"Them two was borned and made for each other. Ef they can ever fight it out and git to agree, hit'll be one o' the finest matches anybody ever seed. But whilst they're a fightin' it 232 out—huh-uh,"—his face drew into a look of wincing sympathy—"I don't know as I want ary one of 'em under my roof. I used to raise a good deal of Cain o' my own—yes, I played the davil a-plenty. I got through with that as best I might. I'm a old man now. I like to see some peace. I did tell you that you could bid Callisty come home with us; but she's done told you no—an' I ain't sorry. She's the onliest gran'child I've got left, an'—I think a heap of her. If she was to come on her own motions—that would be different. But having spiled her as you have did, Octavy, best is that you should let her and Lance alone for a spell."
His daughter-in-law looked at him mutely out of her reddened eyes, and the balance of the drive was made in silence.
And so the slow summer drew forward, Callista in her father-in-law's house, never going back to the cabin at the head of Lance's Laurel, sending Polly or the Widow Griever to get things which she now and again needed from the place; Lance over in the sawmill camp, working brutally hard, faring wretchedly, and eating his heart out with what he hoped was a brave face.
Sylvane brought him almost weekly news. He understood that Callista's foot never crossed the threshold of the home he had built for her. Ola Derf hinted that the young wife bought recklessly at the store—and got snubbed for her pains. She 233 rode out once or twice to try to get him to come and play for a dance; but he shunned the neighborhood as though pestilence were in it, and gave her short answers. No one else importuned him. Lance, the loath, the desired and always invited, found that in his present mood people fell away from him. He was good company for nobody, not even for the rough and ready crowd amongst which he found himself. True, he had lived hard, and been a famous hunter, able to care for himself in any environment; but the squalid surroundings of the sawmill camp were almost as foreign to his fastidious man's way of doing things, as they would have been to a neat woman.
So he grew to avoid and to be avoided; to sit at a little distance from his mates in the evening; to drop out of their crude attempts at merrymaking, to hold aloof even from the fighting. He was neither quarrelsome nor gay, but sat brooding, inert yet restless, interrogating the future with an ever sinking heart. Here was come a thing into his life at which he could not shrug the shoulder. He could not fling this off lightly with a toss of the head or a defiant, "Have it as you please." What was he to do? Was he not man enough to rule his domestic affairs? Could he not command the events and individuals of his own household by simply being himself? To go to Callista and exert authority in words, by overt actions, by 234 use of force—this was not his ideal. It was impossible to him. Well, what then? Must his child be born under the roof of another?
Summer wore to autumn with all its solemn grandeur of coloring, all its majestic hush and blue silences over great slopes of tapestried mountains, and still the question was unanswered. Callista herself was in the mood when she found it hard to think of anything beyond her own body, the little garment she was fashioning, the day which rounded itself from morning into night again.
And now came a new complication. Daggett asserted that he had no money to pay. "I'm a-dickerin' with the company," he told his men. "I've got good hopes of sellin' out to 'em. Them that stays by me, will get all that's due an' comin'; but I hain't got a cent now; an' a feller that quits me when I cain't he'p myse'f—I'll never trouble to try to pay him."
Now what to do. Credit at the store was all very well for Callista's present needs; but Lance Cleaverage's wife must have a sum of money put at her disposal for the time which was approaching. Lance walked from North Caney to Hepzibah one Saturday night to offer Satan for sale, and found the black horse lame. The man who had agreed to buy him expressed a willingness to take Cindy in his place—the black filly which he had, in the first days of their marriage, given to Callista for 235 her own use—presented with sweet words of praise of his bride's beauty and her charming appearance on the horse—a lover's gift, a bridegroom's. Yet the money must be had, and the next time Sylvane came across to the lumber camp, he carried back with him and put into his young sister-in-law's listless hand the poor price of the little filly.
Nothing roused Callista these days, not even when Flenton Hands went down to the Settlement and bought Cindy from the man who had purchased her. That was his account of the transaction, but Sylvane said indignantly to his father that he believed Flenton Hands got that feller to buy Lance's filly. Flenton rode up on his own rawboned sorrel, leading the little black mare who whinnied and put forward her ears to Callista's caresses.
"Yes, I did—I bought her," he repeated. "I hadn't nary bit of use for such a animal, but I couldn't see yo' horse—yo's, Callista—in the hands of a man like Snavely."