Yet if Lance Cleaverage suffered, he kept always a brave front, and took his suffering away from under the eye of his young wife. To do him justice, he had little understanding of his own offences. An ardent huntsman, he had by choice lived hard much 194 of his life, sleeping in the open in all weathers, eating what came to hand. Callista's needs he was unfitted to gauge, and she maintained a haughty silence concerning them. Since she would not inquire, he told her nothing of having been offered money to play at dances, but began to be sometimes from home at nights, taking his banjo, leaving her alone.
An equable tempered, practical woman might have trained him readily to the duties of masculine provider in the primitive household. But beautiful, spoiled Callista, burning with wrongs which she was too proud and too angry to voice, eaten with jealousy of those thoughts which comforted him when she refused to speak, always in terror that people would find out how at hap-hazard they lived, how poor and ill-provided they were, and laugh at her choice—Callista had her own ideas of discipline. If Lance went away and left no firewood cut, she considered it proper to retort by getting no supper and letting him come into a house stone cold. This was a serious matter where a chunk of fire may be sent from neighbor to neighbor to take the place of matches.
In this sort the winter wore away. In April there came one of the spring storms that southern mountaineers call "blackberry winter." All the little growing things were checked or killed. A fine, cold rain beat throughout the day around the eaves of the 195 cabin. The wind laid wet, sobbing lips to chink and cranny, and cried to her that she was alone—alone—alone; she, Callista, was neglected, deserted, shunned! For Lance had a day's work at re-lining fireplaces at Squire Ashe's place. Busy with the truck-patch he had at this late day set about, and which he must both clear and fence, he had somewhat overlooked the wood-pile; and before noon the fuel was exhausted. Instead of gathering chips and trash, or raiding the dry spaces under the great pines for cones and crackling twigs,—as any one of her hardy mountain sisters would have done, and then greeted her man at night with a laugh, and a hot supper—Callista let the fire go out, and sat brooding. Without fire she could cook herself no dinner, and she ate a bit of cold corn-pone, fancying Lance at somebody's table—he never told her now where he was going, nor for how long—eating the warm, appetizing food that would be provided.
As evening drew on the rain slacked, and a cloud drove down on the mountain-top, forcing an icy, penetrating chill through the very substance of the walls, sending Callista to bed to get warm. She wrapped herself in quilts and shivered. It was dark when she heard Lance come stumbling in, cross the room, and, without a word, search on the fire-board for matches.
"There ain't any," she told him, not moving to get up. "It 196 wouldn't do you any good if there was—there's no wood."
He did not answer, but, feeling his way, passed on into the little lean-to kitchen, and Callista harkened eagerly, believing that sight of the bowl of meal and the pan of uncooked turnips on the table by the window would bring home to her husband the enormity of her wrongs and his offences. Leaning forward she could discern a vaguely illuminated silhouette of him against this window. He appeared to be eating. She guessed that he had peeled a turnip and was making a lunch of that.
"Would you rather have your victuals raw?" she demanded finally, desperate at his silence. "I reckon I'd better learn your ruthers in the matter."
"I'd rather have 'em raw as to have 'em cooked the way you mostly get 'em," came the swift reply in a perfectly colorless tone. "I ain't particularly petted on having my victuals burnt on one side and raw on the other, and I'd rather do my own seasoning—some folks salt things till the devil himself couldn't eat 'em, or leave the salt out, and then wonder that there's complaints."
Her day of brooding had come to a crisis of choking rage. Callista sat up on the edge of the bed and put her thick hair back from her face.
"I cook what I'm provided," she said in a cold, even voice. 197 "That is, I cook it when I'm supplied with wood. And I fix your meals the best I know how; but it would take one of the sort you named just then to cook without fire."