Kitabı oku: «The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage», sayfa 11

"It looks like it's a shame for me to have you waitin' on me this-a-way," Callista began half-heartedly. She had taken counsel with herself, during his absence, and resolved to make some effort to keep up appearances.

"Hit don't look like anything of the sort," protested Flenton Hands. "You needed me, and that's all I want to know."

He had laid his fire skilfully, and now the blaze began to roar up the big chimney.

"My feet ain't been warm this whole blessed day," Callista said, almost involuntarily, as she drew nearer the fascinating source of both warmth and light. "My, but that does feel good!"

"You pore child!" Flent muttered huskily, turning toward her from the hearth where he knelt. "You're e'en about perished."

He went out then, only to come hurriedly back, reporting,

"I cain't find any wood – whar does Lance keep it?"

Lance's wife hung her head, lips pressed tight together, striving for resolution to answer this with a smooth lie.

"He don't go off and leave you in this kind of weather without any wood?" inquired Hands hoarsely.

"Yes – he does," Callista choked. And, having opened the bottle a bit, out poured the hot wine of her wrath. All the things that she might have said to her mother had she been on good terms with that lady; the taunts that occurred to her in Lance's absence and which she failed to utter to him when he came; these rushed pell-mell into speech. She was white and shaking when she made an end.

"There," she said tragically, getting to her feet. "I reckon I had no business to name one word of this to you, Flenton; but I'm the most miserable creature that ever lived, I do think; and I ain't got a soul on this earth that cares whether or not about me. And – and – "

She broke off, locking her hands tightly and staring down at them.

Flenton had the sense and the self-control not to approach her, not to introduce too promptly the personal note.

"Callista," he began cautiously, assuming as nearly as possible the tone of an unbiased friend to both parties, "you ort to quit Lance. He ain't doin' you right. There's more than you know of in this business; and whether you stay thar or not, you ort to quit him oncet and go home to yo' folks."

Callista made an inarticulate sound of denial.

"I never will – never in this world!" she burst out. "I might quit Lance, but home I'll never go."

Flenton's pale gray eyes lit up at the suggestion of her words, but she put aside the hand he stretched out toward her.

"I've been studying about it all day, and for a good many days before this one," she said with slow bitterness. "Lance Cleaverage gives me plenty of time to study. If I leave this house, I'm goin' straight to Father Cleaverage."

Hands looked disappointed, but he did not fail to press the minor advantage.

"If you want to go to-night, Callista," he suggested, "I'd be proud to carry you right along on my horse. Lance needs a lesson powerful bad. You go with me – "

"Hush," Callista warned him. "I thought I heard somebody coming. Thank you, Flent. You've been mighty good to me this night. I'll never forget you for it – but I reckon you better go now. When a woman's wedded, she has to be careful about the speech of people; and – I reckon you better go now, Flent."

The rain had ceased. A wan moon looked out in the western sky and made the wet branches shine with a dim luster. Callista stood in the doorway against the broken leap and shine of the firelight. Hands went to his horse, and then turned back to look at her.

"And you won't go with me?" he repeated once more. "Callista, you'd be as safe with me as with your own brother. I've got that respect for you that it don't seem like you're the same as other women. I wish't you'd go, if for nothin' but to learn Lance a lesson."

The girl in the doorway knew that there was no wood for any more fire than that which now blazed on the hearth behind her; she was aware that there was scarcely food in the house for three days' eating; yet she found courage to shake her head.

"Thank you kindly, Flent," she said with a note of finality in her tone. "I know you mean well, but I cain't go."

Then she closed the door as though to shut out the temptation, and, dressed as she was, lay down upon the bed and pulled the quilts over her.

She listened to the retreating hoofs of Flenton's horse, dreading always to hear Lance's voice hailing him, telling herself that his presence there at that hour alone with her was all Lance's fault, and she had no reason for the shame and fear which possessed her at thought of it. But the hoofs passed quite away, and still Lance did not make his appearance. She could not sleep. She judged it was near midnight. Pictures of Lance teaching Ola Derf her chords on the banjo flickered before her eyes. Pictures of Lance dancing with Ola as he had at the infare followed. She had a kind of wonder at herself that she was not angrier, that she was only spent and numbed and cowed. Then all at once came a light step she knew well, the sudden little harmonious outcry of the banjo as Lance set it down to open the door, and Lance himself was in the room.

She thought she would have spoken to him. She did not know that the Indian had gone in and announced her presence outside the window at the Derfs. As she raised her head she got his haughty, lifted profile between herself and the light of the now dying fire. She knew that he was aware of her presence; but he looked neither to the right nor to the left; he made no comment on her fire, but strode swiftly through the room, across the open passage, and into the far room. She heard him moving about for a few moments, then everything was silent.

All that numbing inertia fell away from her. She sat up on the edge of the bed as she had once before that evening, and her eyes went from side to side of the room, picking out what she wanted to take with her. A few swift movements secured her shawl and sunbonnet. Without stealth, yet without noise, she opened the door and stepped forth.

She stood in the open threshing-floor porch between the two rooms, a very gulf of shadow, into which watery moonlight struggled from the world outside. A long while she stood so, looking toward the far room, her hands clenched and pressed hard against her breast. Those hands were empty. She had shut the door of her girlhood home against herself unless she returned, a gift in them. No – she would not go back there.

All at once she became aware of a rhythmic sound, which made itself heard in the utter stillness of the forest night – Lance's deep breathing. He slept then; he could go to sleep like that, when she – . Callista faltered forward toward the front step; and as she did so, another sound overbore the slighter noise; it was the hoofs of an approaching horse.

She checked, turned, flung the sunbonnet from her and dropped the shawl upon it, then, with a quick, light step, crossed the porch and noiselessly pushed open the door of the room in which Lance lay. The little pale moon made faint radiance in the room, and by its light she saw her husband lying on that monster spare bed which is the pride of every country housewife. He had folded and put aside the ruffled covers of her contriving, and lay dressed as he was, with only his shoes removed. On tiptoe she drew near and stood looking down at him. They said if you held a looking-glass over a sleeping person's face and asked him a question, he'd tell you the truth. What was it she wanted to know of Lance? Not whether he loved her or no, though she said to herself a dozen times a day that he cared nothing about her, and had never really cared.

The sleeper stirred and turned on his pillow, offering her a broader view of that strangely disconcerting countenance of slumber, as ambiguous well-nigh as the face of death itself.

She wheeled and fled noiselessly, as she had come in. The light, approaching horse's hoofs had ceased to sound some moments now. At the gate a mounted figure stood motionless within the shadow of the big pine. She ran down the path to find Flenton Hands.

"I – Callista," he faltered in a low voice, "don't be mad. I – looks like I couldn't leave you this-a-way. I was plumb to the corner of our big field, and – I come back."

He glanced with uncertainty and apprehension toward the house; then, as he noted her shawl and bonnet, got quickly from the saddle, saying hurriedly, eagerly,

"I 'lowed maybe you might change your mind – and I – I come back."

"Yes," said Callista, not looking at him. "I'm ready to go now, Flent."

CHAPTER XIV.
ROXY GRIEVER'S GUEST

IT was a strange day whose gray dawn brought Callista to her father-in-law's door. Where she had wandered, questioning, debating, agonizing, since she dismissed Flenton Hands at the corner of old Kimbro's lean home pasture, only Callista knew. The Judas tree down by the spring branch might have told a tale of clutching fingers that reached up to its low boughs, while somebody stood shaking and listening to the sound of the creek that came down the gorge past that home Callista was leaving. The mosses between there and the big road could have whispered of swift-passing feet that went restlessly as though driven to and fro over their sodden carpet for hours. The bluff where a trail precariously rounds old Flat Top kept its secret of a crouching figure that looked out over the Gulf, black in the now moonless night, of a sobbing voice that prayed, and accused and questioned incoherently.

The household at Kimbro Cleaverage's rose by candle-light. Sylvane, strolling out to the water bucket, barely well awake, caught sight of his sister-in-law at the gate, gave one swift glance at her face as it showed gray through the dim light, wheeled silently and hurried ahead of her into the kitchen to warn his sister not to betray surprise. So she was received with that marvelous, fine courtesy of the mountaineer, which proffers only an unquestioning welcome, demanding no explanations of the strangest coming or of the most unexpected comer. She answered their greeting in a curious, lifeless tone, said only that she was tired, not sick at all, and would like to lie down; and when Roxy hastened with her to the bed in the far room and saw her safely bestowed there, the girl sank into almost instant slumber so soon as she had stretched herself out.

"She's went to sleep already," whispered Roxy to Sylvane, stepping back into the kitchen, and, while she quietly carried forward the breakfast preparations, the boy crept up to the loft where Mary Ann Martha and Polly slept and whence the little one's boisterous tones began to be heard. Later he came down with the two, holding the five-year-old by the hand, imposing quiet upon them both by look and word; maintaining it by constant watchfulness.

They ate their breakfast, speaking in subdued voices, mostly of indifferent matters. Roxy, who, woman fashion, would have made some comment, inquiry or suggestion, was checked whenever she looked at the faces of her men folk. The meal over, Sylvane and her father went out to the day's work. Roxy cleared away the dishes and set the house in order, returning every little while to hover doubtfully above that slim form lying so silent and motionless in the bed. She was frightened at the way the girl slept, unaware that Callista had not closed her eyes the night before, and that she was worn out, mind and body, with weeks of fretting emotions.

The morning came on still, warm and cloudy. There was silence in the forest, the softened loam making no sound under any foot, last year's old leaves too damp to rustle on the oak boughs. It was a day so soundless, stirless, colorless, as to seem unreal, with a haunting sadness in the air like an undefined memory of past existences, a drowsiness of forgotten lands. Even the hearth fire faded faint in that toneless day, which had neither sun nor moon nor wind, neither heat nor cold indoors or out. Again and again, as the hours wore on, the Widow Griever stole in and looked upon her sleeping guest with a sort of terror. She sent Polly away with Mary Ann Martha to look for posies in the far woods that the house might be quiet. Quiet – it was as if the vast emptiness which surrounds the universe had penetrated into the heart of that day, making all objects transparent, weightless, meaningless, without power of motion. She would stand beside the bed, noting the even breathing of the sleeper, then go softly to the door and look out. The trees rose into the stillness and emptiness and spread their branches there, themselves thin shadows of a one-time growth and life. The water of the pond below lay wan and glassy, unstirred by any ripple. The very rocks on its edges appeared devoid of substance. From ten o'clock on seemed one standstill afternoon, lacking sign of life or the passage of time, until the imperceptible approach of dusk and the slow deepening of a night which might to all appearances be the shadow of eternal sleep.

Kimbro and his son had taken their bit of dinner with them to their work of clearing and brush-burning in a distant field. At dusk they came quietly in to find the supper ready, Polly still herding Mary Ann Martha to keep her quiet, Roxy Griever putting the meal on the table, worried, but saying nothing. On their part, they asked no questions, but each stole an anxious glance at the shut door behind which was the spare bed. As they sat down to eat, Roxy said to her father:

"I don't hardly know, Poppy – She's a-sleepin' yit – been a-sleepin' like that ever sence she laid down thar. Do you reckon I ort – "

"I'd jest let her sleep, daughter," put in the old man gently. "I reckon hit's the best medicine she can get. The pore child must be sort of wore out."

After supper, while Roxy, with Polly's help, was washing the dishes, Kimbro and his younger son held a brief consultation out by the gate, following which the boy moved swiftly off, going up Lance's Laurel.

A little later Callista waked briefly. She sat listlessly upon the side of the bed, declining Roxy's eager proffer of good warm supper at the table, and took – almost perforce – from the elder woman's hand the cup of coffee and bit of food which Roxy brought her.

"No, no, nothing more, thank you, Sister Roxy!" she said hastily, almost recoiling. "That's a-plenty. I ain't hungry – just sort o' tired." And she turned round, stretched herself on the bed once more, and sank back into sleep.

The next morning, when the breakfast was ready, although Roxy had listened in vain for sounds from the small far room, Callista came unexpectedly out, fully dressed. She sat with them at the table, pale, downcast, staring at her plate and crumbling a bit of corn pone, unable to do more than drink a few swallows of coffee. She did not note that Sylvane was missing. Later the boy came back from Lance's Laurel, to tell his father and sister that he had spent the night with his brother, that the cabin in the Gap was now closed and empty, and Lance gone to work at Thatcher Daggett's sawmill, some twelve miles through the woods, out on North Caney Creek, where several men of the neighborhood were employed.

"That's the reason Callista come over here," old Kimbro said mildly. "She and Lance have had a difference of opinion, hit's likely, about whether or no he should go there. Well, I'm sure glad to have her with us. She'd 'a' been right lonesome all to herself."

"Would you name it to her?" asked the widow anxiously.

Kimbro shook his head. "Don't you name nothin' to the girl, except that she's welcome in this house as long as she cares to stay – and don't say too much about that – she knows it."

"Lance has fixed it up with old man Daggett so that Callista can get what she wants from the store – Derf's place," put in Sylvane.

An expression of relief dawned upon Roxy's thin, anxious face. The Kimbro Cleaverages were very poor. Truly, Callista, the admired, was welcome, yet the seams of their narrow resources would fairly gape with the strain to cover the entertainment of such a guest. If she could get what she wanted from Derf's, it would simplify matters greatly.

"Well, you'll tell her that, won't ye, Buddy?" his sister prompted Sylvane.

He nodded.

"I've got some other things to tell her from Lance," he said, boyishly secretive. "I'm goin' over to see him at the mill come, Sunday, and she can send word by me. I'll be passin' back and forth all the time whilst he's workin' there."

But when this easy method of communication was brought to the notice of Callista, she made no offer toward using it.

It was mid-afternoon of the day following her arrival. The rain was intermitted, not definitely ceased; there would be more of it; but just now the air was warm and the sun brilliant. Mountain fashion, the door of the cabin stood wide. Mary Ann Martha had a corn pone, and she took occasional bites from it as she circled the visitor, staring at her with avid, hazel eyes, that troubled Callista's calm whenever she caught the fire of them, so like Lance's. Marauding chickens came across the door-stone and ventured far on the child's trail of crumbs; the light cackle of their whispered duckings, the scratch of their claws on the puncheons, alone broke the stillness. Callista sat by the doorway, a dead weight at her heart. The pallor, the weariness of it, were plain in her face.

"Good land, Polly – cain't you take this chap over yon in the woods and lose her?" demanded the widow in final exasperation, as Mary Ann Martha turned suddenly on the chicken that was stalking her, and shooed it, squalling, from the door. "I want to get out my quilt and work on it."

All unconscious that these things were done on her behalf, Callista saw the unwilling Mary Ann Martha marched away. She beheld the gospel quilt brought out and spread on the widow's knees quite as some chatelaine of old might have produced her tapestry for the diversion of the guest. Over the gulf of pain and regret and apprehension – this well of struggling, seething emotion – lightly rippled the surface sounds of life, material talk, bits of gossip, that Callista roused herself to harken to and answer.

Roxy spoke in a solemn, muffled tone, something the voice she would have used if her father or Sylvane were dead in the house. She would have been more than human, and less than woman, had she not to some degree relished the situation. She remembered with deep satisfaction that, though she was his own sister, she had always reprehended Lance publicly and privately, holding him unfit to mate with this paragon. Callista had the sensation of being at her own funeral. She drooped, colorless and inert, in her chair, and stared past everything the room contained, out through the open door and across the far blue rim of hills.

"I believe in my soul these here needles Sylvane got me is too fine for my cotton," Roxy murmured, by way of attracting attention. "I wonder could you thread one for me, Callisty? Your eyes is younger than mine."

Callista took the needle and threaded it, handing it back with a sigh. As she did so, her glance encountered Roxy's solicitous gaze, then fell to the quilt.

"You – you've done a sight of work on that, haven't you, Sis' Roxy?" she asked gently.

The widow nodded. "An' there's a sight more to do," she added.

"This is a pretty figure," Callista said, pointing at random, but producing a kindly show of interest.

Roxy brightened.

"Can you make out what it's meant for?" she inquired eagerly. Then, for fear Callista should attempt and fail, "I aimed it for a Tree of Life, with a angel sorter peerched on it, an' one standin' un'neath. But," deprecatingly, "hit looks mo' like a jimpson weed to me. An' pears like I 'don't never have no luck with angels."

Callista's absent gaze rested upon the unsatisfactory sprigged calico and striped seersucker version of members of the heavenly host.

"Them Jacob's-ladder angels – you hain't never seen them, Callisty, sence I sorter tinkered they' wings. Look! 'Pears to me like it's he'ped 'em powerful. But these – I vow, I don't know what is the matter of 'em, without it's the goods. That thar stuff, is 'most too coarse for angels, I reckon. Or it might be the color. 'Warshed whiter'n snow – without spot or, stain – ' that's what the Good Book says, whilst all these is spotted and figured. But ye see white on white wouldn't never show. I might 'a' used blue-and-white stripe. And then again, the sayin' is, 'Chastised with many stripes' – that'd never be angels, no how."

Once more Callista made an effort to bring her mind to the problem in hand.

"The sky is blue," Roxy adduced somewhat lamely. "Do you reckon blue angels would be more better?"

"Maybe purple," hesitated the visitor. "The Bible names purple a heap in regards to Heaven – purple and gold. I've got a piece of purple calico at – at home." Her voice trailed and faltered huskily over the words. Then she set her lips hard, crested her head in the old fashion, and went on evenly. "I've got a piece of mighty pretty purple, and one as near gold as ever goods was, that you're welcome to, Sis' Roxy, if – if you or Polly would go over and get 'em."

Again thought of where those treasured rolls of calico were to be found lowered the clear, calm, defiant voice. Roxy noted it; but the magnum opus, brought out to cheer and divert Callista, had laid its unfailing spell upon the widow; the lust for quilt pieces, rampant in all mountain women, wakened in her, aggravated in her case by the peculiar needs, the more exacting demands of her own superior artistry.

"Yes – shore, honey; I'll be glad to go any time," she said, "ef you'll jest tell me where to look."

So life went on at the Kimbro Cleaverage place, a curious interlude, and still no word was said to Callista of the strangeness of her advent, and no explanation vouchsafed, till on the evening of the third day the girl herself sought her father-in-law and opened the matter haltingly, timidly. They were out at the chip-pile where Kimbro was cutting the next day's wood for Roxy's use. He dropped his axe to the chopping log and stood leaning on it, peering at her with mild, faded, near-sighted eyes.

"Well now, Callisty," he began gently, "I'm glad you named this to me, becaze I've got a message for you from Lance, and I didn't want to speak of it for fear it would seem like hurrying you away, or criticising any of your actions. I want you to know, daughter, that I don't do that. Lance is a wild boy, and he's got wild ways. But he has a true heart, honey, and one of these days you'll find it. Now, I reckon, you might be having some trouble with him."

"A message," repeated Callista in a low tone. "Is he gone away?"

"Well, he's out on North Caney," old Kimbro told her, "a-workin' at Thatch Daggett's sawmill. Lance can make good money whenever he'll work at his own trade, and I doubt not he'll do right well at this sawmill business, too. He hain't got the land cleared over where you-all was livin' that he ought to have, an' I think it's better for you to stay on with us a while – we're sure proud to have you."

Callista's eyes filled with a sudden rush of tears. Kimbro did not explain to her that Sylvane had gone to see his brother. He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a little roll of money.

"Lance sent you this," he said. "He never had time to write any letter. My son Lance is a mighty poor correspondent at the best; but he sent you this, and he bade Sylvane to tell you that you was to buy what you needed at Derf's store, an' that he'd hope to send you money from time to time as you should have use for it."

Callista looked on the ground and said nothing. And so it was settled. The comfortable, new, well-fitted home at the head of Lance's Laurel was closed, and Callista lived in the shabby, ruinous dwelling of her father-in-law. The help that she could offer in the way of provisions was welcome. To Roxy Griever, she had always been an ideal, a pattern of perfection, and now they made a sort of queen of her. The widow begrudged her nothing and waited on her hand and foot. Polly followed her around and served her eagerly, admiringly; but most astonishing of all, Mary Ann Martha would be good for her, and was ready to do anything to attract her notice. Sometimes Callista seemed to want the child with her; and sometimes when the little girl looked at her with Lance's eyes, and spoke out suddenly in his defiant fashion, Callista would wince as though she had been struck at, and send Mary Ann Martha away almost harshly.