Coming suavely and benignly after the cruel winter, the warmth fell like a softly enfolding presence. Spring is a gracious season in Kentucky, full of the smell of flowering locusts, of birdsong, and happy mornings. With sunlight falling through open doors and windows, the children playing outside and the baby asleep in her cradle, the house that all winter had been a cluttered, stinking prison became by contrast quiet, spacious, and restful.
Stimulated by the change, Judith cleaned house, raked up the yard, and burned the winter accumulation of rubbish, set out her garden and even planted some seed of sweet peas and nasturtiums about the house. The caressing spring days filled her with a sense of calmness and passive wellbeing.
She never sang or romped any more. She could not rejoice and be glad with these things of nature. But out of her calm torpor she looked at them as through a thin mist and they sank upon her spirit like healing on a wound. She grew very fond of sitting on the doorstep.
It was that spring that the United States began to make preparations to send young men to Europe to fight for democracy.
A black wave of fear darkened the sunshine of Scott County when it became known that the United States had entered the war. Gus Dibble's vague apprehensions that the trouble might come their way had incredibly been realized. Out of the mouth of a fool the truth had come, and the impossible had happened. The war had crossed the ocean and was among them and was going to take them away from their homes. A few restless and physically fit young blades like Ziemer Whitmarsh and Bob Crupper found in the news the glorious promise of adventure. A few hailed it as a hope of deliverance fromirksome conditions of life. But to most of these simple youths who had never been more than twenty miles away from their own dooryards it brought terror, stark and appalling: terror of the unknown into which they would be dragged from the security of their home cabins and tobacco patches, terror of death and of the unknown after death. In the tired bodies and shrinking minds of these underfed young men there was little to foster a thirst for adventure, still less any feeling of adherence to such a middle class luxury as patriotism. No newspapers nor shouting demagogues came to them with the lies that create and feed an artificial frenzy. For them there were neither crowds nor music nor public acclaim: no showy paraphernalia to hide the stinking carcass of war; only the naked certainty, faced and pondered upon in solitude, that inevitably that dreaded and all-powerful machine known as the law would reach out for them, take them out of their homes, away from the comfort of familiar faces, and place them they knew not where. Knowing nothing of the law and its processes, they feared and respected it beyond all other things. To them it was a god much more real and powerful than the still less known God of the Bible.
It was the most timid among them who developed the boldness of desperation and dared to hide themselves from the recruiting officer. They dropped out of sight, fled away to the hill country. Often they were brought back ignominiously and given a year in jail. Sometimes they were never heard of again.
For the most part, the young men shambled mechanically about the barnyard and behind the plow, trying with indifferent success to cultivate stoicism, afraid of being thought cowards, waiting in cold terror until their time should come.
Fear and hate lay at the hearts of the mothers. And having fewer pretenses to keep up than their sons and less respect for vested authority, they gave free voice to their feelings. Mothers whose sons had been caught in the draft said hard and bitter things behind the backs of the more fortunate ones whose offspring had escaped. There was weeping into midnightpillows, there was terror and dismay, envy, and hard suspicion.
Elmer, the second oldest Gibbs boy, shot himself in the foot while he was out hunting. Nobody knew why or what he was hunting at that time of year. He was lamed for life, so Dr. MacTaggert said; but he didn't have to go.
Marsh, his elder brother, was all agog to get into the fray. He had been listening to the talk of Bob and Ziemer; and being something of a braggart like his father, he had begun to lust for military adventures.
One afternoon when he was plowing near by, he took refuge in the Blackford kitchen from a heavy thunderstorm. From time to time, as he sat close to the door, he cast a swift glance at Judith who stood by the table ironing a Sunday shirt for Jerry. When she went to the stove to change her iron, he followed her movements with eyes that peered furtively from under the brim of his frayed straw hat.
"Well, Marsh," she said, "I hear you're a-goin' into the war."
His face brightened.
"You betcha. Me an' Bob an' Ziemer is a-goin' to clean 'em up good."
"An' what you a-goin' to fight for, Marsh?"
"I dun—" He checked the word before it was out of his lips. "What we a-goin' to fight fer? Why, fer our rights, o' course. An' we're a-goin' to lick 'em, too, the hull lot of 'em."
"Haow do you mean, the hull lot of 'em? Who all air you a-goin' to lick?"
"Why, all them furriners o' course: the Germans an' the Turks an' the Eyetalians an' the French an' the whole lousy shootin' match."
Among the women a few bright particular spirits like Aunt Eppie, who had no sons of an age to come within the selective draft, burned with righteous zeal against the Hun. And as the tigress is more fierce and pitiless than her male companion, so the hatred in the hearts of these women burned with a more cruel, intense, and implacable fury than a man's heart is able to sustain. Aunt Eppie, who had gloried in her neutralitybefore the United States went into the war, considering the belligerents all equally despicable and trifling, now could not find enough words of praise for the Allies, nor heap sufficient ignominy on the Germans. When Aunt Eppie spoke of the unspeakable Hun and the idolatrous Turk, her cold gray eyes flashed with the steely gleam of a scimiter, her false teeth came together with a fierce click, like a rat trap closing down on an unfortunate lover of cheese, and her imperious, bony knuckles rapped the table with a sound as suggestive of finality as the driving of nails into a coffin.
Jerry's mother, Aunt Mary Blackford, was another who was consumed with the fires of hate. At any mention of the enemy Aunt Mary's personality changed from kittenish to tigerish. It was an uncanny thing to see this small, frail woman, so given over to the service of others, so devoted to her husband, her sons, and her grandchildren, so kind and friendly toward her neighbors, turn into a spiteful, vicious virago at the mere mention of people of whom she knew nothing whatever. As the cat's claws are sharp and pitiless, so something hard, cruel, and implacable stretched itself at this crisis out of Aunt Mary's velvet exterior. Her blue eyes, ordinarily mild and childlike, could flash with as cold a gleam as Aunt Eppie's gray ones. Her mouth could shut in lines as hard and pitiless. Her baby-like hands, fluttering in excited anger, seemed to Judith even more savage claws than Aunt Eppie's imperiously tapping knuckles. The younger woman felt something akin to hate rise in her own breast as she turned coldly away from Aunt Mary's demonstrations of righteous indignation.
"I reckon," she said, looking with coolly level eyes at her mother-in-law, "if you'd been born a German you'd be the fust one to hate us Americans same's you're a-hatin' the Germans naow. An' either way there'd be about as much sense to it."
Aunt Mary bridled fiercely under Judith's cold gaze.
"Well, I'm thankful I hain't one o' them that's without no nat'ral human feelin's," she spat out, then was silent, unable to find words to express her irritation and chagrin. Theatmosphere was dense with the intensity of the two women's dislike for each other.
"When times like these comes, they show up folks in their real nater," sniffed Aunt Mary, after an angry pause.
"Yes, they do," answered Judith, with cold incisiveness.
Jerry, the only true devotee of peace, was made miserable when his wife and his mother sparred about the war. He shifted uneasily and looked from one to the other with dumbly beseeching eyes, like those of a gentle dog.
One morning when she was churning on the porch, Bob Crupper sauntered around the corner of the house.
For some time he hung about, talking of this and that: last night's rain that would bring the tobacco beds along, the new flagpole that they had just set up in the school yard, the big price that the sheep men were going to get for their wool. As he talked, he sat on the edge of the porch and whittled aimlessly at a stick or trundled a toy wagon up and down the porch floor with his hand.
At last, after a silence broken only by the thump of the dasher in the churn, he roused himself and stood up.
"Well, I must be a-goin'. I'm off to-night for the trainin' camp. So I'll say good-by."
She released the dasher and gave him her hand. He took it in his which was large, firm, and warm. His face twitched with embarrassment.
Suddenly she felt his face close to hers and heard his voice in a quick, hoarse whisper.
"Judy, mebbe I won't never see you agin. I'm agoin' to hev one kiss anyway afore I go."
She felt herself melting into his arms as he kissed her on the mouth long and passionately. The next moment he was gone.
Her hands trembled as she took hold of the dasher again. Had she kissed him back or had she not kissed him back, she wondered. For a long time her lips burned from his kiss, as once before her neck and shoulder had burned from his look.
In June the neighborhood was thrown into a flutter of excitement by the coming of two evangelists. People said that they were from a little sect in the hill country. They stopped with Uncle Joe Patton, who was himself a religious man and a total abstainer, and they were to hold their meetings in Uncle Joe's house. All the neighbors were urged to attend the meetings.
Jerry was again working beyond his strength. He was determined to have a big tobacco crop this year. It was whispered that the price of tobacco would go sky high on account of America being in the war. He was becoming grouchy from the strain of overwork. Judith, with three babies to care for, could give no help.
"I hain't a-goin' to be drug to none o' their godforsaken meetin's," he said testily to Judith, when she mentioned the evangelists. "I'm too damn tired nights to do anything but turn in. But there hain't nothin' to keep you from goin' if you've a mind. I'll be here in the house with the young uns. All I ast is don't wake me up when you come home."
The thought of the evangelists piqued Judith's curiosity. Her life was easier now that summer had come; and her peaceful apathy was beginning to be stirred by slight tremors of returning interest in things. She had never listened to an evangelist since that half forgotten night when she was ten. She decided to go.
On the way she called for Hat. She knew that Hat would be going. As she expected Hat was preparing to start and had made elaborate toilet preparations. She had frizzed her hair so that it stood out violently on all sides, and she was wearing a stiffly starched pink calico dress. Under the dress Judith glimpsed the red petticoat.
Luke, in his sock feet, stretched luxuriously in an old rocker.
"I reckon you two is spilin' fer sumpin to do," he said, giving them a swift disdainful glance, as he spat into the woodbox. "An' if them lousy preachers'd foller the plow a spell or do a little wrastlin' on the end of a shovel through the day,they wouldn't be so spry about draggin' the wimmin out nights."
"Aw, shet up," returned Hat. "I guess seekin' the Lord nights is jes as good as huntin' foxes anyway. You don't need to hand out no lip."
They walked across fields to the Patton home, each carrying a lantern, for there was no moon. The night was warm and sweet with the smells of summer. Blackberry bushes reached sharp tentacles out of the dark and made Hat gather her precious dress more closely about her.
"I wisht the meetin's was held anywheres but at Patton's place," she fretted. "It's so durn hard to git to, an' when you git there it's so lonesome lookin' it seems like it's hanted. The old folks all says it's hanted. It gives me the chills."
They crossed one creek on a plank and another on a log. Hat's great bulk teetered uneasily on the log and she thought of her clean dress and white stockings.
"Durn hard place to git to," she muttered.
The light wind was balmy and full of woodsy fragrance. In one place a whiff from a flowering alfalfa field came to them on the warm air heavy and sweet.
In a corner of a pasture their footsteps startled some sheep invisible in the darkness. A shivery sound of the movement of many soft bodies and then the patter of innumerable small feet told them that the sheep had scampered away. A few who had become separated from the main flock bleated inquiringly. The others answered: "This way, sisters, this way."
Judith felt strangely stirred and elated. It was an adventure, this coming out into the warm, soft, fragrant night. She thrilled to hear the sheep pattering away into the darkness calling to each other.
A rough wagon track down the side of a steep hill covered with brush and stunted trees brought them to the clearing about the Patton house. It was a tall old house built of heavy logs that had once been whitewashed. It rose corpselike in thedim light of the stars. Small dark windows piercing the thickness of the logs looked out from the pallid walls like eyes.
The house was hemmed in on every side. On the north, from which they had approached it, the hill rose abruptly. East and west the woods crept almost to the doors. On the south was Stony Creek, a torrent in winter, a wide, half dried up river bed in summer. Wagons to get to the place must either come down the steep hill or ford the river. The house was shaded by aged gray willows. Of evenings it was swathed in vapors from the river bed.
There was a vague story whispered about the place: a story of one of those atrocious murders that occur from time to time in out-of-the-way places, where solitude and the emptiness of life teach the mind to brood. Such morbidly brooding minds sometimes flare out into sudden, grim passions, craving the sacrifice of blood.
Such a story was told about the Patton place. Perhaps it had a basis of fact. Perhaps it was only a myth grown out of the sinister appearance of the house and the dark-crannied minds of the tobacco growers. It was old and vague and told with many variations.
"Land alive, but it's a pesky, shivery place," complained Hat. "An' it's damp an' dirty, too. I despise sech a place. I wouldn't live here fer no money."
Light shone from one window of the Patton house, and several low-burning lanterns stood by the door. They added their own to the gleaming cluster and pushed open the door.
Uncle Joe Patton was praying. In the half light cast by a tall, thin glass lamp with a tiny wick, a dozen or so women and perhaps half a dozen men knelt upon the floor before planks laid from chair to chair. Two dogs sat at respectful attention and one was curled up under the table. A large black cat slept on the flattened patchwork cushion of the only rocking chair in the room. The heavy beams of the low ceiling, blackened with smoke and hung with cobwebs, seemed to absorb into their gloom the light of the small lamp.
Uncle Joe's prayer was long and meandering, like all his talk. He was a very old man, and like many other old men harped constantly upon a certain few things, saying them over and over again, each time as impressively as if they were quite new to the patient listener. He addressed the Lord in like manner. His voice rumbling along in the level monotone appropriate to prayer was as drowsy as the humming of bees over a clover field. Judith, who had been standing at the washtub most of the day, caught herself nodding into sleep as she knelt at the end of one of the planks.
She was roused from one of these dozes by Uncle Jabez's dog poking his moist nose into her face; and she began to peer about from under her sunbonnet in quest of the two strangers. She found them easily enough; but their heads were so devoutly bowed in prayer that there was nothing of them to be seen but backs and shoulders. She saw Hat's eyes traveling in the same direction as her own, and encountered the bored gaze of Uncle Jabez and the twinkling gray eyes of Uncle Sam Whitmarsh, who was taking a look around after having consulted his watch.
She dozed a little; and when she roused herself and fell to peeping again she caught an exchange of looks between Abbie Gibbs and Ziemer Whitmarsh.
Aunt Jenny Patton, who suddenly remembered that she had forgotten to put the yeast into the rising of bread, rose at this moment and slipped unobtrusively into the back kitchen. The cat in the rocking chair yawned and stretched, then curled again deliciously. Still Uncle Joe droned along. The kneelers stirred more and more uneasily trying to relieve their cramped legs and aching knees.
At last, when they had almost lost hope, Uncle Joe droned to an end; and they all stood up with sighs of relief and were led into a hymn. The two evangelists and Jabez Moorhouse were the only ones who really sang. The others made vague, inarticulate sounds, took breath gaspingly and quavered uneasily into silence. Uncle Joe, in an aged tremolo, tried hard to follow, but was like a dog that has lost the scent.
When the harvest is past and the summer is gone,And summons and prayers shall be o'er;When the harvest is past and the summer is gone,And Jesus invites us no more.
When the harvest is past and the summer is gone,And summons and prayers shall be o'er;When the harvest is past and the summer is gone,And Jesus invites us no more.
When the harvest is past and the summer is gone,And summons and prayers shall be o'er;When the harvest is past and the summer is gone,And Jesus invites us no more.
When the harvest is past and the summer is gone,
And summons and prayers shall be o'er;
When the harvest is past and the summer is gone,
And Jesus invites us no more.
The evangelists were both rather good singers, and Jabez had a sonorous bass. The tune went wailing to the smoky rafters, wistful and melancholy.
During the hymn Judith and everybody else gazed curiously at the evangelists.
They were farmer folk like herself she knew by the sure intuition with which people know their own kind. One was tall and flimsy of body, with a receding chin, bulging eyes light blue in color, prominent teeth and a large Adam's apple. She seemed to have seen him before or somebody like him. He made her think of a fish. He looked innocent, kindly, and stupid.
The other was shorter and more compactly built. There was nothing remarkable about his face or figure except that he had strange, arresting eyes that seemed to smolder with a dark, inward flame. The eyes fascinated her. Again and again she felt her own drawn toward them. Twice during the singing she met his gaze and turned away her own abashed and in confusion.
When the singing was over, the evangelist with the strange eyes began to preach a sermon, taking as his text the words, "Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." As soon as he began to speak, she knew that his voice matched his eyes. It was glowing, fiery, and under the fire rich with tenebrous depth. He talked about sin and the wrath to come, the raging fires of eternal damnation and the worm that never dieth. As he talked the smoldering glow of his strange eyes burst into flame. The familiar cant phrases of revivalist exhortation falling glibly from his tongue took strength and color from the fire of his dark fanaticism. In the dim light he seemed to grow larger. A potent magnetism issued from him and held the listeners spellbound.
At the end of his discourse he swept them into a hymn.
Almost persuaded. Summer is past.Almost persuaded. Doom comes at last.Almost can not avail.Sad, sad the bitter wail.Almost is but to fail.Almost—but lost.
Almost persuaded. Summer is past.Almost persuaded. Doom comes at last.Almost can not avail.Sad, sad the bitter wail.Almost is but to fail.Almost—but lost.
Almost persuaded. Summer is past.Almost persuaded. Doom comes at last.Almost can not avail.Sad, sad the bitter wail.Almost is but to fail.Almost—but lost.
Almost persuaded. Summer is past.
Almost persuaded. Doom comes at last.
Almost can not avail.
Sad, sad the bitter wail.
Almost is but to fail.
Almost—but lost.
The music, lovingly hugging the words, combined with the rankling pain of remorse and the bitterness of despair the iron clang of inevitable doom. Of its kind the hymn was a masterpiece. During the singing the simple tobacco growers and their wives, not used to spiritual stimulation, looked vaguely troubled, flustered and ill at ease.
When the hymn was over and the preacher sat down the spell was broken. Virtue seemed to have gone out of him. With all his fervor he had uttered nothing but strings of stock phrases used by every ranter about hell fire. They had heard it all before. When the glow of his personality no longer enfolded them, his listeners were left empty-minded and their thoughts reverted instantly to their own affairs, to the kitchen, the barn, and the tobacco field.
Judith did not ponder upon what the preacher had said. For her hell fire had no terrors. Her spirit was of a pagan soundness that shed such tainted superstitions as a duck's down sheds water. But she could not forget the man's darkly glowing eyes and darkly vibrant voice. Through the thick gloom as she walked home she saw the eyes burning before her, heard the voice vibrating through the fragrance of the summer night.
"Ouch!" exclaimed Hat, "if I hain't done gone an' stuck my foot into a mud hole. An' me with white stockin's on, too. Drat the durn lantern, it don't give light enough fer a flea to go to bed by."
In the same spot where it had greeted them before came a whiff from a flowering alfalfa field, not clover nor heliotrope,but a mixture of the intensest sweetness of both, subtle, and disquieting.
"Say, Judy, don't you think the short feller was good lookin'? An' what was it about his eyes—an' his voice, too? I dunno—sumpin."
All the way home Hat talked about the preacher's good looks, about Luke's slovenliness, a new dress that she was making, and a sunbonnet pattern that she had made up herself out of her own head. Through her unheeded patter of talk Judith saw the strange eyes looking at her out of the darkness, heard the dark voice vibrating in the fragrance of the summer night.
On the way home Amos Crupper said to Sam Whitmarsh in his deep chest tones:
"Waal, that there was a fine sermon the young feller preached—a strong, powerful sermon. I like to listen to a good sermon an' read the news about the war. It makes a man feel like life hain't all but jes plantin' an' diggin' taters an' hoein' terbaccer."
"Yaas," agreed Uncle Sam, "sech things livens a feller up a bit an' makes him realize this life hain't all. I hearn you was needin' a buggy hoss, Amos. I got the finest little mare—dark bay—awful purty color—six year old no more, an' I'd—"
"No, Sam, she hain't fer me," Uncle Amos interrupted him smiling genially. "I knowed that there little mare when Pete Akers had her, an' I know she's twelve if she's a day an' she's had the heaves since she was little more'n a colt. You fix her up with a little dose o' birdshot to cover up them heaves an' take her to Georgetown on Court Day. You'll be able to trade her good an' mebbe put a little piece o' money in yer pocket."
On the way home Jabez Moorhouse, walking somberly alone, thought how his life had been wasted.
"I cud a made a preacher," he said to himself, "or a congressman or a jedge or learnt to play the fiddle good if I'd on'y had a chanct. But all my life I hain't done nothin' but digin dirt. An' all the rest o' my life I'm a-goin' to keep right on a-diggin' in dirt."
He spat tobacco juice into the grass and uttered his favorite exclamation of disgust. It was a phrase of his own contriving, a rich verbal arabesque of profanity and obscenity cunningly inwrought.
Having thus partly relieved his feelings, he took a long pull from a bottle that he always carried in his pocket.
After several long pulls he felt much better and sang into the night a ballad with the oft-recurring refrain:
"You can't have my daughter without the gray mare."
On the way home Ziemer Whitmarsh overtook Abbie Gibbs, who had purposely hung behind the other members of her family, wound his arm about her slim, consumptive waist and drew her aside from the path.
On the way home Joe Barnaby and young Marsh Gibbs hesitated where a road making gang who were widening the pike to Georgetown had left their roller and other tools by the side of the road.
"D'yuh know what I spied Gus Dibble a-doin' the other day?" said Joe in a tone of infinite disgust. "I seen him a-stealin' a log chain out o' these here fixin's. What d'yuh think of a feller'd steal a log chain, hey?"
Joe himself had for many years eked out his small means by doing jobs of lumber hauling and was hence amply provided with log chains.
"I dunno," mused Marsh. "Mebbe he needed the log chain. I know I need a new shovel awful bad, an' they've riz up awful high in price since the war come on. That there long-handled one over there is jes the kind I was a-wantin'."
He looked wistfully at the shovel.
"Oh, well, of course a shovel's diff'rent," Joe hastened to assure him. "If I wanted the shovel I'd take it along 'f I'z you. The dod gasted road comp'ny kin buy more. 'Tain't like takin' anythin' off'n a neighbor."
"That's so," agreed Marsh, taking loving hold upon the handle of the shovel.
"The young uns lost my last pair o' pliers yestiddy," confided Joe. "I made the little buggers look everywhere fer 'em, but o' course they didn't find 'em. Hardware's awful high these days. I never knowed hardware to be so high. I reckon I'll jes slip this pair into my pocket, an' nobody'll know where they went to 'cep you an' me, hey, Marsh?"
"Sure," agreed Marsh heartily, as he shouldered the shovel. "You might's well have 'em as any other night walker. Durn careless of 'em to leave these small things lyin' about anyway. Serve 'em right if they hain't here when they come back."
When Judith crept into bed beside Jerry and closed her eyes inviting sleep, she saw the burning eyes of the evangelist looking at her out of the darkness.
A few weeks before the arrival of the Evangelists, Hat had sent away a dime and a two cent stamp to certain parties who had advertised in the "Farm Wife's Friend" that for that sum they would teach you how to develop your personal magnetism and to exert it in such a way that you could control the people with whom you came in contact and make them do whatever you willed that they should do. She received in answer a typewritten letter informing her that hers had been one of the very few letters received by them which indicated beyond a doubt that the writer was a person possessed of a tremendous amount of latent magnetism, a mighty force with untold possibilities of being turned to the owner's advantage. For ordinary people the fee for further instruction was ten dollars. But for her, with her intensely interesting personality and wonderful latent power, they would make the exceptionally low rate of three dollars. For this trifling sum her special case would be taken up and studied in the minutest detail by the greatest specialists of the world, all of them congregated for this important purpose in Toledo, Ohio.
The letter brought to Hat's bosom considerable conflict of impulses. She was flattered and thrilled to know that she was the possessor of an interesting personality full of great magnetic power. In a vague way she had always suspected something of the sort. Now of course she knew for sure. She pondered upon the advantages that the use of this magnetic influence would bring. Of course her first exercise of it would be upon Luke, to make him change his socks oftener, eat less disgustingly at the table, get up first and light the fire in the morning, and chop the stove wood instead of going off and leaving it for her to do. She would also influence him to be fairer in money matters and let her have her just share ofwhat she earned and put it into a bank account in her own name. Since her marriage her disputes with Luke on the subject of the division of their money had been frequent and heated.
Having reformed Luke in this way, she was by no means sure that she would be entirely satisfied with him. She was ready to be convinced that there were nicer men in the world than Luke. Her thoughts rambled away into shadowy and devious paths, imagining lovers of many sorts. With this great power in her possession what avenue in life would be closed to her?
But three dollars! It was too much! How could she bear to take three whole dollar bills and put them into an envelope and send them away? With a two cent stamp or a dime or even both it was different. But three whole dollars! She thought of all the finery that three dollars would buy if she had a mind to spend the money on finery. She thought of all the eggs that she would have to take to Peter Akers' store to get three dollars. No, she just couldn't send away three dollars.
But the idea of having her personal magnetism developed was too fascinating a subject to be easily forgotten. She figured and pondered, almost sent the three dollars a dozen times, but could not bring herself to the final mailing of the letter.
On the day after the first revival meeting, Hat found in her mail box another letter from the cultivators of personal magnetism which fairly made her heart bleed. It began:
"Dear Harriet Wolf: If my own sister had failed to answer my letter, I could not have felt more disappointed than I was at not hearing from you. Many a night I have lain awake thinking of the tremendous power in your extremely interesting personality which is being wasted, thrown away, scattered to the idle winds."
It went on for two and a half typewritten pages in the most personal and poignant manner. Hat could hardly keep from shedding tears of mingled gratification and self-pity. She was a stranger to the devious ways of the advertising business; and the mimeographed form letter, with her own name so skilfullyinserted that it took a trained eye to tell it from the rest of the type, was to her a personal missive from one overflowing heart to another. Besides, the price was reduced fifty cents. For two dollars and fifty cents, if she acted quickly, she could now have her personal magnetism developed.
As she walked home from the mail box through the sweet June weather she thought of the dark eyed evangelist and of her own great undeveloped possibilities. She was stirred by a feeling that life was on the point of opening out for her. She decided to send away the money.
At home she got out the two dollars and fifty cents from a secret place in which she kept such money as she could manage, by various roundabout methods, to get out of Luke's hands, and dropped it into a jar on the clock shelf ready to buy a money order when she met the rural mail carrier next day. But by the next day her ardor had cooled to such an extent that the money looked too good to part with. She put it carefully back into the secret place.
After the second revival meeting she arrived at the conclusion that it was her duty to give a party to make the strangers feel at home.
"It looks like it's up agin me," she said to Judith, with something of the air of a martyr, "seein' nobody else hain't come forrard. O' course the fixin' an' bakin'll come kinder heavy on me, bein' as haow it's terbaccer choppin' time. So I wouldn't mind a bit if you brung along a little cake or sumpin like that to he'p me aout."
She must have thrown out the same subtle suggestion to all the invited guests, for few of the women came without a package in their hands.
The party, as seemed fitting, opened with prayer and a hymn and partook throughout of the nature of a prayer meeting. Out of respect for the preachers there was no dancing, neither were there any boisterous kissing games. The men lounged in the kitchen handy to the stove and woodbox and talked about the war. The women sat about in little groups in Hat's best room and from time to time broke the heavy silence by isolatedremarks about babies, sicknesses, and the best ways of rendering out hog fat. Even the men talked in subdued tones; and over everything there was a hushed atmosphere of restraint and respectful decorum. Nothing disturbed the decent calm but occasional giggles and titters from the young and unmarried who had a tendency to disappear in couples.
Hat, who entertained her guests with several songs, accompanying herself on the violin, avoided the more jaunty and jiglike airs of her repertoire and sang instead a doleful ballad of many stanzas, the gist of which is contained in the following two:
Just one year ago to-night, love,I became your happy bride,Changed a mansion for a cottageTo dwell by the waterside.And you told me I'd be happy,But no happiness I see,For to-night I am a widowIn the cottage by the sea.
Just one year ago to-night, love,I became your happy bride,Changed a mansion for a cottageTo dwell by the waterside.And you told me I'd be happy,But no happiness I see,For to-night I am a widowIn the cottage by the sea.
Just one year ago to-night, love,I became your happy bride,Changed a mansion for a cottageTo dwell by the waterside.
Just one year ago to-night, love,
I became your happy bride,
Changed a mansion for a cottage
To dwell by the waterside.
And you told me I'd be happy,But no happiness I see,For to-night I am a widowIn the cottage by the sea.
And you told me I'd be happy,
But no happiness I see,
For to-night I am a widow
In the cottage by the sea.
Though her voice was a bit strident and her fiddling rather noisy and vigorous for the conveying of these soft sentiments, the listeners, especially the women, seemed none the less deeply touched at the poor young woman's loss of both her man and her mansion.
As she sang she sought more than once with her bold, dark glances the magnetic eyes of the more attractive of the two preachers. Her chagrin was great and very poorly concealed when toward the close of the song about the unfortunate young lawbreaker, she saw the glance that she coveted traveling straight toward Judy Blackford who sat in a corner with her hands folded in her lap looking strangely demure and more than usually beautiful. The eye of jealousy is quicker than the eye of love to perceive beauty. Hat glared and in deep bitterness cursed the fate that had not given to herselfoutward charms in keeping with her qualities of soul. She wished that she had sent away the two dollars and a half.
Out of respect for the guests of honor, very little whiskey flowed at this party. The small amount of drinking that went on was done surreptitiously from pocket flasks in the dark of the outer night. The beverage served with the cake was water.
"It's pure," Hat boasted proudly, as she passed it about in tumblers, goblets, teacups, and jelly glasses. "We got the best well this side o' Sadieville."
When the guests had washed down their pieces of stack cake with this innocent and economical drink, they began to think about going home. As Judith was tying on her sunbonnet, she glimpsed under the bed where Hat had hastily shoved them, the corners of several cakes.
"Her an' Luke'll live on stale cake fer the nex' month," she whispered to Jerry.
The two young preachers stationed themselves at the door and shook hands with all the "friends" as they passed out. And though the handshakes were a bit solemn and prayermeetinglike, they were kindly meant. When it came Judith's turn to take the hand of the preacher with the strange eyes, she felt herself hesitating. Then, having given him her hand, she withdrew it hurriedly and passed out. She felt Hat's searching eyes fastened upon her. Her fingers tingled and her heart thumped as she climbed into the cart and sat down beside Jerry. She was glad of the darkness, for she knew that her cheeks were in a flame.
A compelling fascination lured her again and again to the revival meetings. There through the meaningless droning of the prayers, the wail of the hymns and the exhortations of the evangelists, she sat in a half hypnotized state conscious only of a pair of darkly burning eyes, a darkly vibrating voice. Not once but many times during the service her fascinated gaze met that of the preacher and swerved from it, confused and abashed. Once, by an effort of will, she met his look with her own dark, level gaze and did not turn her eyes aside. Hestarted and turned abruptly away; and in the dim light she thought she saw a dark red flush pass across his face.
Having found that she had this power, she was constantly prodded by the urge to exercise it. She knew nothing about self-discipline. All her life she had known no guide but her impulses. Now as always she followed where they pointed. It was not mere coquetry, but an irresistible force stronger than herself that made her dart her level, penetrating glance like a keen sword into the dark turmoil of the evangelist's smoldering eyes. He winced as if the sword had pierced him. Through her temples the blood pounded tumultuously. She was seized with a delirious, half frenzied joy. She held her breath so that she would not scream. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Hat.
Once they sang an old fashioned hymn, now rarely heard in churches:
Oh to be nothing, nothing,Only to lie at his feet,A broken and empty vesselThat the Master's use may meet.Empty that he might fill meAs forth to His service I go,Broken and unencumberedThat His light through me may flow.
Oh to be nothing, nothing,Only to lie at his feet,A broken and empty vesselThat the Master's use may meet.Empty that he might fill meAs forth to His service I go,Broken and unencumberedThat His light through me may flow.
Oh to be nothing, nothing,Only to lie at his feet,A broken and empty vesselThat the Master's use may meet.Empty that he might fill meAs forth to His service I go,Broken and unencumberedThat His light through me may flow.
Oh to be nothing, nothing,
Only to lie at his feet,
A broken and empty vessel
That the Master's use may meet.
Empty that he might fill me
As forth to His service I go,
Broken and unencumbered
That His light through me may flow.
When the evangelist sang he gave his whole soul to the singing. His breast heaved with more than the expansion of his lungs. His strange eyes dilated and burned. An aura of ecstasy welled out from him. He was a man transfigured and beyond himself. The tune, unutterably wistful and rich with passionate longing, surged through the little room. With music, the only tongue that can voice passion, it spoke mightily to the two who had ears to hear. It throbbed in Judith's temples, in her heart, in all the arteries of her body. Irresistibly she sought the eyes of the evangelist. This time he did not turn away. A shaft of dark fire reached out to her from histransfigured face, bold, compelling, and masterful; and it was she who with a hot blush dropped her gaze to the floor. By a lucky chance Hat was not there that night.
In the darkness of the summer night he overtook her on the way home. All the way she had been listening for him. She knew that he would come. He came up with her where the alfalfa field spilled its subtle fragrance into the warm night air. His arms about her were strong and imperative. His hands were hot. His kissing mouth was insatiable. With an ecstasy transcending anything that she had ever felt in her life, she yielded herself to his passion.
She moved through the succeeding weeks in an unquiet trance, treading not upon hard earth, but upon some substance infinitely buoyant and elastic. She scarcely knew that she washed and milked and churned and worked over butter, that she cooked and swept and hoed in the garden and dressed and fed the children. She performed these tasks as one drives a horse through a pitch black night, leaving the lines slack and letting the animal feel his way. Her body, well broken to household routine, went forward by itself without guidance of the mind. From daylong labors done in this way she came forth strangely fresh and unwearied.
Always she was intensely conscious of her body, deliciously aware of the roundness of her arms, the softness and whiteness of her breasts, the slim grace of her ankles. Never before had she given such things more than a passing thought. In other times when she had thought about the appearance of her body it had been in relation to new dresses. Now the beauty of her body lived and moved with her continually, a part of her consciousness. She gazed long into the little looking glass at her cheeks, radiant with a warm flush, her eyes softly luminous. Something of the cool, level quality had gone out of the eyes leaving a deep radiance. Looking into the glass she laughed little soft, shivery laughs and felt the blood rise tingling into her cheeks.
Sitting on the doorstep to peel potatoes or shell peas, shestretched her slim, brown, bare feet out into the sunshine and looked at them with eyes that saw their beauty. She twisted a strand of her lustrous black hair about her finger, made it into a glittering curl and dangled it in the sunlight with a foolish little laugh.
In the yard not far from the kitchen door stood a rose bush, a poor, battered, stunted thing, scratched and nipped by the hens and broken back again and again by straying hogs and calves. Nothing was left of it but a few spiny stalks almost denuded of leaves. On one of these stalks she had noticed a red bud swelling.
One morning when she came to the door she saw that the bud had blossomed into a rose, not a frail pink blossom, but a silken, scarlet thing with a great, gold heart, heavy with dew and fragrance. Gorgeously it flaunted on its distorted stem. Against the drabness of the dooryard, now bare with summer drought, it flamed rich and vivid. She knelt on the ground beside the rose and smelled of its perfume. Inhaling the fragrance and looking into the deep richness of the scarlet leaves, she felt carried beyond herself with a great uplifting of the heart. Tears from some strange, hidden source welled into her eyes.
After its one rose had shed its leaves, the little bush, discouraged by the drought and the continual pecking of the hens, dried up and leveled itself with the ground.
Fearful of shrewd looks and whispering tongues, she did not go often to the meetings. They had other places of rendezvous. One was a deep hollow pungent with the smell of mint, where the creek splashed over moss covered stones and a weeping willow trailed its gray leaves in the water. Here on the hottest July afternoon the overhanging boughs of many trees and saplings made a green coolness. The place seemed remote as a cave until one day Uncle Jonah Cobb came along the little cowpath that bordered the creek. They heard him pushing aside the branches that grew across the unfrequented path and had time to dive back into the underbrush. Half blind and more than half deaf, he took his slow way throughtheir little bower and, like an old ox whose neck bends by second nature to the yoke, never once lifted his head.
"I wonder was Uncle Jonah ever young?" she whispered, when he was safely out of hearing.
After that she would never go there again. The place seemed as open as a public square, as bare to the world as a housetop. She could never think of it without seeing Uncle Jonah plodding through it, his eyes fixed on the ground, a long blue patch on the back of his gray shirt, his denim trousers, much too large for him, hitched half way up his back by his greasy galluses.
Hemmed in between two steep hills and smothered in brush that had grown up about it was the shell of an old shanty that had been forsaken of man as long as Judith could remember. Near it was neither wagon track nor cowpath. Nobody ever came that way. On the floor, streaked and stained by many rains, they made themselves a resting place of cedar boughs and last year's leaves.
Mocking birds had built that year in the locust trees by the horsepond. How many she did not know. Perhaps there was only a pair or two, but it sounded like a dozen. She could see their pert little gray and white bodies darting about in the branches. Sometimes one of them would perch on a fence rail or the rooftree of the smokehouse and flirt his long tail saucily as he preened his feathers. These little choir boys to Pan, in whose small bodies the spark of life burned with such an intense flame, who lived only to love and to sing, kept the air vibrant almost all day long with their insistent, soul disturbing melodies. For a few hours the noonday sun lulled them into luxurious rest and a deep quiet fell, treacherously haunted by erotic echoes. The meadow larks that sang over and over again at regular intervals their one slender ripple of song were with their few guileless notes like poor little parlor singers beside these great masters of bird opera. There was no sound in the language of birds that they could not make. They chirped, chirred, trilled, twittered, caroled, ran again and again through all the scales a bird's voice ever compassed. Just to show what they could do, they imitated with perfection of accuracy thesong of the finch, the robin, the meadow lark. Then, soaring far beyond the compass of these humble singers, burst forth rapturously into such floods of melody that the sunlight seemed filled with a rain of bright jewels. With delirious abandon to love and joy, the music welled from their little throats, palpitatingly, delicate, piercingly sweet. The enraptured rush of it, the sudden turns of it, the mad surprises of it penetrated Judith's being and swayed her like the master passion of which they were the voice.
They did not often sing in the night. But once a wakeful wooer sat on the ridgepole of the smokehouse and poured into the white moonlight floods of wild melody. For a long time Judith stood at the window looking out at the dim sky with scarcely a star showing and the world lying blanched and black under the light of the full moon. The locust trees by the horsepond looked dark and mysterious. The shadow of the smokehouse gable lay sharp and black against the whiteness of the yard. On the ridgepole she could just distinguish the little dark speck whose music thrilled the night. She leaned her head on the window sill and felt herself melting, dissolving away into music and moonlight.
All at once the bird stopped singing and a silence fell like the hush before doom. She shivered in her thin nightgown and crept back into bed. Sobs were rising in her throat. She tried to stifle them in the pillow; but her whole body shook in the grip of the hysteria.
Jerry stirred uneasily in his heavy sleep of exhaustion.
"Don't cry, Judy," he murmured sleepily, winding his arm about her. "Things'll come out all right."
It was blackberry season and she had a good excuse for leaving the children with Aunt Selina. Aunt Selina was genuinely glad to have them. Like most other back country women she was ready with glib lies to suit any occasion. But Judith knew that she was not lying when she said: "Fetch 'em over soon agin, Judy, the little darlin's." The old woman dearly loved the company of children. She chirruped and twittered to the baby and prattled in an unending stream tothe two boys as they followed her about while she fed the chickens and tended the rabbits and hoed the cabbages and the rows of beans. She loved to put cookies into their chubby little grimy hands and twists of sugared popcorn in the pockets of their overalls. She had a sweet tooth herself, so she nearly always had such things about the house. They were near of an age, all four, and happy together.
He would meet her on the edges of the pasture slopes where the blackberries grew and help her fill her tin bucket with the large, juicy berries. Here in the embrace of the sun the earth swooned with midsummer heat. Bees drowsed over the patches of steeplebush. Here and there tall stately stalks of ironweed lifted their great crowns of royal purple. The scent of flowering milkweed distilled out into the hot sunshine was heavy and sweet. Heavier and sweeter was the smell of purple alfalfa blossoms blown across the pasture in warm whiffs.
As they strayed about over the close cropped grass among the brambles and dock and patches of steeplebush, they spoke to each other scarcely at all. Only sometimes when he came beside her, he gripped her hand in his which was strong and dark. When the berry bucket was full he drew her unresistingly down between the steep hills to the old shanty.
Through these hot summer weeks she felt small need of sleep. When in the half light of the early morning she and Jerry took their milk buckets and went through the yard to the cowlot, she felt awake, alive, a creature of the morning. She thrilled to the feeling of newness, of life born again, that stirs through a summer dawn.
As the summer advanced, an uneasiness that was something other than erotic unrest began to assail her. She tried to dismiss it, to ignore its existence, to lose herself in the old preoccupations. Untiring as a weasel intent upon the blood of chickens, it kept coming back upon her with stealthy persistence. She knew that it was trying to awaken her from her dream. She did not want to be awakened; yet more and more surely she realized that the waking hour was at hand. When she looked into her mirror she met a cool, level gaze lookingcalmly out at her through radiance that was growing dim. The blood no longer rose warmly into her cheeks.
At first the dark-eyed stranger had power to charm away this disquieting intruder and bring the dream back. For this she sought him out at all times and places, unmindful of the tongue of slander, forgetting prudence, forgetting everything but the desire to be kept within her dream. He felt gratified at first, as a man is gratified by evidence of his power to attract. Then, fearing whither her recklessness might lead, tormented too by fears and dark conflicts that were an outgrowth of his nature, but had no part in hers, he tried to show her the folly of her lack of discretion. When he began to do this she was filled with bitter contempt for what she called his cowardice. She looked at him grimly, with a hard light in her eyes, and knew that she must surely awaken.
She began to go less often to look for berries; and the little shanty between the hills saw them more and more rarely. When they met in the pasture lands she was sullen and irritable. He too gloomed and grouched.
One day when she saw him coming toward her in the blackberry patch, her eyes instead of seeking his fell upon the lower part of his face. It was not a bad face as the faces of men go; but of a sudden it seemed to her revoltingly stupid, sullen, and almost bestial. She restrained a mad impulse to fling out her arm and slap it with the back of her hand.
The blackberry season was nearly over, and the berries were becoming few and scattered. They ranged far searching for the luscious fruit. She kept as far away from him as she could. Something about his presence seemed to make the air stuffy.
He picked into a little folding cup that he was in the habit of carrying in his pocket. When he brought the cup full of berries and emptied it into her bucket, she looked at him with cold, sardonic eyes.
When the bucket was half full she took it resolutely on her arm.
"You don't need fer to pick no more," she said coldly. "I'm a-goin' back home naow."
He looked at her at first beseechingly. Then a look of relief spread over his features.
"It's best so," he muttered huskily. But he turned and walked beside her.
"Fall'll soon be a-comin' on," she said. "See that there maple branch is red a'ready. That there one big branch allus turns red in August, long afore the others."
He quoted from one of his hymns: