“But you know in reason hit ain’t a-goin’ to hold,” the old women at the hearthside would say, withdrawing their cob pipes to shake deprecating heads. “The Bushareses and Shallidays has been killin’ each other up sence my gran’pap was a little boy. They tell me the Injuns mixed into that there feud. I say Creed Bonbright! Nothin’ but a fool boy. He better l’arn something before he sets up to teach. He don’t know what he’s meddlin’ with.” All this with a pride in the vendetta as an ancient neighbourhood institution and monument.
The office of the new justice never became, as he had hoped it would, a lounging place for his passing neighbours. He had expected them to drop in to visit with him, when he might sow the good seed in season without appearing to seek an occasion for so doing. But they were shy of him—he saw that. They went on past the little yellow pine office, on their mules, or their sorry nags, or in shackling waggons behind oxen, to lounge at Nancy Card’s gate as of old, or sit upon her porch to swap news and listen to her caustic comments on neighbourhood happenings. And only an occasional glance over the shoulder, a backward nod of the head, or jerk of the thumb, told the young justice that he was present in their recollection.
But there was one element of the community which showed no disposition to hold aloof from the newcomer. About this time, by twos and threes—never one alone—the virgins of the mountain-top sought Nancy Card for flower seed, soft soap recipes, a charm to take off warts, or to learn exactly from her at what season a body had better divide the roots of day lilies.
Old-fashioned roses begin blooming in the Cumberlands about the first of May, and when this time came round Nancy’s garden was a thing to marvel at. The spring flowers were past or nearly so, and the advent of the roses marked the floral beginning of summer. In the forest the dogwood petals now let go and fell silently one by one through the shadowed green. But over Nancy’s fence of weather-beaten, hand-rived palings tossed a snow of bloom so like that here they were not missed at all; and the mock orange adds to the dogwood’s simple beauty the soul of an exquisite odour. Small, heavily thorned roses, yellow as the daffodils they had succeeded, blushing Baltimore Belles, Seven Sisters all over the ricketty porch—one who loved such things might well have taken a day’s journey for sight of that dooryard in May.
“Well, I vow!” said the old woman one day peering through her window that gave on the road, “ef here don’t come Huldy Spiller and the two Lusks. Look like to me I have a heap of gal company of late. Creed, you’re a mighty learned somebody, cain’t you tell me the whys of it?”
Creed, sitting at a little table deep in some books and papers before him, heard no word of his friend’s teasing speech. It was Doss Provine, at the big fireplace heating a poker to burn a hole through his pulley-wheel, who turned toward his mother-in-law and grinned foolishly.
“I reckon I know the answer to that,” he observed. “The boys is all a warnin’ me that a widower is mo’ run after than a young feller. They tell me I’ll have to watch out.”
“I say watch out—you!” cried Nancy, wheeling upon him with a comically disproportionate fury. “Jest you let me ketch you settin’ up to any of the gals—you, a father with two he’pless chaps to look after, and nobody but an old woman like me, with one foot in the grave, to depend on!”
There was one girl however who, instead of multiplying her visits to the Card cabin with Creed’s advent, abruptly ceased them. Judith Barrier was an uncertain quantity to her masculine household; unreasonably elated or depressed, she led them the round of her moods, and they paid for the fact that Creed Bonbright did not come across the mountain top visiting, without being at all aware of where their guilt lay. After that interview at the milking lot one thought, one emotion was with her always. Always she was waiting for the next meeting with Creed. Through the day she heard his voice or his footstep in all the little sounds of the woods, the humble noises of the farm life; and at night there was the cedar tree.
Now the cedar tree had affairs of its own. When, with the egotism of her keen, passionate, desirous youth, the girl in the little chamber under the eves listened to its voice in April, it was talking in the soft air of the vernal night about the sap which rose in its veins, spicy, resinous, odoured with spring, carrying its wine of life into the farthest green tips, till all the little twigs were intoxicated with it, and beat and flung themselves in joy. And the tree’s deep note was a song of abiding trust. There was a nest building within its heart—so well hidden in that dense thicket that it was safe from the eye of any prowler. Hope and faith and a great devotion went to the building. And the tree, rich and happy in its own life, cherished generously that other life within its protecting arms. Its song was of the mating birds, the building birds, the mother joy and father joy that made the nest ready for the speckled eggs and the birdlings that should follow.