XXI.
Alethea Sayles awoke early the morning after the momentous news of Mink’s journey had come to Wild-Cat Hollow; such an awakening as a barn-swallow might know, the familiar of the rafters and the clapboards. There was no other ceiling to the roof-room. She might put up her hand and touch it where she lay, but in the centre it was higher,—high enough for many pendent uses: bags of cotton swung from the ridge-pole; hanks of yarn; bunches of pepper; gourds; old hats and garments, of awry, distorted, facetious aspect in their caricature of the habit of humanity. The snow pressed heavily without; through the crevices vague white glimpses of the drifts might be seen, for the dull glow from the fire in the room below penetrated the cracks between the boards of the flooring, which served as the ceiling of the lower story. Light came in, too, from the rifts between the wall and the great stick-and-clay chimney, which bulged outward, being built outside the house, as is the habit in the region. It was the light of the waning moon, fitful, fluctuating, for clouds were astir. Now and then, too, Alethea could see the great morning star with its tremulous glister, seeming nearer, dearer, than all the others,—splendid, yet tender and full of promise. She looked wistfully at it for a moment, feeling the dull aching wound in her heart, and forgetting what dealt it. Then it all came back to her, and she wondered she had awakened again. She could not understand how she lived. She felt as if she could rise no more. But the cow was to be milked; she listened to the cocks crowing. The baby, who had developed a virulent habit of early rising, was already astir. She heard his thumping bare feet on the floor of the room below; he would be cold, and she thought of the danger of the embers, and remembered that the sluggard his mother still drowsed. The breakfast must be cooked, the dishes must be washed. Her physical strength was asserting itself against the shock to her mind. Her collapsed energies were recuperated by sleep, albeit the slumber induced by the primitive narcotics of the “yerb bag.” Ah, the world of Wild-Cat Hollow, small though it was, was full of work, and she must lay hold. And so she rose once more, and joined hands with joyless duty.
Ben Doaks sojourned with them for a time, and went hunting with Jessup, and brought back game, and made Mrs. Sayles presents of the peltry. As he sat by the fire at night he told the news from the cove in great detail, and discussed it freely with Mrs. Jessup, and developed remarkable capacities for acquiescence. Old Griff, he said, was having a mighty hard winter. His mill had proved a sore loss, for he was bereft of his tolls, and he had planted little corn. “He mought make out, though. His meat looks thrivin’; he hain’t killed yit.” Ben spoke of the miller’s hogs afoot as if they held their fat in trust and were stewards of their own bacon. The old man seemed failing, and talked much about Tad; sometimes as if he had already returned, sometimes as if he momently expected him. The children, too, “’peared thrivin’,” though Ben didn’t believe Sophy would ever be good for much except to look at, and the little ones “all ’peared ragged ez ef she didn’t study ’bout them much.”
“Too many peart, spry boys in the cove fur her ter study ’bout, stiddier them,” said Mrs. Sayles, with a scornful toss of the head, histrionically seeing the situation from Sophy’s standpoint.
“Jerry Price ’pears ter set a heap o’ store by Sophy’s looks,” submitted Ben, with the implication of the remark.
“Waal, ’twould be a jedgmint on Dely Purvine fur all her onwholesome vanity an’ slack-twisted sort o’ religion, ef that thar Jerry Price, ez she hev brung up ez ef he war her own son,—though his looks air enough ter tarrify a mole,—war ter marry Sophy Griff.”
“Waal, sir, one thing,—her housekeepin’ couldn’t ’stonish him none arter Mis’ Purvine’s,” remarked Mrs. Jessup, with an elaborate semblance of seeing the brighter side of things.
“Shucks!” Mrs. Sayles commented. “He’d miss mightily the show and the shine he hev been used ter along o’ Mis’ Purvine.”
“Waal,” said Ben, “I don’t b’lieve ez Mis’ Purvine would mind much who Jerry marries, so long ez he keeps clar o’ Elviry Crosby. Mis’ Purvine air mightily outdone with her. She hev been mournin’ fur Peter Rood same ez ef she war a widder-woman. An’ ye know she wouldn’t speak ter him ez long ez Mink war out’n the grip o’ the sher’ff. She tried ter toll Pete back arterwards. I hearn him ’low sech when they war drawin’ the jury. I dunno how she made out.”
Mrs. Sayles gazed at the fire solemnly from under her pink sun-bonnet. “Death tolled him,” she said lugubriously.
“I’d jes’ ez lief Death as Elviry Crosby,” said Mrs. Jessup, in calm superiority to the wiles of feminine fascination.
Old man Sayles shook his head in negation.
“Mighty dark under the ground,” he said, with terror of the termination of life; which for him signified so little that a sponge with a vocable or two might have seemed his correlative.
But when Ben was gone,—and the sight of Alethea, silent, absorbed, pallid, broken-hearted, gave him little wish to prolong his stay,—the scene at the fireside was less amicable and cheerful. The elder women, bereft of gossip, bickered over the trifling mishaps of the day. The old man sorted his “lumber.” Jessup slouched and lazed and smoked. Only the weather varied the aspect of the world. The snow slipped away in the thaw, leaving mud and ooze and intervals of blackened ice. Then the rains descended, and the scene without was dimly visible through the long, slanting, dun-colored fringes of the cloud. The roof clamored with the resonant fall of the drops, the clapboards leaked, and puddles formed even in the ashes of the chimney corner. The sun might shine vaguely for a day. The chill splendors of the wintry constellations scintillated icily in the dark spaces of the night. But the clouds, rallying from every repulse, closed once more about the Great Smoky, and ravine and peak and cove were again deeply covered with snow.
Mrs. Jessup bewailed the change. “I war a-hopin’,” she remarked, “ez we would hev no mo’ fallin’ weather, so Lethe could go ter the meetin’ at the church-house in Eskaqua Cove, an’ fetch up some word o’ what’s a-goin’ on down thar ter this benighted roost. I war raised in the cove! I ain’t used ter sech a dwindlin’ sort o’ life ez this hyar.”
“What ailed ye, then, ter marry a mounting boy?” Mrs. Sayles would demand in resentment.
“’Kase I war the mos’ outdacious an’ astonishin’ fool in Cherokee County.”
Mrs. Jessup was not a woman of great abilities, but she had an uncommon gift of conclusiveness in retort.
Mrs. Sayles could only knit off her needle with a sort of whisking scornfulness of gesture.
And presently, not to be silenced, she demanded when the meetin’ was to be held.
“To-morrer’s the day; this be Sat’dy. Ter-morrer’s Sunday.”
“The snow’s a dry snow,” remarked Mrs. Sayles. “I dunno what’s ter hender Lethe, ef she feels minded ter go ter meetin’.”
It never occurred to either of them to undertake themselves the hardships and dangers of the excursion. Even Mrs. Jessup, pining for the fuller development and richer social opportunities of life in the cove, did not covet them to the extent of exertion.
Alethea was glad to be alone. The burden of the work, however mechanically accomplished, had pressed heavily upon her consciousness. The acrimony, the continual talk, the trivial stir, had impinged jarringly upon her deeper absorption. The infinite solitude of the wilds, the austere dignity of their silence, harmonized with her mood. She had craved to hear the preaching. She was spiritually an hungered. She turned to the consolations of religion. Now and then she drew a deep sigh as she went, and paused and looked about her with eyes that felt as if they had wept long; but they were dry, and tears for a time had been strangers. She was fain to note closely to-day the aspects of the outer world, or, woodland creature though she was, she might have missed her way in the tortuous intricacies that the road had followed in striving to make and keep a footing among the steeps. Icicles still hung to the dark faces of the crags, grim and distinct upon the snowy slopes about them. On every side towered the great trees, their gigantic proportions more incredibly imposing when fully revealed in bare bole and branch than when the foliage had veiled them. Now and then she met a mist, stealing softly, silently along, or lurking like some half-affrighted apparition in the depth of ravines, or peering down from over unmeasured heights. As the road turned abruptly she saw a mass of white vapor against the sky,—nay, it was Thunderhead, the great cloud-mountain. There was movement upon the slopes of the peak. The mists shifted to and fro, with vague gray shadows mysteriously attendant upon them. Sudden gusts of wind swept through the forest, rousing it to motion, to weird murmurs. She gathered her brown shawl about her and drew her bonnet forward. And then the wind would slip away, and she would hear it repeating its mystic apostrophe far off among the ravines of Thunderhead, or Big Injun, or another of the mighty company of the border. Through rifts of the clouds came sometimes a pallid glimpse of the midday moon. It had a strange ghastly gleam on this sad gray day, above the great legendary mountain. She stood and gazed at it for a moment in vague fascination, then she turned and went on. She saw occasionally the footprints of small animals in the snow. Often she looked after them, for she had the compassionate tenderness of a compatriot for these little mountaineers. Once she noticed a rabbit that crouched chilled and trembling for an instant, and then went leaping through the frozen weeds.
She was not cold. It was growing warmer as she made her way down to lower levels, and much of the time she walked rapidly. Only when she cautiously crossed the mountain torrent, icy and motionless save that in its crystal heart a stream like a silver arrow swiftly and silently glided, glancing in the light, she felt the chill of the day. For the foot-bridge was hung with icicles and enveloped in deceptive snow that fell at the touch of her foot, and she began to be afraid she would lose so much time here that she might be late and miss some part of the sermon. When the cove became visible, one might fail to discern any expression of the social opportunities for which Mrs. Jessup valued it. In its wintry guise it was peculiarly open to the eye: its forests were bare; the unbroken snow lay in its broad fields in lieu of its harvested crops; its road was distinguishable by the narrow interval between the zigzag fences; the serpentine lines of the river were defined by its snow-fringed laureled banks; here and there a curl of blue smoke arose from the chimney of a little house heavily thatched with drifts.
The church had for Alethea many melancholy associations. She paused at the palings, remembering the night when she had stood here in the silent moonshine, in the full summer-tide, and the vapors had shifted about, and in their midst she had seen the boy whom they had said was dead. How much had come into her life since then, and, alas, how much had gone forth forever! The snow hung heavy in the pine-trees; the faint moon was in the fretted gray sky above the mountains. The little house was dark and drear under its whitened roof. The snow was melting close to the chimney. She heard the drops trickling down. The mounds in the inclosure were very distinct. Some of them had a square of palings close about: those were the graves of the well-to-do people of the cove. She could hardly have said, but for her life-long knowledge of the place, which was the new-made grave where lay the man who had pointed at her with his last living impulse, whose last word was intended for her, becoming dumb on his lips as his life died in him,—a word never to be heard, never to be answered. Here they all were, little ephemeral mounds in the midst of the great eternities of the mountains. She wondered if there were words to be said buried with the others; deeds to be done or undone; hopes unrealized; promises deferred until now when time was no more for them. Life was transitory, and so she was minded anew of the preacher.
He was already in the pulpit when she entered the low, dark little building, with its scanty congregation huddled on the few benches. He was a long-haired, wild-eyed, jeans-clad mountaineer, with a powerful physique and an admiration of prowess. He was a worthy and a well-meaning man, and there are those of his profession wiser than he who forget that they are apostles of peace. The circumstantial account of various feuds detailed in the Old Bible proved of intense interest to the majority of his congregation, who listened with eager faces and spellbound attention. The methods of slaughter in those days seem to have had phenomenal diversity, and certainly exceeded anything of the sort that had ever been heard of in Eskaqua Cove.
Alethea’s mind was too closely held in subordination to reverence for her to acknowledge, even to herself, how little this discourse met her peculiar needs. She endeavored to fix her attention humbly upon the harrowing details of barbarity; now and then an expression of wincing sympathy was in her clear eyes.
The application of the sermon—for it had an application—was to be found in the thankfulness which every professing member should experience because his lot was cast in Eskaqua Cove, where such practices did not obtain, and the fear which the unregenerate should harbor, since these tortures were nothing in comparison to what would happen to him in the next world, unless he forthwith mended his ways.
It left a certain trace of meditative astonishment among the heavy mountaineers, slouching out to their horses and wagons, slowly commenting while chewing hard on their great quids of tobacco. The women lingered and talked in a lack-lustre fashion to one another of their ailments, and interchanged inquiries concerning absent members of the family. Sophy Griff stood by the palings, debating whether she should accept the proffer of one of the youths to take her home on his horse behind him.
She was looking about doubtfully. “I brung two o’ the chil’ren along o’ me, but they ’pear ter hev runned off somewhar. I dunno ez I wanter leave ’em.”
“They’ll be home ’fore supper-time,” urged the gallant. “Trest ’em ter git thar ef thar’s enny eatin’ goin’ on.”
With this logic she suffered herself to be persuaded, mounted his horse behind him, and they rode away after the manner of a cavalier and his lady-love of the olden time.
Alethea trudged along the road to Mrs. Purvine’s house, for the journey up the mountain was hardly a possible achievement after the fatigues of the descent. The sun had come out. It scintillated on the snow. The cascades in the half-frozen river glittered iridescent. The bluffs were outlined with drifts in all their fissures; icicles clung to them at every jutting point, and the stunted trees of their summit, whose insistent roots seemed to pierce the stone, were encased in ice, and sparkled as the wind moved them. In the midst of all this splendor Mrs. Purvine’s house was dark and humble, despite the porch, and the front steps, and the glass windows. In the half-buried garden a bevy of dark figures sped this way and that over the snow. They were aunt Dely’s boys chasing rabbits. The creatures, half famished and bold with necessity,—fatally distinct on the whitened ground,—were deftly knocked on the head with a stick, and one blow from such experts was sufficient. In the party was a smaller boy, whom, at first, Alethea was puzzled to remember. Presently she recognized ’Gustus Tom, and this prepared her to see, when she entered, “sister Eudory,” sitting in front of Mrs. Purvine’s fire.
The pernicious glass in the windows added much cheerfulness to the apartment in weather like this. It aided the firelight in revealing sister Eudory’s tangle of flaxen hair and beguiling plumpness, as she sat, looking demure and wise, in one of the large rickety chairs. She was nearly five years of age now, and a great girl, and when she got down and went and stood behind the churn, in an affectation of shyness because of Alethea’s presence, she was not hidden by the article, and the handle of the dasher was insufficient to obscure her downcast face and her finger in her mouth.
“Yer aig will pop an’ bust, fust thing ye know,” said aunt Dely, the politic.
And Eudora forthwith came briskly out to investigate an egg which she was roasting in the ashes, the kind present of Mrs. Purvine. The hen that laid it was stalking about the room in unconscious bereavement. Now and then there was a shrill piping from a basket on the floor, from which overflowed, as it were, a downy collection of fall “deedies,” hatched too late to stand any chance of weathering the winter except by being reared into those obnoxious animals, house-chickens. A matronly feathered head would occasionally be thrust out with a remonstrant cluck, and the assemblage, miraculously escaping the heedless human foot, would climb into the basket, and there would ensue a soft sound of snuggling down and drowsy pipings. All of which excited sister Eudory almost to ecstasy.
Mrs. Purvine experienced less complacence. “Ef ennybody ain’t got no baby, an’ feels like adoptin’ one ter take trouble about, jes’ let ’em git ’em a settin’ o’ aigs an’ hatch out some fall deedies. They’ll be ez much trouble ez twins!”
“Whyn’t you-uns stay ter the meetin’ ter the church-house, Eudory?” demanded Alethea.
The little girl, kneeling on the hearth, anxiously adjusted a broom straw on the egg to see if it were done,—when, according to culinary tradition, the straw would turn; she glanced up with her charming smile showing her snaggled little teeth.
“’Gustus Tom wouldn’t bide,” she declared.
“Waal, now, ’Gustus Tom oughter begin ez early ez he kin,” said Mrs. Purvine. “Sech ez ’Gustus Tom hev a mighty wrastle with Satan ’fore they git grace. ’Gustus Tom hev got a long way o’ wickedness afore him. He oughter be among them in early youth convicted o’ sin an’ afeard o’ Satan.”
“Naw,” said the child, sitting upright and staring steadily at the straw. “He be ’feared o’ Pete Rood. An’ he won’t bide a-nigh the church-house.”
The light of the fire was on her face. Its breath stirred her bright hair. Her chubby hand hovered about the egg in the ashes. Surely the straw was turning at last.
“Pete Rood is dead, Eudory,” said Mrs. Purvine, rebukingly.
“In the groun’,” said Eudory unequivocally.
The mention of him recalled to Alethea that momentous day of drawing the jury, the mystery of Tad’s fate, the hardships of Mink’s duress, and finally the calamity which he had brought upon himself.
Alethea had taken off her bonnet, and sat down in the rocking-chair before the fire, her eyes fixed reflectively upon the great burning logs. The interior of Mrs. Purvine’s house always had a leisurely aspect; to-day it wore the added quiet and ease of Sunday stillness. It was evident that here no anxious female heart was “harried ter death,” in yearnings for the perfecting of a theory of housekeeping.
Mrs. Purvine, sitting with her empty hands in her lap, once more rebuked sister Eudory, the decorums of the day giving a more stringent interpretation to her code of manners.
“Ye mustn’t say ’Gustus Tom air ’feard o’ Pete Rood, ’kase he air dead.”
“That’s what ’Gustus Tom say—he say don’t talk ’bout’n it.” Eudora looked up gravely. “He be wusser ’feard now ’n he war when Pete Rood war ’live.”
There was a sudden hand on the latch, and ’Gustus Tom came hastily in.
“Look-a-hyar, sister Eudory!” he cried remonstrantly, seizing her by the arm, “what ails ye ter let yer tongue break loose that-a-way? Shet up! Ye promised ye wouldn’t tell.”
He had an excited, grave, frightened look that was incongruous with the roguish cast of his features; his torn old hat was jauntily askew; his clothes were ragged; a single suspender seemed quite adequate to support so many holes; his shoes were broken. There was a distinct deprecation and anxiety in his face more pitiable than poverty, as he looked from one to the other of the women. He was evidently wondering how much of his secrets the faithless sister Eudory had told. He could not control his fears. He broke out suddenly:
“Hev she tole ’bout’n what I done?”
Mrs. Purvine, who was jocose with children, and who could not appreciate at this stage of the disclosure that anything of moment impended, folded her arms slowly across her bosom, looked at him over her spectacles, a great deal of the whites of her blue eyes showing, and with mock solemnity nodded assent.
“Waal, waal—did she tell ’bout’n the—the mill, too?”
Aunt Dely shook her head in burlesque reproach. “She hev tole on ye, ’Gustus Tom. Yer wicked ways air made plain.”
His eyes were wildly starting from his head; he caught his breath in quick gasps. The little girl first detected the genuine terror which he was suffering, and as she held his hand she began to whimper and to lay her head against his ragged shirt-sleeve.
“Oh, Mis’ Purvine,” cried ’Gustus Tom, “I never knowed aforehand how ’twar goin’ ter turn out, else I’d never hev gone thar that night, an’ I wouldn’t hev knowed no mo’ ’bout who bust down the mill ’n nobody else!”
“Didn’t Mink bust the mill down?” asked Mrs. Purvine, staring.
“Naw,” said ’Gustus Tom, miserably, “Mink never.”
Aunt Dely suddenly sat upright, and took her spectacles from her astonished eyes. She was about to speak sharply, but met Alethea’s warning glance, and desisted.