For a minute Father Peterkin made no reply. Then he shifted the bundle of pine knots, and responded warily. “Young Alan, he’s still livin’ on the old place, but I hear he’s been took now, an’ is goin’ the way of all the rest of ’em. ’Tis a hard trial for Miss Judith, po’ young thing, an’ with a boy nine year old that’s the very spit an’ image of his pa. Wall, wall, I kin recollect away back yonder when old Mr. Timothy Jur’dn was the proudest man anywhar aroun’ in these parts; but arter the War things sorter begun to go down hill with him, and he was obleeged to draw in his horns.”
“Is he still living?”
The old man shook his head. “Mebbe he is, an’ mebbe he ain’t. Nobody knows but the Jur’dn’s, an’ they ain’t tellin’ fur the axin’.”
“I suppose it was this Miss Judith who sent for me?”
“’T would most likely be she, suh. She was one of the Yardlys that lived over yonder at Yardly’s Field; an’ when young Mr. Alan begun to take notice of her, ’twas the first time sence way back that one of the Jur’dn’s had gone courtin’ outside the family. That’s the reason the blood went bad like it did, I reckon. Thar’s a sayin’ down aroun’ here that Jur’dn an’ Jur’dn won’t mix.” The name was invariably called Jurdin by all classes; but I had already discovered that names are rarely pronounced as they are spelled in Virginia.
“Have they been married long?”
“Ten year or so, suh. I remember as well as if ’twas yestiddy the day young Alan brought her home as a bride, an’ thar warn’t a soul besides the three daft old ladies to welcome her. They drove over in my son Tony’s old buggy, though ’twas spick an’ span then. I was goin’ to the house on an arrant, an’ I was standin’ right down thar at the ice pond when they come by. She hadn’t been much in these parts, an’ none of us had ever seed her afore. When she looked up at young Alan her face was pink all over and her eyes war shinin’ bright as the moon. Then the front do’ opened an’ them old ladies, as black as crows, flocked out on the po’ch. Thar never was anybody as peart-lookin’ as Miss Judith was when she come here; but soon arterwards she begun to peak an’ pine, though she never lost her sperits an’ went mopin’ roun’ like all the other women folks at Jur’dn’s End. They married sudden, an’ folks do say she didn’t know nothin’ about the family, an’ young Alan didn’t know much mo’ than she did. The old ladies had kep’ the secret away from him, sorter believin’ that what you don’t know cyarn’ hurt you. Anyways they never let it leak out tell arter his chile was born. Thar ain’t never been but that one, an’ old Aunt Jerusly declars he was born with a caul over his face, so mebbe things will be all right fur him in the long run.”
“But who are the old ladies? Are their husbands living?”
When Father Peterkin answered the question he had dropped his voice to a hoarse murmur. “Deranged. All gone deranged,” he replied.
I shivered, for a chill depression seemed to emanate from the November woods. As we drove on, I remembered grim tales of enchanted forests filled with evil faces and whispering voices. The scents of wood earth and rotting leaves invaded my brain like a magic spell. On either side the forest was as still as death. Not a leaf quivered, not a bird moved, not a small wild creature stirred in the underbrush. Only the glossy leaves and the scarlet berries of the holly appeared alive amid the bare interlacing branches of the trees. I began to long for an autumn clearing and the red light of the afterglow.