CHAPTER VIII
There was a quilting party at Porter’s that day. Cynthia had invited some of her friends to help her, and the quilt, a big square of colored scraps, more or less artistically arranged in stars, crescents and floral wreaths, occupied the centre of the sitting-room. It was stitched to a frame of four smooth wooden bars, which were held together at the corners by pegs driven into gimlet holes and which rested on the backs of four chairs. The workers sat on two sides of it and stitched, with upward and downward strokes, toward the centre, the quilt being rolled up as the work progressed.
Hattie Mayhew was there, Kitty Welborn and two or three others. As usual they were teasing Cynthia about the young preacher.
“I know she’s the apple of his eye,” laughed Kitty Welborn. “He really can’t, as you said the other night, keep from looking at her during preaching. I noticed it particularly one Sunday not long ago and told Matt Digby that I’d be sure to get religion if a man bored it into me with eyes like his.”
“I certainly would go up to the mourners’ bench every time he called up repentant sinners,” said Hattie Mayhew. “I went up once while he was exhorting and he turned me over to Sister Perdue, that snaggle-toothed old maid. He didn’t even offer his hand.”
Cynthia said nothing, but she smiled good-naturedly as she rose from her chair and went to the side of the quilt near the crudely screened fireplace to see that the work was rolled evenly on the frame. While thus engaged her father came into the room, vigorously fanning himself with his old slouch hat. The girls knew he had been to the village, and all asked eagerly if he had brought them any letters.
“No, I clean forgot to go to the office,” he made slow answer as he threw himself into a big armchair with a rawhide bottom, near a window on the shaded side of the house.
“Why, father,” his daughter chided him, “you promised the girls faithfully to call at the office. I think that was very neglectful of you when you knew they would be here to dinner.”
“And he usually has a good memory,” spoke up Mrs. Porter, appearing in the doorway leading to the dining-room and kitchen. She was rolling flakes of dough from her lank hands and glanced at her husband reprovingly. “Nathan, what did you go and do that way for, when you knew Cynthia was trying to make her friends pass a pleasant day?”
“Well, I clean forgot it,” Porter said, quite undisturbed. “To tell you the truth, thar was so much excitement on all hands, with this un runnin’ in with fresh news, an’ that un sayin’ that maybe it was all a false alarm, that the post-office plumb slipped out o’ my head. Huh, I hain’t thought post-office once sence I left here! I don’t know whether I could ’a’ got in thar anyway, fer the Postmaster hisse’f was runnin’ round like a camp-meetin’ chicken with its head cut off. Besides, I tell you, gals, I made up my mind to hit the grit. I never was much of a hand to want to see wholesale bloodshed. Moreover, I’ve heard of many a spectator a-gittin’ shot in the arms an’ legs or some vital spot. No, I sorter thought I’d come on. Mandy, have you seen anything o’ my fly-flap? When company comes you an’ Cynthia jest try yoreselves on seein’ how many things you kin put out o’ place, an’ I’m gittin’ sick an’ tired o’——”
“Nathan, what’s going on in town?” broke in Mrs. Porter. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know what’s goin’ on now,” Porter drawled out as he slapped at a fly on his bald pate with an angry hand. “I say I don’t know what’s goin’ on now; but I know what was jest gittin’ ready to go on. I reckon the coroner’s goin’ on with the inquest ef he ain’t afeared of an ambush. Jeff Wade—” Porter suddenly bethought himself of something, and he rose, passed through the composite and palpable stare of the whole room and went to the clock on the mantelpiece and opened it. “Thar!” he said impatiently. “I wonder what hole or crack you-uns have stuck my chawin’ tobacco in. I put it right in the corner of this clock, right under the turpentine bottle.”
“There’s your fool tobacco!” Mrs. Porter exclaimed, running forward and taking the dark plug from beneath the clock. “Fill your mouth with it; maybe it will unlock your jaw. What is the trouble at Springtown?”
“I was jest startin’ to tell you,” said Porter, diving into his capacious trousers pocket for his knife and slowly opening the blade with his long thumbnail. “You see, Jeff Wade has at last got wind o’ all that gab about Minnie an’ Nelson Floyd, an’ he sent a war-cry by Pole Baker on hossback as fast as Pole could clip it to tell Floyd to arm an’ be ready at exactly twelve o’clock sharp.”
“I knew it would come,” said Mrs. Porter, a combination of finality and resignation in her harsh voice. “I knew Jeff Wade wasn’t going to allow that talk to go on.” She was looking at her daughter, who, white and wide-eyed, stood motionless behind Hattie Mayhew’s chair. For a moment no one spoke, though instinctively the general glance went to Cynthia, who, feeling it, turned to the window looking out upon the porch, and stood with her back to the room. Mrs. Porter broke the silence, her words directed to her daughter.
“Jeff Wade will kill that man if he was fool enough to wait and meet him. Do you think Floyd waited, Nathan?”
“No, he didn’t wait,” was Porter’s answer. “The plucky chap went ’im one better; he sent word by Mel Jones to tell Wade that it would be indecent to have a rumpus like that in town on a Saturday, when so many women an’ childern was settin’ round in bullet-range, an’ so, if it was agreeable he’d ruther have it in the open place at Price’s spring. Mel passed me as he was goin’ to Jeff with that word. It’s nearly one o’clock now, an’ it’s my candid opinion publicly expressed that Nelson Floyd has gone to meet a higher Power. I didn’t want to be hauled up at court as a witness, an’ so, as I say, I hit the grit. I’ve been tied up in other folks’s matters before this, an’ the court don’t allow enough fer witness fees to tempt me to set an’ listen to them long-winded lawyers talk fer a whole week on a stretch.”
“Poor fellow!” exclaimed Hattie Mayhew. “I’m right sorry for him. He was so handsome and sweet-natured. He had faults, but they may have been due to the hard life he had when he was a child. I must say I have always been sorry for him; he had the saddest look out of the eyes of any human being I ever saw.”
“And he knew how to use his eyes, too,” was the sting Mrs. Porter added to this charitable comment as her sharp gaze still rested on her daughter.
There was a sound at the window. Cynthia, with unsteady hands, was trying to raise the sash. She finally succeeded in doing this and placing the wooden prop under it. There was a steely look in her eyes and her features were set, her face pale.
“It’s very warm in here!” they heard her say. “There isn’t a bit of draught in the room. It’s that hot cook stove, mother; I will—I——”
She had turned and walked from the room.
Mrs. Porter sighed as she looked after the departing form.
“Did you notice her face, girls?” she asked. “It was as white as death itself. She looked as if she was about to faint. It’s all this talk about Floyd. Well, they were friends. I tried to get her to stop receiving his attentions, but she thought she knew better. Well, he has got his deserts, I reckon.”
“And all on account of the talk about that silly Minnie Wade!” cried Kitty Welborn, “when you know as well as I do, Mrs. Porter, that Thad Pelham—” The speaker glanced at Nathan Porter and paused.
“Oh, you needn’t let up on yore hen-cackle on my account,” that blunt worthy made haste to say. “I’ll go out an’ look at my new hogs. You gals are out fer a day o’ pleasure, an’ I wouldn’t interfere with the workin’ of yore jaws fer a purty.”
Mrs. Porter didn’t remain to hear Kitty Welborn finish her observation, but followed her daughter.
In the next room, which was the dining-room, an old woman sat at a window. She was dressed in dingy black calico, her snowy hair brushed smoothly down over a white wrinkled brow, and was fanning herself slowly with a turkey-feather fan. She had Mrs. Porter’s features and thinness of frame.
“Mother,” Mrs. Porter said, pausing before her, “didn’t Cynthia come in here just now?”
“Yes, she did,” replied the old woman. “She did. And I just want to know, Mandy, what you all have been saying to her? I want to know, I say?”
“We haven’t been saying anything to her as I know of,” said the farmer’s wife in slow, studious surprise.
“I know you have, I say, I know you have!” The withered hand holding the fan quivered in excitement. “I know you have, for I can always tell when that poor child is worried. I heard a little of it, too, but not all. I heard them mention Hillhouse’s name. I tell you, I am not going to sit still and let a whole pack of addle-pated women tease as good a girl as Cynthia is plumb to death.”
“I don’t think they were troubling her,” Mrs. Porter said, her face drawn in thought, her mind elsewhere.
“I know they were,” the old woman insisted. “She may have hidden it in there before you all, but when she came in here just now she stopped right near me and looked me full in the face, and never since she was a little baby have I seen such an odd look in her eyes. They looked like they were about to burst with tears. She saw me looking at her, and she come up behind me and laid her face down against my neck. She quivered all over, and then she said, ‘Oh, Granny! Oh, Granny!’ and then she straightened up and went right out at that door into the yard. I tell you, it’s got to let up. She sha’n’t have the life deviled out of her. If she don’t want to marry that preacher, she don’t have to. As for me, I’d rather have married any sort of man on earth when I was young than a long-legged, straight-faced preacher.”
“You say she went out in the yard?” said Mrs. Porter absently. “I wonder what she went out there for.”
Mrs. Porter went to the door and looked out. There was a clothesline stretched between two apple trees nearby, and Cynthia stood at it taking down a tablecloth. She turned with it in her arms and came to her mother.
“I just remembered,” she said, “that there isn’t a clean cloth for the table. Mother, the iron is hot on the stove. You go back to the girls and I’ll smooth this out and set the table.”
The eyes of the two met. Mrs. Porter took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go back to the company, but I’ve got something to say, and then I’m done for good. I want to say that I’m glad a daughter of mine has got the proper pride and spunk you have. I see you are not going to make a goose of yourself before visitors, and I’m proud of you. You are the right sort—especially after he’s acted in the scandalous way he has and—and laid you, even as good a girl as you, liable to be talked about for keeping company with him.”
The girl’s eyes sank. Something seemed to rise and struggle up within her, for her breast heaved and her shoulders quivered convulsively.
“I’ll fix the cloth,” she said in a low, forced voice, “and then I’ll set the table and call you.”
“All right”; Mrs. Porter was turning away. “I’ll try to keep them entertained till you come back.”