He had such exceeding confidence in the dignity and decorum of Gwinnan as judge that at first it seemed almost impossible that he should have taken such notice of the witness as to attract the attention of others. But there was a sort of coercive evidence in the circumstance that the girl’s face had lingered in his mind with a luminous distinctness, a surprised pleasure, a newly awakened sense of beauty, which he had associated with no other face that he could remember. He was not a sentimental man. He had had few romantic experiences, and the flavor they had left was vapid and foolish. Alethea had not primarily impressed him as beautiful. She looked so noble, so true, so radiantly good. It was altogether an abstract sentiment, a tribute to the lofty qualities which he revered and she embodied.
He cared so little for Gwinnan as Gwinnan that he entertained the mildest resentment toward the man who had struck him on the head with his iron shackles. The indignity offered by the foreman of the jury, and afterward by Harshaw, to Gwinnan the judge had burned into his consciousness, and the scars would be there on the judgment day. The knowledge that the attack was not in revenge for some fancied wrong in the trial, but that it was the frenzy of a madly jealous lover in chains and in expatriation, altered the whole aspect of the case for Gwinnan as Gwinnan.
The judge could not, perhaps, have sufficiently condemned Gwinnan’s state of mind as he sat down and wrote to Mr. Kenbigh, the attorney for the State at Glaston, requesting that no action should be taken in regard to the assault, as he was not willing to prosecute.
XXI.
Alethea Sayles awoke early the morning after the momentous news of Mink’s journey had come to Wild-Cat Hollow; such an awakening as a barn-swallow might know, the familiar of the rafters and the clapboards. There was no other ceiling to the roof-room. She might put up her hand and touch it where she lay, but in the centre it was higher,—high enough for many pendent uses: bags of cotton swung from the ridge-pole; hanks of yarn; bunches of pepper; gourds; old hats and garments, of awry, distorted, facetious aspect in their caricature of the habit of humanity. The snow pressed heavily without; through the crevices vague white glimpses of the drifts might be seen, for the dull glow from the fire in the room below penetrated the cracks between the boards of the flooring, which served as the ceiling of the lower story. Light came in, too, from the rifts between the wall and the great stick-and-clay chimney, which bulged outward, being built outside the house, as is the habit in the region. It was the light of the waning moon, fitful, fluctuating, for clouds were astir. Now and then, too, Alethea could see the great morning star with its tremulous glister, seeming nearer, dearer, than all the others,—splendid, yet tender and full of promise. She looked wistfully at it for a moment, feeling the dull aching wound in her heart, and forgetting what dealt it. Then it all came back to her, and she wondered she had awakened again. She could not understand how she lived. She felt as if she could rise no more. But the cow was to be milked; she listened to the cocks crowing. The baby, who had developed a virulent habit of early rising, was already astir. She heard his thumping bare feet on the floor of the room below; he would be cold, and she thought of the danger of the embers, and remembered that the sluggard his mother still drowsed. The breakfast must be cooked, the dishes must be washed. Her physical strength was asserting itself against the shock to her mind. Her collapsed energies were recuperated by sleep, albeit the slumber induced by the primitive narcotics of the “yerb bag.” Ah, the world of Wild-Cat Hollow, small though it was, was full of work, and she must lay hold. And so she rose once more, and joined hands with joyless duty.
Ben Doaks sojourned with them for a time, and went hunting with Jessup, and brought back game, and made Mrs. Sayles presents of the peltry. As he sat by the fire at night he told the news from the cove in great detail, and discussed it freely with Mrs. Jessup, and developed remarkable capacities for acquiescence. Old Griff, he said, was having a mighty hard winter. His mill had proved a sore loss, for he was bereft of his tolls, and he had planted little corn. “He mought make out, though. His meat looks thrivin’; he hain’t killed yit.” Ben spoke of the miller’s hogs afoot as if they held their fat in trust and were stewards of their own bacon. The old man seemed failing, and talked much about Tad; sometimes as if he had already returned, sometimes as if he momently expected him. The children, too, “’peared thrivin’,” though Ben didn’t believe Sophy would ever be good for much except to look at, and the little ones “all ’peared ragged ez ef she didn’t study ’bout them much.”
“Too many peart, spry boys in the cove fur her ter study ’bout, stiddier them,” said Mrs. Sayles, with a scornful toss of the head, histrionically seeing the situation from Sophy’s standpoint.
“Jerry Price ’pears ter set a heap o’ store by Sophy’s looks,” submitted Ben, with the implication of the remark.
“Waal, ’twould be a jedgmint on Dely Purvine fur all her onwholesome vanity an’ slack-twisted sort o’ religion, ef that thar Jerry Price, ez she hev brung up ez ef he war her own son,—though his looks air enough ter tarrify a mole,—war ter marry Sophy Griff.”