"If I'm to live with you-all," she said in a tone of authority which had never been hers in the days of her petted, spoiled girlhood, "I may as well speak out plain and say that I never want to hear the name of Cleaverage if I can help it. If you don't agree to that—without any why or wherefore—I'd rather not stay."
"Oh, honey—oh, honey!" protested Octavia tearfully. "Gran'pappy 281 and me will do just whatever you say. Fetch the baby in the house. God love his little soul, hit's the first time he's ever been inside of these doors—and to think he should come this-a-way!"
Callista drew back and eyed her mother.
"If you're going to go on like that," she said, "I reckon it would be just as well for me to live somewheres else. You won't see me shed a tear. I don't know what there is to cry for. Gran'pappy is an old man—he ought to have some peace about him. I won't come in unless you hush."
And having laid her will upon them both, Callista Cleaverage re-entered the dwelling of her girlhood and disposed her sleeping boy on the bed in the fore room.
To the mind of man, which looks always to find noise and displacement commensurate with size, there is something appalling about the way in which the great events of life slip smoothly into position, fitting themselves between our days with such nicety as to seem always to have been there. Little calamities jar and fret and refuse to be adjusted, but matters of life and death and eternity flow as smoothly as water.
Callista might have dropped easily into her old place in the home, but the woman who had returned to the Gentry roof could never have contented herself in that narrow sphere. Strong, efficient, driven to tireless activity by memories which one 282 might guess stung and hurt the mind at leisure, she cleared out the long unused weaving room and set the loom to work.
"Aunt Faithful Bushares learned me to weave whilst I was stayin' at Miz. Griever's, after the baby was born," she told her mother. "I'll finish this rag carpet you've got in the loom, and then I'll be able to earn some ready money. I can weave mighty pretty carpet, and a body can get a plenty of it to do from down in the Settlement. They's things I need from the store now and agin, and this boy's got to have something laid by for him, to take care of him as he grows."
Thus boldly, at the outset—though without mentioning the forbidden name—she made it known to them that she would accept nothing from her husband. Octavia Gentry was always on the edge of tears when she talked to Callista about her plans; at other times, the daughter's presence in the house was cheerful and sustaining. If Callista brooded on the shipwreck of her affairs, she asked no sympathy from anyone. Indeed, so far from seeking it, she resented bitterly any suggestion of the sort.
Lance's own family blamed him more than did Callista's people. Roxy Griever, of course, was loud in her denunciations.