IX.
It was close upon nightfall when Alethea, on her homeward journey, reached the banks of the Scolacutta River. It still had a melancholy version of the sunset imprinted upon its surface. It was full of dreamy crimson tints, and olive-green shadows, and gentle pensive effects of undistinguishable lustres. Its ceaseless monotone was on the air; its breath was of freshness and fragrance; the bluffs that towered above it gave the austerity of rugged rocks and the dignity of great heights to the incidents of its margin. Stunted trees clung to the niches of these splintered cliffs; everywhere along the banks the leaves of the sourwood were red and gay as a banner, the tassels all gleaming and white; the dogwood showed a flaunting ochreous tint, but the sweet-gum was as yet only a dull purple, and the sumach had merely hung out its garnet tufts. An amethystine haze rested on the nearest mountains, softening the polychromatic richness that glimmered all along the great slopes; further away they wore the softened blue of autumn. The scene was familiar to her, for she had already passed through the gap of the mountain down into Eskaqua Cove, and her aunt Dely’s house lay among the tawny corn-fields on the other side. Very lonely this habitation was among the great company of the mountains; they rose about the cove on every side with a visible immensity of wilderness which belittled the slight hold of humanity expressed in the house, the fields, the road that seemed itself a vagrant, for there was no bourne in sight of the wide landscape to which it might be supposed to tend.
The log cabin had heard the river sing for nearly a century. It appeared for many years the ready prey of decay: the chimney leaned from the wall, the daubing was falling from the chinking, there were holes in the floor and the roof. Suddenly a great change came over it. The frivolity of glass enlivened the windows where batten shutters had formerly sufficed; a rickety little porch was added; a tiny room was partitioned off from this, and Mrs. Purvine rejoiced in the distinction of possessing a company bedroom, which was far from being a haven of comfort to the occasional occupant of those close quarters. She had always been known to harbor certain ambitions. Her husband’s death, some two or three years before, had given her liberty to express her tastes more fully than when hampered by his cautious conservatism. And now, although the fields might be overrun with weeds, and the sheep have the rot, and the poultry the cholera, and the cow go dry, and the “gyarden truck” defer to the crab-grass, and the bees, clever insects, prepare only sufficient honey for their own use, Mrs. Purvine preserved the appearance of having made a great rise in life, and was considered by the casual observer a “mighty spry widder woman.” Such a one as Mrs. Sayles shook her head and spared not the vocabulary. “Dely,” she would observe, “air my husband’s sister, an’ I ain’t goin’ ter make no words about her. Ef she war ennybody else’s sister, I’d up an’ down declar’ ez she hev been snared in the devices o’ the devil, fur sech pride ez hern ain’t godly,—naw sir! nur religion nuther. Glass in the winder! Shucks! she’d better be thinkin’ ’bout gittin’ light on salvation,—that she hed! Folks ez knowed Dely whenst she war a gal knowed she war headin’ an’ sot agin her elders, an’ run away from home ter git married, an’ this is what kem of sech onregenerate ways. Glass in the winder! I’ll be bound the devil looks through that winder every day at yer aunt Dely whenst she sets thar an’ spins. He gits a glimge o’ her when she ain’t a-lookin’. The pride o’ the yearth is mighty strong in her. Ye oughter sati’fy yerse’f with ’sociatin’ with her in this life, fur ye ain’t a-goin’ ter meet up with her in heaven. Naw, sir, yer aunt Dely’ll remember that winder in the darkness o’ Torment, an’ ef she war ennybody else’s sister than my own husband’s I’d say so.”
Mrs. Purvine was standing on the porch, so fine a manifestation of her pride, and gazing with unrecognizing curiosity at Alethea as the girl came up the stony hillside.
Mrs. Purvine hardly looked the woman of a vaulting worldly ambition. She had a broad, moon-like face and blue eyes with much of the whites showing, the more as she had a trick of peering over her spectacles. She had no teeth; despite her social culture she had never heard of a false set, or her mouth would have been a glittering illustration of the dentist’s art. She held in her hand a short clay pipe, from which the smoke slowly curled. She wore a blue-checked homespun apron, but a calico gown, being, according to report, “too triflin’” to do very much weaving at home, and the cross-roads store was only ten miles from her house, on the road to Shaftesville. She had journeyed even to the town, twice or thrice in her life, mounted on a gray mare with a colt at her heels, and had looked from beneath her sun-bonnet at the metropolitan splendors and habits with a starveling’s delight in such of the meagre conventional graces of life as the little village possessed, and as were vouchsafed to her comprehension. Nobody knew whence she derived her “vagrantin’ ways;” for these excursions earned for her the reputation of an insatiate traveler, and her frivolous disposition and pride were the occasion of much reprehension and comment. They could hardly take the form of remonstrance, however, without open rupture; for Mrs. Purvine, right well aware of them, with an acumen and diplomacy grafted like some strange exotic upon her simple character, was always bewailing the frivolous tendency of the times, the pride of “some folks,” the worthless nature of women nowadays, and foisting herself upon her interlocutor as an example of all homely and primitive tastes and virtues.
Her moon face suddenly assumed an expression of recognition and of stern reprobation as she came solemnly down from the door, a feat which it was difficult to perform with stateliness or even safety; for the two or three plank steps were only set against the wall, and although far more imposing than the hewn logs or rough stones customary elsewhere, they were extremely insecure. Often when a foot was placed upon the lowest of the number they careened forward with the weight.
Mrs. Purvine accomplished the descent with dignity, and as she held the gate open she addressed her niece, looking full in her tear-stained face:—
“I knowed it would kem ter this,—I knowed it, sooner or later. What’s that thar step-mother o’ yourn been doin’ ter ye?”
Albeit Mrs. Sayles had few equals as a censor, Mrs. Purvine, with a secret intuition of her animadversions, returned them as best she might, and Mrs. Sayles’s difficult position as a step-mother rendered her as a shorn lamb to the blast.
“Nuthin’,” sobbed Alethea,—“nuthin’ ez I knows on.” She started up the steps, which bounded forward with a precipitancy that had a startling effect as if the house had jumped at her. Alethea stumbled, and Mrs. Purvine commented upon her awkwardness:—
“Look at the gal,—usin’ her feet with no mo’ nimbleness ’n a cow. Laws-a-massy, young folks ain’t what they war in my day. Whenst I war a gal, ’fore I jined the church an’ tuk ter consortin’ with the saints, ye oughter hev seen me dance! Could shake my foot along with the nimblest! But I ain’t crackin’ up bran dances, nuther. I’m a perfessin’ member,—bless the Lord! Satan hides in a fiddle. Ye always remember yer aunt Dely tole ye that word. An’ ef ever ye air condemned ter Torment, don’t ye up an’ ’low ez ye hed no l’arnin’; don’t ye do it.” Then looking over her spectacles, “What ails ye, ef ’tain’t that step-mother?”
“I hev been ter Shaftesville. I bided all night at Cousin Jane Scruggs’s in Piomingo Cove, an’ next day I footed it ter town.”
This announcement would have surprised any one more than the roving Mrs. Purvine. Even she demanded, as in duty bound, with every intimation of deep contempt, “Laws-a-massy, what ye wanter go ter Shaftesville fur?”
“I went ter see Reuben Lorey in jail,” replied Alethea.
Mrs. Purvine looked at her with an expression of deep exasperation. “Waal,” she observed sarcastically, “I’d hev liked ter seen him thar, too. I ain’t seen ez good a fit ez Mink Lorey an’ the county jail fur this many a day. Kem hyar one night, an’ tuk them bran’ new front steps o’ mine, an’ hung ’em up on the martin-house. An’ thar war a powerful deep snow that night, an’ it kivered the consarn so ez nex’ mornin’ we couldn’t find out what unyearthly thing hed fell on the martin-house, an’ we war fairly feared ’twar a warnin’ or a jedgmint till we missed them front steps. They ain’t never been so stiddy sence.”
Alethea had laid aside her bonnet and bathed her face. She was going about the house in a way which was a tribute to Mrs. Purvine’s hospitality, for she felt much at home there. She had glanced toward the great fireplace, where the ashes piled on the top of the oven and the coffee-pot perched on the trivet over the coals told that the work of preparing supper was already done. She suddenly took down the quilting frame, suspended to the beams above by long bands of cloth, produced thread and thimble from her pocket, and, seating herself before it as before a table, began to quilt dexterously and neatly where Mrs. Purvine’s somewhat erratic performance had left off long before. The smouldering firelight touched her fine, glistening hair, her pensive, downcast face; there was still light enough in the room through the pernicious glass window to reveal the grace of her postures and her slender figure. Aunt Dely, with some instinct for beauty native in her blood along with her “vagrantin’ ways” and her original opinions, contemplated her for a time, and presently commented upon her.
“I’m yer father’s own sister,” she averred. “I ain’t denyin’ it none, though he did go an’ marry that thar Jessup woman, ez nobody could abide; an’ I hate ter see a peart gal like you-uns, ez air kin ter me, a-sp’ilin’ her eyes an’ a-cryin’ over a feller ez her folks don’t favor no-ways. Yer elders knows bes’, Lethe.”
“Why, aunt Dely, you-uns married a man ez yer elders never favored; they war powerful sot agin him.”
Mrs. Purvine was clad in logic as in armor.
“An’ look how it turned out,—him dead an’ me a widder woman!”
Alethea stitched on silently for a moment. Then she observed with unusual softness, for she feared being accounted “sassy,” “I ’lowed I hed hearn ye say he war fifty-five year old, when he died.”
“What’s fifty-five?” demanded Mrs. Purvine aggressively. “I knowed a man ez war a hunderd an’ ten.”
And so Alethea was forced to acquiesce in the proposition that Mrs. Purvine’s consort had been cut off in the flower of his youth as a judgment for having some thirty years previous eloped with the girl of his heart.
Both women looked conscious when a sudden step sounded in cautious ascent of the flight before the door, which illustrated so pointedly the truism that pride goes before a fall, and a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered, red-headed fellow strode in at the door.
“Air yer eyesight failin’ ye, Jerry Price?” Mrs. Purvine admonished him. He was her husband’s nephew. “Thar’s Lethe Sayles.”
Being called to order in this manner might well embarrass the young man, who had not expected to see Alethea, and who was rebuked for the dereliction before he was well in the room.
He shambled up to shake hands with her with a somewhat elaborate show of cordiality.
“Waal, Lethe,” he exclaimed, “ye air a sight fur sore eyes! Ain’t seen ye fur a month o’ Sundays.”
“Looks like she hed sore eyes herself, bound with red ferretin’,” commented Mrs. Purvine gruffly. She often had a disposition, as she averred, to knock these young people’s heads together,—a sufficiently dangerous proceeding, for according to her account there were not two such hard heads in all Eskaqua Cove and Piomingo to boot. She had cherished an earnest desire to make a match between them, frustrated only by their failure to second the motion. They were well aware of this, and it impaired the ease of their relations, hampering even the exchange of the compliments of the season.
“Young folks take the lead!” Mrs. Purvine often exclaimed, oblivious of her own sentimental history. “Ef nobody war wantin’ ’em ter marry they’d be runnin’ off with one another.”
She had considered this breach of obedience on the part of her husband’s nephew a special instance of filial ingratitude, and had begun to remind him, and in fact to remember, all that she had done for him.
“Folkses ’lowed ter me, whenst Jerry Price’s mammy died, ez I hed better leave him be, an’ his aunt Melindy Jane would keer fur him. An’ I hedn’t been merried but a few years, an’ bein’ ez I runned away my folks wouldn’t gin me nuthin’, an’ me an’ my old man war most o’ the furniture we hed in the house. But law! we hed plenty arter a while, an’ ter spare!” cried the rich aunt Dely. “An’ they all ’lowed I hed better not lumber myse’f up with other folkses chill’n. Waal, I never expected ter, when I went ter the fun’el. But thar on the floor sot the hardest-featured infant I ever seen, red-headed, blinkin’ eye, lean, an’ sucked his thumb! An’ all them folks war standin’ ’round him, lookin’ down at him with thar eyes all perverted an’ stretched, like a gobbler looks at a deedie ’fore he pecks him on the noodle. An’ they were all pityin’ Melindy Jane fur hevin’ ter keer fur him. Thar she war settin’ wropped in a shawl, an’ ’pearin’ ez ef she could bite a ten-penny nail in two, sayin’ she mus’ submit ter the Lord! Waal, ’peared ter me ez I jes’ could view the futur’, an’ the sorter time Red-head would hev along o’ a woman ez war submittin’ on account o’ him ter the Lord! An’ I jes’ ups an’ lied afore ’em all. I sez, ‘That’s the purties’ child I ever see. Surely he is!’ An’ I sez right hearty ter the b’reaved husband, ‘Ephr’im, ef ye’ll gin him ter me, I’ll keer fur him till he’s able ter keer fur me.’ An’ Eph looked up ez s’prised an’ pleased, and says, ‘Will ye, Dely?’ An’ ef ye’ll b’lieve me, arter I hed called him ‘purty’ Melindy Jane ’lowed she wanted him, an’ hed nuthin’ ter say ’bout the Lord. But I jes’ stepped inter the floor an’ snatched him up under my arm, an’ set out an’ toted him five mile home. An’ lean ez he ’peared, he war middlin’ heavy. I rubbed some pepper on his thumb that night. He ain’t sucked it sence.”
Jerry Price used to listen, calmly smoking, hardly identifying himself—as what man would!—with the homely subject of the sketch; and yet with a certain sense of obligation to Mrs. Purvine, returning thanks in some sort in behalf of the unprepossessing infant.
“Ye an’ me made a right good trade out’n it, ain’t we, aunt Dely?” he would say.
She formerly accorded jocund acquiescence to this blithe proposition. But now she would exclaim, “Did ennybody think ye’d grow up ter set yerse’f ter spite me, an’ won’t do nuthin’ I ax ye? ’Kase I hev sot my heart on hevin’ Lethe Sayles ter live along o’ me, ye won’t go courtin’ her.”
The specious Price would demand, “How d’ye know ez I won’t?”
And hope would once more gleam from the ashes of Mrs. Purvine’s disappointments.
“Lethe’s been ter Shaftesville,” she said, nodding triumphantly, sure to impress Jerry with this statement, for he was as worldly as she. Then, with sudden animation, she turned to her niece: “Lethe, did ye see enny lookin’-glasses thar like mine?” She pointed to a cherry-framed mirror, some ten or twelve inches square, hung upon the wall at a height that prevented it from reflecting aught but the opposite wall. It was as well, perhaps, for glass of that quality could only return a corrugated image that might have induced depression of spirit in one gazing on the perversions of its surface. The walls were pasted over with pictures from almanacs and bright-tinted railway advertisements; for her husband had once been postmaster of the invisible neighborhood, and these were the most important trophies and emoluments of the office. They quite covered the mellow brown logs and the daubing between, and were as crude and gairish a substitute as well might be. They were the joy of Mrs. Purvine’s heart, however, and as she dwelt upon them and committed them to memory they assumed all the functions of a literature. She valued hardly less a cheap clock that stood upon a shelf, and gave no more intimation of the passage of time than a polite hostess. Whether it had no works, whether it had sustained some internal injury, whether the worldly nephew and aunt had not sufficient knowledge of the springs of its being to wind it up, Alethea never speculated and Mrs. Purvine did not care. It was more than was owned by any one else in her acquaintance, and she rejoiced without stint in its possession.
“An’ I’ll be bound ye never seen no clock like mine!” she said.
“Naw’m,” said Alethea; “but I jes’ went ter the jail.”
“What fur?” demanded Jerry. He was leaning against the door, and did not notice that he kept the light from Alethea’s work, but she was unwilling to remonstrate, and sewed on in the shadow.
“She went ter see Mink Lorey,” said his aunt. “I hope he ’lowed he war sorry fur his sins,—though ’twon’t do him no good now; oughter hev been sorry fust.”
“I never seen him,” said Alethea.
Mrs. Purvine had knelt before the fire for the purpose of investigating the baking of the egg-bread; she held the lid of the oven up with a bit of kindling, while she turned half around to fix an astonished gaze on the girl.
“In the name o’—Moses!”—she produced the adjuration as if she thought it equal to the occasion,—“what did ye kem hyar lyin’ ’bout’n it, Lethe, an’ sayin’ ye hed been ter see him? Ye’ll git yer nose burnt, an’ I’ll be glad of it.” She broke off suddenly, addressing a hound that, lured by the appetizing odor gushing out from under the lid of the oven, had approached with a sinuous, beguiling motion, and was extending his long neck. “Ye’d look mighty desirable with a blister on it.”
“I never said I seen Reuben,” returned Alethea, regardless of this interlude. “He wouldn’t see me.”
“What fur?” asked Jerry excitedly.
The lid fell from Mrs. Purvine’s hand upon the oven with a crash. She was speechless with amazement.
Alethea sat, her hands clasped on the quilting frame, the glow of the firelight full on her golden hair; her beauty seemed heightened by the refined pathos which weeping often leaves upon the face when it is once more calm. It was hard to say the cruel words, but her voice was steady.
“He ’lowed I favored the harnt on Thunderhead what sp’iles folkses’ prospects. I hed ’lowed ter him, when I las’ seen him, ez he oughter gin what he hed ter old man Griff. An’ he went ter Shaftesville. An’ they jailed him.”
Mrs. Purvine’s moon face turned scarlet. “Now, ain’t ye up an’ down ’shamed o’ yerse’f, Lethe Ann Sayles? Ter set store by a man ez talks ter you-uns like that!” She rose, with a toss of her head. “The kentry hev got my cornsent ter hang him!”
She began to move about more briskly as she placed the plates on the table. The fact of this breach between Alethea and Mink was auspicious to her darling scheme. “Naw, child,” she said as the girl offered to assist, “ye set an’ talk ter Jerry ’bout Mink; he wants ter hear ’bout Mink.”
“I wisht I could be witness fur Reuben,” said Alethea, feeling an intense relief to be able to mention this without revealing her secret. “I b’lieve I could holp Reuben some.”
“Whyn’t ye go ter his lawyer?” asked Jerry. “Harshaw, they say, he hev got ter defend him.”
“He wouldn’t listen; he fairly run from me.”
“In Moses’s name!” cried Mrs. Purvine, with sibilant inversion of her favorite exclamation, “what ails them crazy bucks in Shaftesville? All of ’em got the jim-jams, in jail an’ out!”
“Waal,” said Jerry coolly, “ef ye want ter tell him sech ez ye know, I’ll make him listen ter ye. I hev been summonsed on the jury fur the nex’ term, an’ I’ll hev ter go ter Shaftesville or be fined. An’ ef ye air thar I’ll see Harshaw don’t run from ye,—else he won’t run fur, no mo’. He’ll lack his motions arter that.”
“Ai-yi! When Jerry talks he ain’t minchin’ his words!” cried aunt Dely admiringly.
Alethea was very grateful for this stalwart championship. She said nothing, however, for she had no cultured phrases of acknowledgment. Her spirits rose; her flagging brain was once more alert; she was eager to be alone,—to think what she would say to the lawyer, to Mink, on the witness-stand. She hardly noticed Mrs. Purvine’s manner of self-gratulation, or her frequent glances toward her young people as they sat together before the dull fire. Alethea was very beautiful, and Jerry—Mrs. Purvine never deluded herself with denials of her adopted son’s ugliness—was good and manly, and as sharp as a brier. Any man might be esteemed a poor match for looks, unless it were the worthless Mink, so safe in jail.
The feat a woman’s imagination can accomplish in a given time is the most triumphant illustration of the agility of the human mind. Before either spoke again Mrs. Purvine had elaborated every detail of the courtship and engagement, pausing from time to time, as she placed the dishes on the table, and looking about the room in complete abstraction, planning how to arrange the furniture to give space for the dancing at the infair.
“Set out the supper in the shed-room, an’ take these hyar two beds an’ thar steads up-steers inter the roof-room,” she muttered, measuring with her eye. “The loom kin jes’ be h’isted out ’n the shed-room inter the yard—an’ I don’t keer ef I never see it agin—an’ the spinning-wheels set in the bedroom.” As to Satan, she had forgotten that he was quite capable of making himself small enough to hide in the fiddle.
The light was growing dull out of doors; the stridulous voices of the September insects sounded ceaselessly, scarcely impinging upon the sense of quiet, so monotonous was the iteration of their song. The strokes of an axe, betokening activity at the wood-pile, seemed to cleave the silence, and reverberated from the mountains, as if the echoes were keeping a tally. Alethea had rolled up the quilting frame, and it swung from the beams. Presently the children were trooping in, three great awkward boys, who evidently formed themselves upon Jerry Price’s manner, except the youngest, a lad of fourteen, whose face had a certain infantile lower, saved over from his juvenile days, and concentrating readily into a pout. Even his mother admitted that he was “sp’iled some.” Together they made short work of the egg-bread and “br’iled bacon.”
They tarried not long afterward, but trooped noisily up the ladder to the roof-room; and as they strode about on the floor, which was also the ceiling of the room below, it seemed momently that they would certainly come through.
Jerry lighted his pipe and sat on the doorstep; the fashionable Mrs. Purvine lighted hers and took a chair near. All the doors stood open, for the night was sultry. The stars were very bright in the moonless sky. The dogs lolling their tongues, sat on the porch, or lay in the dewy grass; making incursions now and then into the room, climbing cavalierly over Jerry’s superfluity of long legs, and nosing about among the ashes to make sure that none of the scraps had escaped.
“Don’t ye know I never waste nuthin’, ye grisly gluttons?” demanded Mrs. Purvine, the model housekeeper. But their fat sides did not confirm this statement, and, bating a wag of homage in the extreme tip of their tails, they paid no attention to her.
“What I’m a-honin’ ter know,” said Jerry Price presently, “air how them boys ez war along o’ Mink an’ war summonsed ez witnesses air goin’ ter prove he war drunk. Ef they ’low Mink war drunk the ’torney-gin’al ’ll try ter make out he war sober. He’s a-goin’ ter ax, ‘Whar’d he git the whiskey, bein’ ’s all the still thar is air a bonded still, an’ by law can’t sell less ’n five gallons. Then them boys’ll be afeard ter tell whar they got the whiskey, ’kase folks mought think they knowed who war makin’ it. An’ ef the moonshiners war raided, they mought declar’ ez some o’ them boys war aidin’ an’ abettin’ ’em, an’ the revenuers would arrest them too.”
“Don’t ye know who air makin’ it?” Alethea asked, a vivid picture in her mind of Boke’s barn, and Jerry Price and his cronies stalking their fantastic rounds about it.
“Naw, sir! an’ don’t wanter, nuther. I war along o’ ’em in the woods that night. I holped tote the jug. We lef’ it empty in Boke’s barn an’ fund it filled, but I dunno nuthin’ mo’.”
“Lethe,” said Mrs. Purvine, handing her a ball of gray yarn, the knitting-needles thrust through an ill-knit beginning of a sock, “I wish ye’d try ter find out whar I drapped them stitches, an’ ravel it out an’ knit it up agin. I hate ter do my work over, an’ I hev ter be powerful partic’lar with Jerry’s socks,—he wears ’em out so fas’. Ye’d ’low he war a thousand-legs, ef ye could see the stacks of ’em I hev ter darn.”
Alethea drew up a great rocking-chair, and now and then leaned over its arms toward the fire to catch the red glow of the embers upon her work, as her deft hands repaired the damages of Mrs. Purvine’s inattention. Suddenly she said in a pondering tone, “Why would the ’torney-gineral ruther prove Reuben war sober?”
“’Kase ef he war proved drunk the jury would lean ter him,” said Jerry.
She laid her work down in her lap, and gazed intently at him. His face had the transient glow of his pipe upon it, and then, as he took it from his lips, was as indistinct as his long, lank figure disposed in the doorway.
“They oughtn’t ter do it,—but they do. I ain’t never seen nare jury hold a drunk man ez up an’ down ’sponsible ez ef he war sober. They’ll lean ter him ef he could be proved drunk.”
Alethea said nothing. Her mental attitude was one of intense receptivity. Her keen appreciation of how much depended on her comprehension, her desire that no point should escape her attention, were positive pain in their acute consciousness.
The discerning Jerry went on with that acumen and cogency which were such odd concomitants of his ignorance and uncouthness:—
“It makes me laff every time I see a witness swore ter tell ‘the truth, the whole truth, an’ nuthin’ but the truth.’ Folks is so apt ter b’lieve the truth air jes’ what they wanter b’lieve. Git them boys skeered up right smart ’bout the revenuers on one side an’ the moonshiners on t’ other, an’ they’ll feel the truth war ez none o’ we-uns hed ennythin’ ter drink that night; mought hev hed a dram o’ cider, or mebbe nuther stronger ’n yerb tea, but nobody war bodaciously boozy. Then they don’t know sure enough whar the liquor kem from; mos’ folks don’t b’lieve thar’s no still round ’bout the mountings now.”
Alethea leaned back in the rocking-chair, her nerveless hands falling idly upon the work in her lap. The crude mosaic of advertisements on the walls started out with abnormal distinctness, as a tiny flame rose from the embers and fell into sudden extinction among the ashes, leaving the only picture in the room the dusky night-scene dimly painted in purple and dove color upon the panes of the window.
It was only she who could remedy the deficiency in this valuable testimony. She knew full well the source of their secret supply. She it was who had seen the jug left in the barn by the roistering blades, and the moonshiner swing down from the loft to seize upon it. She had his full confession from his own lips. She appreciated the distinctions the jury would make between hilarious drunken sport and coolly intentional malice in the prisoner, and that it was in her hands to sacrifice one of these men to the other.
For the first time she was quick to distrust her own intuitions. Her tyrant conscience, hitherto always ready to immolate every cherished wish on the altar of the right, seemed now the suavest mentor, urging that her lover’s liberty, his life for aught she knew, should not be jeopardized to protect a man whose vocation she accounted a curse to the community. She felt a secret amaze that her first vague project should expand into a fully equipped plan, with hardly a conscious process of thought to give it shape and detail. Her natural doubts, her efforts at alternatives, were flouted by some inner imperious determination. It was in the nature of a concession from this suddenly elate and willful power that she obtained her own consent, as she would have phrased it, to warn Sam Marvin, for the sake of his “houseful,” that he might elude capture, and perhaps save his still and appliances from destruction. And she would warn Jerry, too, despite that triumphant, tumultuous consciousness which held all else so slight since she had knowledge that could aid in proving Mink’s irresponsibility for what he had really done, and his innocence of the graver crime of which he was accused.
“Jerry,” she said, observing that Mrs. Purvine had fallen asleep in her chair, her moon face all askew, her idle hands neatly rolled up in her apron,—“Jerry, I reckon ye wouldn’t want me a-goin’ testifyin’ ter Shaftesville ef ye knowed I seen you-uns leave the jug that evenin’ in Boke’s barn. I sca’cely b’lieved ’twar ye, at fust, all of ye acted so cur’ous; I ’lowed ’twar sperits in yer likeness. An’ I seen the distiller kem an’ git the jug. An’ he seen me.”
“Look-a-hyar, Lethe!” exclaimed Jerry, seriously. “Don’t joke ’bout sech ez that. Ye know the moonshiners mought fairly kill ye, ef they fund out ye knowed an’ tole on ’em. They hev done sech afore now. Ye keep yer mouth shet an’ yer tongue ’twixt yer teeth, ef ye knows what’s healthy fur ye.”
“I ain’t jokin’,” said Alethea.
“Ye mind what I say,” declared Jerry. “I ain’t afeard myself o’ the moonshiners nor the revenuers, nare one,—ain’t got no call ter be,—but words sech ez ye air speakin’ air powerful ticklish an’ techy kind o’ talk. Ye better tend ter the cows an’ sheep an’ weavin’ an’ sech, an’ leave the men’s business alone. I hev never knowed,” continued Jerry, a trifle acrimoniously, “a woman git ten steps away from home but what she acts ez ef she hed tuk off her brains an’ lef’ ’em thar along of her every-day clothes.”
“I jes’ went ter git the lam’ out’n a hole,” said Alethea, in no wise daunted, and ready with her retort. “His leg’s mendin’, though he hops some yit. An’ I war in the cow-pen when the moonshiner kem an’ talked ter me.”
“Listen at ye, a-settin’ talkin’ ’bout law-breakers,” said the fastidious Mrs. Purvine, who had abruptly waked. “I ain’t kin ter none o’ ’em. Naw, sir, an’ I wouldn’t own it ef I war. Mind me o’ yer uncle Pettin Guyther, ez war always talkin’ ’bout murder an’ robbery: every tale he told they killed the folks a diff’ent way,—spilled thar blood somehows, an’ cracked thar skulls bodaciously; an’ whenever he’d git hisself gone from hyar I useter be ’feared lawless ones would kem hyar of a night ter thieve an’ kill, knowin’ ez I hed consider’ble worldly goods. The Bible say riches ain’t no ’count. Mebbe so, but I ain’t so sure ’bout that.”
Perhaps it was her clock which she had in mind, for—without any monition from it, however—she added, “Time ter go ter bed, chill’n,—time ter go ter bed.”
She did not rise from her chair at once. She admonished Jerry to “kiver” the fire with ashes, and watched him as he did it. Then he tramped up the ladder to the roof-room, noisily enough to wake the dead, perhaps, but not aunt Dely’s boys.
She gave a long, mournful yawn of sleepiness and fatigue, and stretched her arms wearily above her head. Then with sudden cheerfulness she exclaimed, “Lethe, ye hain’t never hed a chance ter sleep in the bedroom!”
She spoke as if there were but one on the face of the earth.
“Ye hev never been down hyar ’thout yer elders an’ sech, ez ye hev hed ter show respec’ ter, an’ stan’ back fur,—yer step-mam, an’ Jacob Jessup’s wife, an’ sech; but ye shell sleep in the bedroom one time, sure, instead o’ in this room, ez be het up so hot with cookin’ supper in it.”
She rose bustlingly to stir up the fire, that there might be light enough to make the requisite preparations. Alethea’s heart failed her when she thought of the tiny apartment partitioned off at the end of the porch, and beheld her aunt lighting a little tin lamp without a chimney at the fire. The mountain girl, with all the conservatism of her class, possessed the strength of prejudice against innovation which usually appertains to age. The characteristic of years seemed reversed as she looked on with reluctance, and the old woman flustered about, full of her experimental glories and her eager relish of a new fashion. “Ye kem along, child!” she exclaimed, her moon face wreathed with a toothless smile and the redolent emanations of the smoking and sputtering lamp. It was placed on a shelf in the little room, and as Alethea buttoned the door it gave out less light than a suffocating odor. It served, however, to reveal the timbers that formed the sides of the room, for it was built after the treasures of the post-office had been exhausted in the decoration of the main house. Upon them hung an array of Mrs. Purvine’s dresses, suspended by the neck, and suggesting the uncheerful idea of a row of executed women. The bed was high, huge with feathers and heaped with quilts. There were no means of ventilation, unless sundry cracks incident to mountain architecture might be relied upon. Alethea made haste to extinguish the lamp. When she had climbed the altitudes of the feather bed she could not sleep. The roof-room at home, with its windows and its sweeps of high air, was not so fine, it might be, but as she smothered by slow degrees she thought poorly of fashion. Her brain was hot with the anxious, strenuous thoughts that seethed through it. She was much less cheerful as the hours wore on. The recollections of the sad day bore heavily upon her spirit. Over and again Mink’s cruel words, the ridicule to which the lawyer had subjected her in her own estimation, the affront to her dignity,—she had no such fine name for it, she could only feel,—came back to her, and she could but marvel that the evening had passed so placidly; she wondered that she even lived, so acute were the pangs of her wounded pride. She had an ineffable repugnance to the idea of ever seeing Harshaw again; for herself alone, for her life, she felt, she would have made no further effort. “I’ll do it fur Reuben, though,” she said. The thought of him, too, was very bitter. Her wakeful eyes were hot, but they harbored no tears. Once she slipped down from the bed and unbuttoned the door, hoping to sleep with the influx of air. It came in fresh, sweet, full of the sense of dew. The night was not black; only a subdued gray shadow lay over all the land: how its passive, neutral aspect expressed the idea of rest! Looking out from the cavernous overhanging portal of the little porch, she could see the Great Smoky, darkly rising above the cove. She heard the stir of a bird roosting in an althea bush by the gate, and then a scuttling noise under the house. She had moved very softly, but the vigilant Towser bounded upon the porch. He knew her—for she spoke to him instantly—as well as he knew his name, but for some unexplained affectation of his nature he would not recognize her, and sat before her door and barked at her with a vehemence that made the roof ring, the sound reverberating from the mountains as if a troop of wolves were howling in the melancholy woods. Twice he tired of this pastime, and withdrew under the house, coming out once more to renew it. She shut the door, finally, and again and again he threw himself against it, at last lying down before it and growling at intervals. She fell asleep after a time, through sheer fatigue, regardless of the lack of air in the little dungeon; waking heavy-eyed and fagged in the morning, able to acquiesce only faintheartedly when Mrs. Purvine triumphantly saluted her: “Waal, Lethe, now nobody kin never say ez ye ain’t slep’ in the bedroom.”
All day she felt the effects of her vigil. She thought it was this which had touched her courage. She stood still with a quaking at her heart, when, climbing the Great Smoky, she reached the forks in the road where she should turn off to go to Sam Marvin’s house. There was no view of the valley. The woods were immeasurable about her, all splendid with the pomp and state of autumn. Those great trees, ablaze with color,—the flaming yellow of the hickory, the rich, dull purple of the sweet-gum, the crimson of the oaks,—reached up in endless arches above her head, all boldly painted against the blue sky. An incredible brilliancy of effect was afforded by the long vistas, free of undergrowth, and carpeted with the poly-tinted leaves. Among the boughs often the full purple clusters of the muscadines hung, the vines climbing to the tops of the trees, and then trailing over to the ground. As she stood she heard a creaking and straining of the strong cables,—a fox in their midst as they lay tangled upon the earth. She noted, too, the translucent red globes of the persimmon hanging upon trees denuded of all but a few yellow leaves.
She sat down on a log at the forks of the road, feeling greatly perturbed and anxious. To do what she proposed to do was to take her life in her hands. Not her step-mother alone, but Jacob Jessup, had warned her, and Jerry Price had repeated what they had said, almost in their very words. But they had only sought to curb her foolish tongue. They had never dreamed of the reckless temerity of going into the moonshiner’s den to defy him, proclaim herself the informer, and warn him to save himself. He had already threatened her; she remembered his stern, vehement face in the closing dusk. She wondered that her mind should balk from the decision so imperatively urged upon it. She seemed, as it were, to catch herself in lapses of attention. Often she looked, first at one, then at the other, of the roads,—neither visible for more than a few yards up the steep ascent,—as if she expected some diversion, some extraneous aid, in her dilemma, something to happen to decide it for her.
What, she said to herself, if never again she should behold this place? What if, in taking choice of the forks of the road, she should take a path she might never tread again?
And then she wondered that she should notice that the log on which she sat was a “lick log,” should speculate whether the cattle often came here for salt, should look idly into the cleft within it to see if perchance there were still salt there.
It would be safer, it might be better for all, to give her testimony if it should be called for, and leave Sam Marvin to the law. “I’m fairly feared o’ him, ennyways. I’m feared ter go thar an’ let him know that he’ll git fund out, mebbe, fur I’ll tell on him ef I’m summonsed ez a witness. My step-mother’s always sayin’ I’m a meddler, an’ mebbe I be.”
She listened to the sound of an outgushing roadside spring. She looked up at the new moon, which seemed to follow the lure of the wind beckoning in the trees. They shook their splendid plumes together like an assemblage of bowing courtiers, gayly bedight.
She remembered the “houseful,” the pinching poverty, the prison, the destruction of the still. She rose reluctantly and turned to the left. Her eyes were bright; her cheeks were flushed; her red lips parted. She listened intently from time to time: not a sound but her own slow, light footfall. She had thought to hear the dogs barking, for the place was now near at hand. When she saw a rail-fence terminating the vista her heart gave a great bound; she paused, looking at it with dilated eyes. Then she went on, up and up, till the house came in view,—a forlorn little cabin, with a clay and stick chimney, smokeless! She stared at it amazed. There was no creature in the hog-pen, which was large for the pretensions of the place,—the distillery refuse explained its phenomenal size, perhaps; the door of the house swung loose in the wind. There were several slats nailed across the entrance low down, evidently intended to keep certain vagrant juveniles from falling out of the door. No need for this now. The place was deserted. Alethea walked up to the fence,—the bars lay upon the ground,—and stepped over the slats into the empty room. The ashes had been dead for days in the deep chimney-place; a few rags in a corner fluttered in the drafts from crannies; the whole place had that indescribable mournfulness of a deserted human habitation that had so pathetically appealed to her in the little house at Boke’s Spring. Here it pierced her heart. It was from fear of her that they had fled,—and whither? A poor home at best, where could they find another? She need not have quaked, she said to herself; they had not sought to still her tongue, lest it should wag against them. They had uprooted their home, and had withdrawn themselves alike from the informer and the law that threatened them. The tears sprang into her eyes. She deprecated their bitter feeling, their saddened lives, their deserted hearth-stone. And yet it was all wrong that they should distill the brush whiskey, and could she say she was to blame?
A faint scratching sound struck her attention. It came from behind the closed door of the shed-room. She stood listening for a moment, unable to account for it. Then she went forward and unlatched the door.
A starved cat, emaciated and forlorn to the last degree, forgotten in the removal, shut by some accident into the room, crept quivering out. It went through the dumb show of mewing; it could not walk; its bones almost pierced its skin. Its plight served to approximate the date of the flitting. It had been there for days, weeks perhaps.
She picked up the creature, and carried it home in her arms.