gracious, I don't know what men are made of!"
"Some are made of one thing, and some of another," allowed Lance easily, leaning his head back against the door jamb and half closing his eyes.
"Before we went away," repeated Callista reproachfully. "Maybe you've lost your chance."
The spur to Lance Cleaverage, the goad, was ever the hint to go slower; applied recklessly, it was quite sufficient to make him dig heels and toes into the track and refuse to go at all. At Callista's suggestion that he had missed his chance, he balked entirely.
"Well, I don't know as I want to sell," he reiterated. "That's what I told the man—and that's the truth."
"Of course you want to sell," asserted Callista in exasperation, "and you want to sell terrible bad—we all do. Nobody in the Turkey Tracks has got any money. We just live from hand to272mouth, and dig what we get out of the ground mighty hard. Oh, I wish't I was a man. I'd go straight down to the Settlement and sell this land before I came back."
A faint color showed itself in her husband's brown cheeks. His lips parted slightly and remained so for a moment before he spoke.
"Not unless the man you was chanced to be me, you wouldn't sell my land," he said at length, speaking softly, almost dreamily.
Callista's temper was slow, but it was implacable. She eyed her husband for a moment and turned to begin dishing up her supper. Lance lifted his son back once more out of reach of the instrument, set him comfortably against the propped open door, took up the banjo and commenced to play a lively air for the boy's diversion.
"Flenton Hands has sold," Callista flung out the words as she bent over the hearth to a pot that stood there. She had the news from Roxy Griever.
"Uh-huh," agreed Lance indefinitely, and offered no question as to what the lands had brought or whether the deal was actually closed.
"Sylvane said Gran'pappy met him in the big road, and he said that them that didn't sell now, or that just give options, would be sorry afterwards. He thinks the Company's mistaken about the273coal being on this side o' the ridge, and that they'll soon find it out and quit buying."
"That so?" laughed Lance. "Well, in that case, I sha'n't make no efforts. I'd hate to get anything off the Company that wasn't coming to me, and I reckon—"
He broke off suddenly. Callista had turned to face him, white, angry as he had never seen her before. Her blue eyes rounded meaningly to the downy poll of the baby sitting on the floor between them. This was how much he cared for the up-bringing and the future of the child.
"Lance Cleaverage," she said in a low, even tone, "a woman that's married to a man, and lived with him for two years, and got his child to raise, ought to quit him for such a speech as that."
This was the ultimate challenge. Here was the gage thrown down. She dared him. He leaned forward to lift back the boy, who was clambering once more for the banjo. Then he straightened up and looked his Callista full in the eye, breathing light and evenly, half smiling, his face strangely luminous.
"All right," he said, and his voice rang keen-edged and vibrant. "If them's your ruthers—walk out. What's a'keepin' you? Shain't be said I ever hendered a woman that wanted to quit me."
Very softly, Callista set down the plate of bread she held. Gazing straight ahead of her, she stood a moment rigid,274in a waiting, listening attitude. Out of her mood of cold displeasure, of nagging resentment, flamed, at her husband's words, that sudden fire of relentless rage of which Callista was capable. Her sight cleared, and she became aware of what she was staring at—the wall, with its well-planned shelves of Lance's contriving; the beautifully whittled utensils and small, dainty implements of cedar which he had made for her use. Slowly her glance swept the circle of the room. Evidences of Lance's skill and cleverness were everywhere; proofs that he had persistently tamed both to the service of wife and home. Yet, at this moment, these things made no appeal. Mechanically she inspected her supper table, then turned and moved swiftly across the open passage to the room beyond. Promptly, unerringly, she gathered together a bundle of needments for herself and the child, thrust them in a clean flour sack, and swung it across her arm. Going back, she found her husband still sprawled in the doorway, his side face held to the darkening interior of the room behind him. Banjo on knee, he leaned against the lintel, whistling beneath his breath, his eyes on the far primrose band of light dying down in the west.
Callista gave no further glance at the home which had been much to her. She averted her gaze stonily from the husband who had once been all. Bending, with a single motion she swept the baby up in her arm, raised him to her shoulder and stepped to the275open doorway. Lance never turned his head or seemed to note her. He made room for her passage without appearing to move a muscle. Out she went and down to the gate—a real gate, that swung true and did not drag; Lance's planning and handiwork. She unlatched it, passed through, and drew it shut behind her, never looking back.
And with scarcely a change of attitude and expression, except that his fingers twitched a bit and the smile on his lean, brown, young face became set and unnatural, he watched her evenly swaying figure pass on down the road. Head defiantly erect, eyes strangely bright. Lance stared meaninglessly, like a man shot through but not yet crumpling to his fall. The baby fluttered a fat, white, little starfish of a hand over his mother's shoulder and called "Bye-by," the sum of all his attainments in the matter of language.
The man did not look up. His head was bent now, his gaze had forsaken the slender new moon swinging like a boat in the greenish haze of the western sky, where some smoldering coals of sunset yet sent up gray twilight smoke.
Callista vanished between the trees. It was dusk, and deeply still. Down in the alders, beside the spring branch, the whippoorwills were calling. In the intervals of their far, plaintive importunity, the silence was punctuated lightly by the276tiny, summer-evening chirpings in the grass.
The moon sank lower, the sunset coals burned into swart cinders; the hosts of the dark marched in upon the still figure on the doorstone where Lance crouched motionless, his face drooped almost to the threshold, his arms flung forward till they touched the nodding weeds by the path. So an hour counted itself out, and there was no change in his posture, no lifting of the head. The little moon finally dropped down behind the hills; dew lay thick on the curls beside the great limestone slab. About ten o'clock a cloud blew in through the Gap, bearing a tiny shower of summer rain. Under the cool pattering that drenched his hair and garments. Lance stirred not at all; but all the noises of the July night were hushed by it, and in the chill which followed, he shivered. Deep in the night's silent heart, a bird cried out; Lance started and raised his face to the darkness with a sort of groan.
"And this time she won't come back," he whispered.
277
CALLISTA reached her grandfather's gate when the old man was just finishing that last pipe he loved to smoke in his big hickory arm chair on the porch before he lay down for his night's rest. In the soft, summer night, beginning to be thick with stars, he was aware that whoever the newcomer was, it was someone well known to the dogs, for the chorus of greetings was distinctly friendly. Yet his keen old hunter's ears noticed the surprised yap of a younger hound born since Callista left the farm; and when his granddaughter emerged into the light of the doorway, he was scarcely surprised.
"Good evenin', Gran'pappy. Where's Mother?" Callista greeted him.
Before Ajax could answer her, his daughter-in-law came hurrying out crying,
"Lord love yo' soul, honey! Did you git home at last to see yo' mammy that's—"
Callista silenced her with a raised hand.
"W'y, Callisty honey," ejaculated Mrs. Gentry, examining her anxiously, "is anything the matter with Lance?"
A slight contraction passed across the visitor's face, as they278watched it, but she answered coldly, evenly,
"I reckon there's nothing more the matter of Lance Cleaverage than there always has been. I've come home."
Dead silence followed this statement. Then old Ajax knocked the ashes out of his pipe and slowly put it in his pocket.
"Uh-huh," he agreed, "you've come home—and I always knowed you would."
Octavia turned on him crying in a voice more tremulous with tears than anger,
"Now, Pap Gentry—"
But Callista interposed, with the faintest flicker of her old fire,
"Let him have his say. I told you-all once, standin' right here on this porch, that I'd never come home to this house with empty hands—that I'd bring something. Well, I have. I've brought this child."
Octavia was striving to take the baby from his mother's arms, to draw Callista into the house. At this she began to cry,
"Make her hush, Pap Gentry," she pleaded. "Don't set there and let my gal talk that-a-way!"
But old Ajax, remembering the turbulent days of his youth, knowing from his own wild heart in those long past days the anger that burned in Callista, and must have way, wisely offered279no interference.
"I've come home to stay," Callista pursued bitterly, "and I've brought my boy. But ye needn't be afraid of seein' us come. Sence I lived here I've learned how to work. I can earn my way, and his, too."
"Callista," sobbed the mother, clinging to her daughter, still seeking to draw her forward, "you're welcome here; and, if anything, the boy is welcomer. We ain't got nobody but you. Pappy, make her welcome; tell her that we're proud to have her as long as she's willin' to stay, and—and—" she hesitated desperately—"we'd be proud to have Lance, too."
She instantly saw her mistake. Callista drew herself sharply from her mother's detaining arms and sat down on the porch edge, hushing the child whom their talk had disturbed. Presently she said—and her voice sounded low, and cold, and clear,
"I have quit Lance Cleaverage. You needn't name his being anywhere that I'm at."
Gentry snorted, and heaved himself up in his chair as though to go into the house.
"I consider that I had good cause to quit him," Callista went on; "but I'm not a-goin' to—"
"I don't want to know yo' reasons!" broke in old Ajax fiercely. "I say, reason! Reason and you ort not to be named in the same day. Yo' mammy spiled you rotten—I told her so, a-many's the time—and now them that wishes you well has to look on and see280you hit out and smash things."
The deep, rumbling old voice sank and quavered toward the end.
"I wasn't going to give you any reasons," returned Callista contemptuously. "Them that I've got are betwixt me and Lance—and there they'll always be. I would rather live at home; but I can earn my keep and the chap's anywhere. Shall I go—or stay?"
The old man put down a shaking hand and laid it on her shoulder—a tremendous demonstration for Ajax Gentry.
"You'll stay, gal," he said in a broken tone. "You'll stay, and welcome. But I want you to know right here and now that I think Lance Cleaverage is a mighty fine man. You' my gran'child—my onliest one—I set some considerable store by ye myse'f. But there's nothing you've said or done that gives me cause to change my mind about Lance."
Callista rose, still hushing her boy in her arms.
"If I'm to live with you-all," she said in a tone of authority which had never been hers in the days of her petted, spoiled girlhood, "I may as well speak out plain and say that I never want to hear the name of Cleaverage if I can help it. If you don't agree to that—without any why or wherefore—I'd rather not stay."
"Oh, honey—oh, honey!" protested Octavia tearfully. "Gran'pappy281and me will do just whatever you say. Fetch the baby in the house. God love his little soul, hit's the first time he's ever been inside of these doors—and to think he should come this-a-way!"
Callista drew back and eyed her mother.
"If you're going to go on like that," she said, "I reckon it would be just as well for me to live somewheres else. You won't see me shed a tear. I don't know what there is to cry for. Gran'pappy is an old man—he ought to have some peace about him. I won't come in unless you hush."
And having laid her will upon them both, Callista Cleaverage re-entered the dwelling of her girlhood and disposed her sleeping boy on the bed in the fore room.
To the mind of man, which looks always to find noise and displacement commensurate with size, there is something appalling about the way in which the great events of life slip smoothly into position, fitting themselves between our days with such nicety as to seem always to have been there. Little calamities jar and fret and refuse to be adjusted, but matters of life and death and eternity flow as smoothly as water.
Callista might have dropped easily into her old place in the home, but the woman who had returned to the Gentry roof could never have contented herself in that narrow sphere. Strong, efficient, driven to tireless activity by memories which one282might guess stung and hurt the mind at leisure, she cleared out the long unused weaving room and set the loom to work.
"Aunt Faithful Bushares learned me to weave whilst I was stayin' at Miz. Griever's, after the baby was born," she told her mother. "I'll finish this rag carpet you've got in the loom, and then I'll be able to earn some ready money. I can weave mighty pretty carpet, and a body can get a plenty of it to do from down in the Settlement. They's things I need from the store now and agin, and this boy's got to have something laid by for him, to take care of him as he grows."
Thus boldly, at the outset—though without mentioning the forbidden name—she made it known to them that she would accept nothing from her husband. Octavia Gentry was always on the edge of tears when she talked to Callista about her plans; at other times, the daughter's presence in the house was cheerful and sustaining. If Callista brooded on the shipwreck of her affairs, she asked no sympathy from anyone. Indeed, so far from seeking it, she resented bitterly any suggestion of the sort.
Lance's own family blamed him more than did Callista's people. Roxy Griever, of course, was loud in her denunciations.
"Hit's jest the trick a body might expect from one of tham men," she commented. "He never was fitten for Callisty; and when a283feller plumb outmarries hisself, looks like hit makes a fool of him, and he cain't noways behave."
Old Kimbro gazed upon the floor.
"I reckon it's my fault, Roxana," he said gently. "Lance has a strong nature, and he needed better discipline than what I was able to give him. I had my hopes that he'd get it in his marriage, for daughter Callista is sure a fine woman; but—well, maybe time'll mend it. I don't give up all hope yet."
"Miz. Gentry sent word that she wanted me to help them through fodder-pullin'," Sylvane announced. "If I do, I'm a-goin' to watch my chance to talk to Sis' Callie. She's always the sweetest thing to me. I'll bet I can get in a good word for Buddy."
But it was Roxy Griever who saw Callista before Sylvane did. Octavia, desperately anxious and perturbed, sent word to the widow to drop in as though by accident and spend the day. Callista came into the room without knowing who was present. The two women were fluttering about over her baby, exclaiming and admiring. The young mother greeted the visitor with an ordinary manner, which yet was a trifle cold.
"The boy's mighty peart," the Widow Griever said eagerly. "But," examining Callista with a somewhat timid eye, "you' lookin' a284little puny yo'self. Sis' Callie."
"Oh, I'm perfectly well," returned Callista sharply.
There fell a silence, upon which Roxy's voice broke, husky and uncertain.
"Well, I hope you won't harbor no hard feelin's toward any of Lance's kin-folks, for we don't none of us uphold him."
At the name a quiver went through Callista's frame, the blue eyes fixed on Roxy's face flickered a bit in their steady, almost fierce regard. Then she bent and picked up her child.
"I reckon Mother hasn't said anything to you," she explained evenly; "but I have asked each and every in this house not to say—You spoke a name that I won't hear from anybody if I can help it. If you and me are to sit down at the same table, you'll have to promise not to mention that—that person again."
Then she walked out, leaving the two older women staring at each other, aghast, both of them with tears in their eyes.
"But I cain't blame her," Roxana hastened to declare. "I know in my soul that everything that's chanced is Lance's fault. He always was the meanest little boy, and the worst big boy, and the sinfulest young man, that ever a God-fearin' father had! He never was half way fitten for Callista—and I always said so."
"Oh, Miz. Griever—hush!" protested Octavia. "She'll hear you—285Sis' ain't but gone in the next room."
"Well, I hope she may," the widow pursued piously, in a slightly raised tone. "I'd hate mightily to have my sweet Sis' Callie think that I held with any sech; or that I didn't know what her troubles had been, or didn't feel that she was plumb jestified and adzactly right in all points and in all ways whatever."
"M—maybe she is," sniffed soft-hearted Octavia; "but I love Lance mighty well. Right now I could jest break down and bawl when I think o' him there in the cabin all alone by himself, and—"
The closing words were lost in the apron she raised to her eyes. If Callista heard the controversy, it had an odd effect; for she treated the Widow Griever with considerable resentment, and, laying a gentle hand on her mother's shoulder, said to her apart:
"I don't want to be a torment to you, Mammy; but I believe when any of those folks are about I'd better just take the baby and stay in my own house."
"But, honey," her mother remonstrated, "Pappy Gentry's aimin' to have Sylvanus here all through fodder-pullin' time. Is that a-goin' to trouble you? Do you just despise all them that's kin to—would you ruther we didn't have the boy?"
Callista shook her head.
"It ain't for me to say," she repeated stubbornly Then, with a286sudden rush of tears in her hard eyes, "I do love Sylvane. I always did. I couldn't have an own brother I'd think more of. But—well, let him come over here if you want him. I can keep out of his way."
The "house" to which Callista proposed to retire was the outside cabin, where the loom stood. This she had fitted up for the use of herself and child, as well as a weaving room, saying that the noise might disturb Gran'pappy if the baby were in the house all the time. And it was at the threshold of that outside cabin that, only a few days later, Sylvane caught his sister-in-law and detained her, the baby on her arm. Little Ajax reared himself in his mother's hold and plunged at his youthful uncle, so that she had no choice but to turn and speak.
"How you come on, Sis' Callie?" Sylvane inquired, after he had tossed the heavy boy up a time or two and finally set him on his shoulder.
"Tol'able," Callista returned briefly. "I've got a lot of weavin' to do and it keeps me in the house pretty steady."
"I—was you leavin' in thar becaze I come?" inquired Sylvane with a boy's directness.
Callista shook her head.
"Didn't I tell you I was mighty busy?" she asked evasively. "You an' me always have been good friends, Sylvane, and I aim that we287always shall be, if it lies in my power."
The young fellow looked up at her where she stood above him in the doorway.
"You ain't never a-goin' to fuss with me," he told her bluntly. "Besides, me and this chap is so petted on each other that you couldn't keep us apart," and he turned to root a laughing face into the baby's side, greatly to that serious-minded young man's enjoyment.
Callista smiled down at both of them, and Sylvane found something wintry and desolate in the smile.
"Weavin' is mighty hard work," he broke out impatiently. "Even Sis' Roxy says that, and the Lord knows she's ready to kill herself and everybody else around her with workin'. What makes you do so much of it, Sis' Callie?"
Callista looked past the two and answered:
"Sylvane, a woman with a child to support has to work hard here in the Turkey Tracks. If it wasn't for Mommie and Gran'pappy I'd go down in the Settlement, where I could earn more and earn it easier."
"Callista—honey," Sylvane bent forward and caught her arm. "You ain't got no call to talk that-a-way. Lance shore has a right to support his own son—even if you won't take nothin' from him for yo'self."
Callista removed her gaze from the far sky line and brought it288down to her young brother-in-law. Now indeed her smile was wintry, even bitter.
"The man you named, Sylvane," she said explicitly, "has no notion of carin' what becomes of this child. Now that you've brought this up, I'll say to you what I haven't said to any other: it was this that caused me to quit Lance. You' right, I did leave the house in there for fear you should speak to me—and speak of him. If I could be sure that I'd never hear his name again, I'd be better suited. I reckon you'll have to promise not to bring this up again, or they'll sure get to be hard feelings between you and me."
Sylvane dropped back with a face of consternation, his hand fell away from her arm. He reached up and drew the boy down, so that the small, fair face was against his breast.
"Sis' Callie," he began incredulously, "I cain't believe it. Buddy's got quare ways, but them that loves him can understand. His own son—! Why, ef the chap was mine—" He broke off, and stood a moment in silence. "The meanest man there is, looks like to me, ort to be glad to do for his own child."
The words were not so strange on the lips of the tall seventeen-year-old boy with the child's eyes, since in mountain communities youths little older are often husbands and fathers.
"Well, air you going to promise me never to name it again?" demanded Callista, an almost querulous edge to her voice.289Sylvane's resemblance to his brother, some gnawing knowledge of injustice toward the absent Lance, wrought upon her mood intolerably.
"No, I'll never name Buddy to you again," said Sylvane soberly. "If you and me ever talks of him, you'll have to mention it first. But if there is anything I can do for you, Sis' Callie, you know you have but to ask."
"I know that, Sylvane," Callista assured him, with a certain eagerness in her tone. "And they is something—something that I reckon nobody could do as well as you could. I need—I just have obliged to get my things from—from up yon in the Gap. Would you go fetch 'em for me, Brother?"
Sylvane, after all, was kin to Lance. He could not keep down a little thrill of pride, that his brother had thus far forced Callista's hand. But he answered gravely—almost sadly,
"I'll go this day, if you say so."
Securing permission from Ajax to absent himself, the boy hitched his old mule to the buckboard and hurried off to the home at the head of Lance's Laurel. Whether or not he found all of Callista's belongings packed and ready, what was said between the two men, no one knew. He returned near nightfall with Callista's trunk and one or two sizable bundles, while Spotty meekly led roped to the rear axle of the buckboard. Callista290helped him into her cabin with the bundles; but when he would have untied Spotty she remonstrated.
"I surely thought you were fixing to take the cow over to yo' house," she said shortly. "It doesn't belong here."
"It was said to be yours," Sylvane told her, true to his promise not to mention his brother's name, even inferentially. "I 'lowed that the baby and—and all—would need the milk. Reckon you best leave her stay."
"No," said Callista positively. "The cow's nothing I have any concerns with. Maybe Sis' Roxy could make use of the milk. Take her along home, Sylvane, or drive her back where she came from—or turn her loose, for all of me."
And then Sylvane knew whether his brother had failed in care for the child.
When Callista came in from disposing of this question of the cow, she found her mother standing, inclined, as usual, to be tearful, over the boxes and bundles. Coming on one of these latter with a peculiar knot which Lance always used, and which he had once taught her the secret of, Callista experienced a sick revulsion of feeling.
"I wish you'd undo 'em and put 'em away for me. Mammy," she said with unusual gentleness. "I think I hear the baby."
"All right, honey, go 'long and 'tend to him. I'll see to these," agreed Octavia patiently.
Callista hurried over to the big house where young Ajax lay291asleep, and, as chance would have it, found indeed that he had wakened. She was hushing him on her knee a few minutes later, when her mother appeared in the doorway, a little money held in her trembling hands, and her eyes now openly overflowing.
"That pore boy!" Octavia burst out. "Look what he sent you. Sis! Now, he hain't sold anything of his crop—not yet. The good Lord only knows whar he come by this; but what he could get his hands on, he's sent you."
Callista leaped to her feet and ran to the door, pushing her mother aside none too gently, offending Ajax greatly by her rough handling of him.
"Sylvane!" she cried in the direction of the horse lot where Sylvane had gone to exchange the harness for a saddle on the mule. "Whoo-ee—Sylvane!"
"I'm a-comin'," Sylvane's voice answered, and she turned swiftly to the bed and laid the baby down.
"Give me that money!" she demanded.
"What for?" asked Octavia with unexpected spirit, tucking the bills in against her arm and refusing them.
"I want to send it back by Sylvane."
"You ain't a-goin' to do any such thing," Octavia declared. "The good Lord! To think that I ever raised such a gal as you air!"
"Give it to me!" Callista laid hands upon her mother's arm,292wrenching at it. "Here's Sylvane. Give it to me now!"
The thud of the mule's hoofs approaching the door came clearly to both of them. Callista could even distinguish the little cow's light feet following.
The two wrestled and swayed a moment, Callista pushing a strong, capable hand into the elbow where the bills and the few coins were held.
"Take it, then. Oh, my Lord!" moaned Octavia. "I think you're the hard-heartedest somebody I ever knew of. Pore Lance—pore Lance!"
Sylvane, riding to the door with the rejected cow, received with something of Lance's stoic grace the despised money. A thankfulness that his "Buddy" was rehabilitated in his eyes made him say, as he stuffed the small wad down in his pocket:
"An' I don't take back my word. Sis' Callie. You wouldn't have these; but whatever I can do is ready and waitin', you know that."
And somehow, in the hour of her victory, Callista tasted defeat.