II
Consternation reigned the “len'th an' brea'th” of Jim-Ned. Mrs. Cullum—placid and easy-going Mrs. Tobe—under the same roof with him, actually had not spoken to her lawful and wedded husband since the snipe-hunt ten days ago come Monday!
“It's plumb scan'lous!” Mrs. Pinson exclaimed, at her daughter's quilting. “I never would of thought sech a thing of Sissy—never!”
“As of the boys of Jim-Ned couldn't have a little innercent fun without Mis' Cullum settin' in jedgment on 'em!” sniffed Mrs. Leggett.
“Shot up, Becky Leggett,” said her mother, severely. “By time you've put up with a man's capers for twenty-five years, like Sissy Cullum have, you'll have the right to talk, an' not before.”
“They say Tobe is wellnigh out'n his mind,” remarked Mrs. Trimble. “Ez for that soft-headed Bud Mines, he have fair fattened on that snipe-hunt. He's gittin' ez sassy an' mischeevous ez Jack Carter hisse'f.”
This last statement was literally true. The victim of Tobe Cullum's disastrous practical joke had become on a sudden case-hardened, as it were. The consumptive pallor had miraculously disappeared from his cheeks and the homesick look from his eyes. He bore the merciless chaffing at Bishop's with devil-may-care good-nature, and he besought Mrs. Cullum, almost with tears in his eyes, to “let up on Mr. Tobe.”
“I was sech a dern fool, Mis' Cullum,” he candidly confessed, “that I don't blame Mr. Tobe for puttin' up a job on me. Besides,” he added, his eyes twinkling shrewdly, “I'm goin' to git even. I'm layin' off to take Jim Belcher, that biggetty drummer from Waco, a-snipin' out Buck Snort next Sat'day night. He's a bigger idjit than I ever was.”
“You ten' to your own business, Bud, an' I'll ten' to mine,” Mrs. Cullum returned, not unkindly. Which business on her part apparently was to make Mr. Cullum miserable by taking no notice of him whatever. The house under her supervision was, as it had always been, a model of neatness; the meals were cooked by her own hands and served with an especial eye to Tobe's comfort; his clothes were washed and ironed, and his white shirt laid out on Sunday mornings, with the accustomed care and regularity. But with these details Mrs. Cullum's wifely attentions ended. She remained absolutely deaf to any remark addressed to her by her husband, looking through and beyond him when he was present with a steady, unseeing gaze, which was, to say the least, exasperating. All necessary communication with him was carried on by means of the children. “Minty,” she would say at the breakfast-table, “ask your pa if he wants another cup of coffee”; or at night, “Temp'unce, tell your pa that Buster has shed a shoe”; or, “Sue, does your pa know where them well-grabs is?” et caetera, et caetera.
The demoralized household huddled, so to speak, between the opposing camps, frightened and unhappy, and things were altogether in a bad way.
To make matters worse, Miss Minty Cullum, following her mother's example, took high and mighty ground with Jack Carter, dismissing that gentleman with a promptness and coolness which left him wellnigh dumb with amazement.
“Lord, Minty!” he gasped. “Why, I was taken snipe-hunting myself not more'n five years ago. I—”
“I didn't know you were such a fool, Jack Carter,” interrupted his sweetheart, with a toss of her pretty head; “that settles it!” and she slammed the door in his face.
Matters were at such a pass finally that Mr. Skaggs, the circuit-rider, when he came to preach, the third Sunday in the month, at Ebenezer Church, deemed it his duty to remonstrate and pray with Sister Cullum at her own house. She listened to his exhortations in grim silence, and knelt without a word when he summoned her to wrestle before the Throne of Grace. “Lord,” he concluded, after a long and powerful summing up of the erring sister's misdeeds, “Thou knowest that she is travelling the broad and flowery road to destruction. Show her the evil of her ways, and warn her to flee from the wrath to come.”
He arose from his knees with a look of satisfaction on his face, which changed to one of chagrin when he saw Sister Cullum's chair empty, and Sister Cullum herself out in the backyard tranquilly and silently feeding her hens.
“She shore did flee from the wrath to come, Sissy did,” chuckled Granny Carnes, when this episode reached her ears.
As for Tobe, he bore himself in the early days of his affliction in a jaunty debonair fashion, affecting a sprightliness which did not deceive his cronies at Bishop's. In time, however, finding all his attempts at reconciliation with Sissy vain, he became uneasy, and almost as silent as herself, then morose and irritable, and finally black and thunderous.
“He's that wore upon that nobody dassent to go anigh him,” said Mrs. Pinson, solemnly. “An' no wonder! Fer of all the conniptions that ever struck the women o' Jim-Ned, ez wives, Sissy Cullum's conniptions air the outbeatenes'.”
But human endurance has its limits. Mr. Cullum's reached his at the supper-table one night about three weeks after the beginning of his discipline. He had been ploughing all day, and brooding, presumably, over his tribulations, and there was a techy look in his dark eyes as he seated himself at the foot of the well-spread table, presided over by Mrs. Cullum, impassive and dumb as usual. The six girls were ranged on either side.
“Well, ma,” began Tobe, with assumed gayety, turning up his plate, “what for a day have you had?”
Sissy looked through and beyond him with fixed, unresponsive gaze, and said never a word.
Then, as Mr. Cullum afterward said, “Ole Satan swep' an' garnisheed him an' tuk possession of him.” He seized the heavy teacup in front of him and hurled it at his unsuspecting spouse; she gasped, paling slightly, and dodged. The missile, striking the brick chimney-jamb behind her, crashed and fell shivering into fragments on the hearth. The saucer followed. Then, Tobe's spirits rising, plate after plate hurtled across the table; the air fairly bristled with flying crockery. Mrs. Cullum, after the first shock of surprise, continued calmly to eat her supper, moving her head from right to left or ducking to avoid an unusually well-aimed projectile.
Little Sis scrambled down from her high chair at the first hint of hostilities, and dived, screaming, under the table; the others remained in their places, half paralyzed with terror.
In less time than it takes to tell it, Mr. Cullum, reaching out his long arms, had cleared half the board of its stone and glass ware. Finally he laid a savage hand upon a small, old-fashioned blue pitcher left standing alone in a wide waste of table-cloth.
At this Sissy surrendered unconditionally. “Oh, Tobe, fer Gawd's sake!” she cried, throwing out her hands and quivering from head to foot. “I give in! I give in! Don't break the little blue-chiny pitcher! You fetched it to me the day little Bud was born! An' he drunk out'n it jest afore he died! Fer Gawd's sake, Tobe, honey! I give in!”
Tobe set down the pitcher as gingerly as if it had been a soap-bubble. Then, with a whoop which fairly lifted the roof from the cabin, he cleared the intervening space between them and caught his wife in his arms.
Minty, with ready tact, dragged Little Sis from under the table, and driving the rest of the flock before her, fled the room and shut the door behind her. On the dark porch she ran plump upon Jack Carter.
“Why, Jack!” she cried, with her tear-wet face tucked before she knew it against his breast, “what are you doing here?”
“Oh, just hanging around,” grinned Mr. Carter.
“Gawd be praised!” roared Tobe, inside the house.
“Amen!” responded Jack, outside.
“An' Tobe Cullum,” announced Joe Trimble at Bishop's the next day, “have ordered up the fines' set o' shiny in Waco fer Sissy.”
“It beats me,” said Newt Pinson; “but I allers did say that the women o' Jim-Ned, ez wives, air the outbeatenes' critters in creation!”