Project Gutenberg's The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage, by Alice MacGowan This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage Author: Alice MacGowan Release Date: May 12, 2015 [EBook #48937] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIVING OF LANCE CLEAVERAGE *** Produced by Elaine Laizure from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries. The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage By Alice MacGowan Author of "Judith of the Cumberlands," "The Last Word," "Huldah," "Return," etc. With Illustrations in Colour by Robert Edwards G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press 1909 Copyright, 1909 ALICE MacGOWAN The Knickerbocker Press, New York To Emma Bell Miles who could without doubt have written much better this story of her own home country the book is affectionately inscribed by The Author CONTENTS PAGE I. A Pair of Haggards 1 II. The Up-Sitting 19 III. The Burying 39 IV. A Dance and a Serenade 50 V. The Asking 70 VI. The Wedding 88 VII. Lance's Laurel 104 VIII. The Infare 124 IX. The Interloper 140 X. Poverty Pride 154 XI. "Long Sweetenin'" 168 XII. "What Shall He Have Who Killed the Deer?"185 XIII. Broken Chords 193 XIV. Roxy Griever's Guest 211 XV. A Stubborn Heart 223 XVI. Lance Cleaverage's Son 237 XVII. The Coasts of the Island 247 XVIII. The Hegira 266 XIX. Callista Cleaverage Goes Home 277 XX. Drawn Blank 293 XXI. Flenton Hands 300 XXII. The Speech of the People 309 XXIII. Buck Fuson's Idea 321 XXIV. Silenced 330 XXV. The Flight 340 XXVI. Roxy Griever 345 XXVII. In Hiding 357 XXVIII. The Sheriff Scores 371 XXIX. The Island at Last 377 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "I was just a-studyin' on the matter." Frontispiece "A face, passion-pale, was raised to him, and eager lips met his." 66 "You'll marry us now—or not at all." 98 "He placed the instrument in Ola's grasp." 202 "He gazed long at Callista's face on the pillow." 246 "He broke off, staring with open mouth." 336 The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage CHAPTER I. A PAIR OF HAGGARDS. NOON of summer in the highlands of Tennessee; the Cumberlands, robed in the mid-season's green, flashed here and there with banding and gemming of waters. The two Turkey Track Mountains, Big and Little, lying side by side and one running so evenly from the other that only the dweller upon them knew where to differentiate, basked in the full glow of a Sabbath morning radiance. A young fellow of twenty-three, crossing the crown of a higher hill, tonsured years ago by the axe of some settler, but offering half way up its side resistance of undergrowth and saplings, paused a moment in the open to look down. Below him the first church bell had just rung in the little gray structure across the creek. Shining above the ocean of woods and the cabin homes that, like islets, dotted the forest at wide intervals, the Sabbath sun caught and lightened upon something bright, swung upon the newcomer's back. Himself as yet unseen, he gazed down upon this his world, spread map-like below him. He could pick out everybody's home. Each one of those cabins wore to-day, from porch floors hollowed with much scouring to inner cupboard niche, an air of Sunday expectancy that lacked little of being sanctimonious. Only the house-mother remained in charge of each, preparing the Sunday company dinner with even more outlay of energy than the preceding six had required. The men had, by common consent, adjourned to spring, barn, the shelter of big trees in the yard; he caught glimpses of the young folks below him on the woods-paths, attired in their brightest frocks and shirts, and whatever finery they could command, sauntering by twos and threes toward preaching. His smiling, impersonal gaze was aware of Callista Gentry sitting on a rock above the spring, holding a sort of woodland state like a rustic queen. The time of roses was past in this southern land, but every dooryard in the Turkey Tracks was painted gay with hollyhocks, while in ravine and thicket flamed the late azaleas, ranging from clear pale yellow, through buff and orange, to crimson. These lay piled in a sheaf beside the big gray rock, and the girl who sat there was showing her mates how to trim their hats with them, while several boys looked on and presumably admired. The curious feature of Callista Gentry's following was, that it included as many young women as young men, and the chariot wheels of her mates looked robbed always, because, inferentially, the man who courted any other would rather have Callista Gentry if he might. Coached and forwarded, exploited and made the most of ever since she could remember; a bright, pretty child, and a dutiful student, during her brief days of country schooling; her mother had from infancy enforced all the rural arts of beauty culture to make her what she was. Long home-knitted yarn gloves were worn to protect the shapely hands and whiten them. The grand big mane of ashen-blond hair was washed in fresh-caught rainwater, clipped in the dark of the moon, combed and tended and kept as no one else's hair was. Her sunbonnets were never the long-caped ungainly affairs commonly seen; they took on, whether by accident or design one could hardly say, the coquetry of a wood violet half-blown; and when these were not in use, a broad hat shaded the exquisite fairness of the oval cheek. Callista had grown up a delicate court lady, smooth and fine to look upon, pink and white and golden, like one of those rare orchids, marvelously veined and featured, known only to the bees of the wood, whose loveliness is always ashiver with peculiar vitality. This Sunday morning the lepidopteral flutter of gay calicoes, and the bee-like murmur of young male voices in her court of youths and maidens, carried out well the figure of the rare, moth-bewitching blossom. "I wish't Lance Cleaverage'd come—then we'd see fun!" cried Buck Fuson, rising to his knees and gazing across the slope. "I'd ruther hear him and Callista fuss as to eat my dinner. Them two has the masterest arguments I ever heared outside of a law-court." Brown little Ola Derf, sitting slightly apart from the others braiding pine needles into a ring, looked up suddenly. A woman at the spring below scooping a drink for a fat child, lifted a long drab face and sighted in the same direction. This was the Widow Griever, elder sister of Lance Cleaverage. Sour censor of public morals that she was, Roxy Griever considered eighteen-year-old Callista the young woman perfect, and found her own brother quite unworthy of the paragon. Only the central figure of the group appeared to take no notice, while the girls about her, at the mere mention of Lance, all fluttered and resettled themselves with a certain vague air of expectancy. "You boys ought to be ashamed of yo'se'fs," Roxy Griever reproved. Then apart to young Fuson, "Callista's got more sense than to pay any attention to such a light-headed somebody as that fool brother o' mine. Let me tell you, Callista Gentry has more sense than any of you men persons give her credit for. She's a serious-minded gal. You Mary Ann Marthy, you quit treadin' over yo' Sunday shoes." And she raised her small daughter a bit from the pathway and set her down sharply, as though to indicate the correct manner of walking in Sunday foot-gear. The infant of the triple name—her Uncle Lance said she sounded like twins if she didn't look it—put up a mutinous red mouth and lowered from under flaxen brows. "Me wants to hear 'em fuss," she muttered as she progressed reluctantly toward the little church on the hill-side. "Well, you ain't goin' to hear 'em fuss, and they ain't goin' to fuss, and you couldn't hear 'em if they did," 1 2 3 4 5 admonished her mother lucidly, accelerating the infant's pace from the rear. "The big spring ain't no place for chillen like you, and old women like me. Let the light-minded and the ungodly do about in such ef they will. You and me is goin' into the church house and set thar till preachin'." Fathers and mothers were herding their broods of lesser children in, but boys and girls of older growth, young men and women of an age to be thinking of mating, strolled by twos or sat on the bank above the big spring that supplied the baptismal pool of Brush Arbor church. Callista Gentry was wearing a new print frock—and looking quite unconscious of the fact. "That ain't no five cent lawn," whispered Ola Derf enviously, as she eyed it from afar. The Derf girl was an outsider at most gatherings, and particularly so at church affairs. Everybody knew she came to Brush Arbor only on a chance of seeing Lance Cleaverage. "Thar comes Lance now!" announced Fuson, and then winked at his companions. Callista never raised her glance, nor did the even tenor of her speech falter, though something told the onlooker that she was aware. A swift slight contraction of plumage like that of a hawk suddenly on the alert, a richer glow on the softly oval cheek, a light in the down-dropped eyes which she jealously hid, a rearrangement, subtle and minute, of her attitude toward the world, showed that she needed no sight nor hearing to advise her of the coming of the lithe young fellow who approached from the ragged second growth of the abandoned hillside clearing. He came straight through, paying no attention to paths—that was Lance Cleaverage. His step was light and sure, yet it rent and crushed what was in his way. On his back swung the banjo; his soft felt hat was off in his hand; as he moved, the sleeves of his blue hickory shirt fluttered in the breeze that stirred his hair, and he sang to himself as he came. What he sang was not a hymn. His hazel eyes were almost as golden as the tan of his cheek, and there was a spark in the depths of them that matched the audacious carriage of his head. At his advent the Widow Griever turned and let the fat child find her way alone. "You Lance," she began in a scandalized tone, "don't you bring that sinful and ungodly thing into the house of the Lord. You know mighty well and good the preacher is about to name you out in meetin'; and here you go on seekin' the ways of the Evil One. Pack that banjo straight back home this minute." She evidently had as little expectation of Lance obeying her as he had of doing so. Her words were plainly intended merely to set forth her own position—to clear her skirts of reproach. The young folks about her giggled and looked with open admiration at the youth who dared to bring such a worldly object to Sunday preaching. "Banjo'll let the preacher alone, if the preacher'll let it alone," smiled Lance, unconcernedly pulling the instrument around to get at the strings, and touching them lightly. "You go 'long into the church and get your soul saved for Heaven, Sis' Roxy. I reckon they need representatives of the Cleaverage family in both places." "Well, that's whar you're a-goin'—er more so," asserted the widow with dignity, as she turned her back once more on the young folks and moved away. Lance took the ribbon of his banjo from his neck and flung it over a blossoming azalea bush. "I'll hang my harp on a willer tree, And away to the wars again," he hummed softly just above his breath. "I don't aim to hurt the preacher's feelings. I won't take my banjo into his church—sech doctrine as Drumright's is apt to be mighty hard on banjo strings. Don't you-all want to have a little dance after the meeting's out—on the Threshin'-floor Rock up the branch?" The girls looked duly horrified, all but Ola Derf, who spoke up promptly, "Yes—or come a-past our house. Pap don't mind a Sunday dance. You will come, won't you, Lance?" pleadingly. Callista Gentry did not dance. She had always, in the nature of things, belonged to the class of young people in the mountains who might be expected at any time to "profess" and join the church. The musician laughed teasingly. "I reckon we'd better not," he said finally. "Callista's scared. She begged me into bringing my banjo to-day (you don't any of you know the gal like I do), and now she's scared to listen to it." Callista barely raised her eyes at this speech, and spared to make any denial. "You-all that wants to dance on a Sunday better go 'long there," she said indifferently. "It's mighty near time for preaching to begin, and you've got a right smart walk over to the Derf place." Dismissing them thus coolly from her world, she addressed herself once more to pinning a bunch of ochre and crimson azaleas into the trimming of her broad hat. "Lance," drawled Buck Fuson, "I hear you' cuttin' timber on yo' land. Aimin' to put up a cabin—fixin' to wed?" The newcomer shrugged his shoulders, but made no reply. "When I heared it, I 'lowed Callista had named the day," persisted Fuson. 6 7 8 9 "Have ye, Callista?" Rilly Trigg put in daringly, as neither of the principals seemed disposed to speak. "The names that the days have already got suits me well enough," Callista observed drily. "I don't know why I should go namin' ary one of 'em over again." There was a great laugh at this, of which Cleaverage appeared entirely oblivious. "Yes," he began quietly, when it had subsided, "I'm about to put me up a house—I like to be a-buildin'—a man might as well improve his property. There's one gal that wants me mighty bad, and has wanted me for a long while; sometimes I'm scared she'll get me. Reckon I might as well be ready." "Ye hear that, Callisty?" crowed little Rilly Trigg. "Ye hear that! Have ye told him adzackly the kind of house ye want? I 'low ye ort." "Put a little yellow side o' that red," advised Callista composedly, busying herself wholly with the hat Rilly was trimming. "There—don't you think that looks better?" Rilly made a face at Fuson and Cleaverage, and laughed. "No need to ask her which nor whether," said Lance nonchalantly. "Any place I am is bound to suit Callista. I intend that my house shall be the best in the Turkey Tracks; but if it wasn't she'd never find it out, long as I was there." Again there was a chorus of appreciative laughter. "How's that, Callista—is it so for a fact?" inquired Fuson, eager to see the game go on. Callista opened her beautiful eyes wide, and smiled with lazy scorn. "Truly, I'm suited with whatever Lance Cleaverage builds, and wherever and whenever he builds. Let it be what it may, it's nothing to me." "You Rilly!" called a shrill feminine voice from the direction of the church. "Bring the basket." "Help me with it, Buck," said Aurilla, and the two started down the slope together. "Now," suggested Lance, with an affectation of reluctance, "if the rest of you-all don't mind giving us the place here, I reckon Callista's got a heap that she wants to say to me, and she's ashamed to speak out before folks." The mad project of a Sunday dance, which nobody but Ola Derf had entertained for a moment, was thus tacitly dropped. There was a general snickering at Lance's impudent assumption. Again Callista seemed too placidly contemptuous to care to make denial. Boys got up from their lounging positions on the grass, girls shook out their skirts, and two and two the young folks began to straggle toward the gray little church. "You're a mighty accommodatin' somebody," observed Lance, dropping lightly on the grass at Callista's feet. "I have been told by some that you'd make a contentious wife; but looks to me like you're settin' out to be powerful easy goin'. Ain't got a word to say about how many rooms in the house, nor whar the shelves is to be, nor nothin'—eh?" Reckless of time or place he reached up, put a finger under her chin, and turned her face toward him, puckering his lips meditatively as though he meant to kiss her—or to whistle. He got a swift, stinging slap for his pains, and Callista faced around on the rock where she sat to put herself as far from him as might be. "Who said anything about wives and husbands?" she demanded. "I was talking about you building on yo' land. Hit's nothin' to me. I never expect to live in the houses you build, nor so much as set foot in 'em. When you named that girl that was tryin' to wed you, I shorely thought you must have been meanin' Ola Derf. As for me, if you heard me talkin' of the house I expected to live in, you'd hear a plenty—because I'm particular. I ain't a-going to put up with no puncheon floor in my best room. Hit's got to be boards, and planed at that. I ain't a-goin' to break my back scouring puncheons for no man." Lance nodded, with half closed eyes. It was plain he got her message. One guessed that the house would be made to please her, and, too, that he liked her the better for being fastidious. The two were apparently alone together; but neither Ola Derf nor Flenton Hands was among the young people moving away down the further slope. Lance gazed after their retreating friends and heaved a lugubrious sigh. "Well, looks like they've all started off and left me for you and you for me," he commented sadly. "Have they?" inquired Callista without interest. "They show mighty poor judgment." "Same sort of judgment I'm showing, settin' here talking to you, when I might as well spend my time with a good- lookin' gal," retorted Lance promptly. "The Lord knows you waste yo' time talking to me," Callista sent back to him with a musing, unruffled smile on her finely cut lips. "Your settin' up to me would sure be foolishness." "Settin' up to you?"—Lance took his knees into an embrace and looked quizzically at her as she reclined above him, milk-white and pink, blue-eyed and flaxen-haired, a creature to cuddle and kiss one would have said, yet with a gall-bag under her tongue for him always. "Me settin' up to you?" He repeated the words with a bubble of apparently unsubduable amusement in his tone. "I reckon you're a-doin' the settin' up; everybody seems to understand it so. I just mentioned that the rest of the folks had left you and me alone together, and I was goin' on to say that I began to suffer in the prospect of offerin' you my company up to the church-house. Lord, some gals will make courtin' out of 10 11 12 13 anything!" A subdued snicker sounded from the screen of leafage behind the spring. Several young people lingered there for the fun of hearing Lance Cleaverage and Callista Gentry fuss. The red began to show itself in the girl's smooth, fair cheeks. She caught her wide hat by its strings and got suddenly to her feet. "Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Lance Cleaverage," she said coldly, "I never took enough notice of you to see was you courtin' me or some other girl; and I'll thank you now to step yourself out of my way and let me get on to the church-house. I've got to lead the tribble, come service time. I can't stand fooling here with you, nor werry my-self to notice are you courting me or somebody else." She held her graceful head very high. If she swung the hat by its strings a thought too rapidly, it was the only sign she gave of any excitement as she gained the path. Cleaverage ranged himself beside her, leaving the banjo in the bushes. "All right—all right," he remarked in a pacifying tone. "I'm willin' to walk up to the door with you, if that's what's troublin' you so greatly; but I don't want to go in and sit alongside of you on the middle seats. You take your place on the women's side, like a good gal, and let me have some peace, settin' over with the men." For a moment she was dumb. Half a dozen had pushed into view, and were listening to them now. They all understood that Lance knew well enough she must sit with the singers, yet his open refusal to accompany her to the middle seats, where the courting couples generally found place, was not the less galling. "Tell him you won't never step yo' foot in church beside him, Callista," prompted a man's voice, and Flenton Hands stepped out on the path, twisting a bit of sassafras in his fingers and looking from one to the other with quick shiftings of his gray eyes. Lance laughed radiantly but soundlessly, his face and eyes shining with mirthful defiance. The girl looked down and trifled with her hat ribbons. "Why don't you say it?" inquired Cleaverage at length. Hands leaned forward and stared eagerly at her, his mouth a little open and his breath coming quick. He had always been the most pertinacious of Callista's followers; an older man than any of the others, he brought to bear on his wooing the persistence and determination of his years. Callista just glanced at the younger man, and let her gaze rest on Hands. "What's the use of telling him what he already knows mighty well and good?" she said finally. "Give me the pleasure of walking up with you this morning, then," Hands encroached eagerly. With negligent composure Callista looked about her. She was not willing to walk with Lance—she doubted if he would ask her again. She was not willing to discredit him and go with Hands. She was determined that Cleaverage should not walk with another girl. "Come on, Ola," she coolly addressed the figure plainly to be seen behind Hands. "Let's you and me hurry over and see what hymns Brother Drumright is going to use. You sing mighty good counter, and I'd like to have you next to me." Ola Derf could not refuse. It was almost equal to social rehabilitation to be allowed to walk with Callista Gentry from the spring to the church, to sit beside her in the singing seats; yet the brown girl cast uneasy glances backward till she saw Lance, whistling melodiously, turn to the blooming azalea bush and catch up his banjo from it. She stopped in her tracks, holding Callista back. "Whar—whar ye gwine, Lance?" she inquired anxiously. If Cleaverage was not coming to church it would scarcely be worth while for her to torture herself with an hour of old Preacher Drumright's holding forth. "Whar ye gwine?" she reiterated, as the other girl pulled her sleeve and attempted to hurry on. "Whar you and Callista ca'n't come," returned Lance, speaking over his shoulder unceremoniously. "Ain't ye gwine to stay to preachin'?" persisted the brown girl. "I—I thought ye was, or I—ain't ye gwine to stay?" "No," drawled Cleaverage. "I just brought the banjo to please Callista—because I promised her I would, when she begged me to. I had no notion of staying to listen to Drumright." "Come on—if you're a-coming," Callista admonished the Derf girl with a little flash of temper which Lance did not fail to observe, any more than she missed the chuckle with which he received it. "Well, I'm a-goin' with ye," announced Ola. She let go Callista's arm, and turned back to where Lance was taking a shadowy path into the forest. "I told you, gals couldn't come," Cleaverage bantered her. But Ola persisted. "I can go wherever you can go. Lance—wait! Wait for me—I'm a-comin'." "Callista'll be mad," objected Cleaverage. "She begged and begged me, and I wouldn't leave her come along of me; now if I take you, she'll be mad." "Like I cared where you went or who went with you!" Callista retorted, eyes shining blue fire, head crested. "Come on, Mr. Hands, it's time we were stepping, if we want to get in to go through the hymns." 14 15 16 17 "And you will sit alongside of me?" Hands's voice pleaded close to her ear. Ola and Lance were of the same age; the blond girl, lingering half indignant, could remember how hardy, free little Ola Derf used to play with the boys, always singling Lance Cleaverage out as the companion for her truant expeditions. Now in mute denial of Hands's petition, Callista shook her head, and in doing so managed to glance round and get a tormenting glimpse of Ola and Lance disappearing together between the trees. Under the green domes of oak and liriodendron, the latter starred all over now with orange-tawny tulips, she saw them pass. Wine of summer was in the veins of the forest. Even the sober oaks, wreathed like bacchanals, overflowed with sweetness from their wrappings of wild grape. The two with the banjo took their way down a steep path toward a jade-green pool, a still reach of water arched over by fantastic tangles of laurel and rhododendron, black as the tents of Kedar, lighted only by the flash of a water-fall that caught the sun. This was the baptismal place. The daughter of the house of Gentry turned her face resolutely toward respectability and the church, albeit there was no joy in the countenance. Strung out over a quarter of a mile were courting couples bent toward the same destination. To these young hearts it seemed well worth while to have lain under the heel of winter to attain this marvelous summer morning with its green-clothed forest, its wreathing of blossoms where they passed. Clean and cool as a bell's note, the song of a thrush deep in the wood spilled jeweled drops of sound through the trembling branches overhead. A catbird's sonata rippled boldly out upon the very path. A canopy of bloom was woven and flung over the spring by the black, knotty fingers of the laurel. Bees tumbled happily in the bosom of the fairest drooping clusters, their hum nearly drowned by the heavy gurgle of the creek water. Callista drew in her breath sharply. Summer and sun and light and love everywhere—and she was walking up to the church-house with Flenton Hands, while back on some forest by-path, with music at his finger ends and Ola Derf beside him, Lance Cleaverage forgot her with a laugh. CHAPTER II. THE UP-SITTING. GRANNY YEARWOOD—the grandmother of Flenton Hands and his sisters—was dead. The work-hardened old body had parted with its flame of life reluctantly; for nearly a year she had been declining toward the end; and during the last months the family had cared for her almost day and night. They were worn out with the toil of it before she herself wore out. But now it was all over. The first outburst of noisy lamentation, which is fairly conventional in the Southern mountains, was past. The corpse had been decently composed on a rude plank scaffold, while Octavia Gentry and Roxy Griever took charge of the household and began to order things in that curious half-ecclesiastical fashion which follows the footsteps of death. It was near noon, and Octavia dished up the dinner, while Roxy paid more attention to the impending funeral arrangements. Before the meal was over, young people began to come in, though none could quite say how they had received word. The girls made proffer of assistance, and swiftly the table was cleared away, the dishes washed, and the house and surroundings put in immaculate order. Work in the fields was stopped, that messengers might be sent, one on horseback to notify distant-dwelling kin, another with a wagon to buy the coffin down in Hepzibah, a third afoot to arrange with the strong young men of the family connection about helping to dig the grave. All the flowers in the dooryard were gathered and laid round the corpse. The withered old face was covered with a damp cloth, and then a borrowed sheet was drawn smoothly over the whole mound. The Widow Griever was so deeply versed in the etiquette of such occasions, and so satisfyingly exacting on all points, as to make an undertaker even more highly superfluous than he would usually have been among those simple folk. What with garments and accessories she had brought from her own scant widow's wardrobe, and articles hastily borrowed from the nearer neighbors, she managed inside of two hours to have Little Liza and her two sisters—the mother of the family was dead some years ago—clad in black and seated in state inferior only to that of the dead. More flowers were brought by girls and small boys from the neighbors' yards—yellow and purple and red were the colors mostly in bloom now, and those which would have been favored for this occasion. Roxy gravely arranged them and set them in place. She had veiled the looking-glass and stopped the clock as soon as she came into the house. "A body cain't be too careful about all these here things," she said with a solemn sniff. "Hit's easy at a time like this for something to be did that crosses the luck." Women came and went through the open doors, silent almost as the little breeze that played between. Everybody wore the same expression of mournful acquiescence in the natural order of things. Greetings were exchanged in low tones. Callista, carrying a basket of garden asters, came up the front walk, looking openly for her mother, guarding a little warily against Flenton Hands's approach. Some girls hurrying out to seek ferns in the low places of the wood met her, and she turned back with them, joining her activities to theirs and making a wreath of the flowers she had brought. Flenton Hands was thirty years old. To have arrived at this age unmarried is, in the mountains, in some measure a reproach. True, he aligned himself sharply with the religious element of the community, and this, when youthful masculinity is ever apt to choose the broad way where there is more company, bespoke for him a certain indulgence or toleration that would have been denied a typical old bachelor. 18 19 20 21 He was cantankerous old Preacher Drumright's right hand at all times, and Drumright was safe always to approve him. He was the kind of man who seeks the acquaintance and company of those well-to-do and older than himself, paying a sober court to respectability and money, and thus coming eventually to be rated as one of the elders, while he yet held the dubious position of an unmarried male who shilly-shallied in the matter of wedding. No actual scandal ever attached to Flenton Hands. If there were improprieties to be debited against him, he kept such matters out of the sight of Turkey Track people, and only a vague rumor of something discreditable associated itself with his Valley connections to warrant young girls in pouting their lips and referring to him as "that old Flenton Hands"; while their mothers reproved and told them that he was one of the best young men, as well as one of the best matches, in the neighborhood. So far as personal appearance went, he was well enough, yet with a curious suggestion of solidity as though his flesh might have been of oak or iron. The countenance, too, with its round, high cheek-bones, had an unpleasing immobility, resting always in a somewhat slyish cast of expression which the odd slant of the light gray eyes gave to it. For the rest, he was thin-lipped, with thick, straight, dark hair, and an almost urban air of gentlemanliness, an effort at gentility which, in a shorter and more cheerful individual, would have been smug. "Flenton's gone for the coffin," Sallie Blevins said. "He always tends to it when there's anything to do that calls for money to be spent." "I reckon he's got a plenty," supplied little Rilly Trigg; "but someway I never could like his looks greatly. There, I oughtn't to have said that—and his granny laying dead in the house that-a-way." Callista did not add her opinion to this discussion, but finding that she was in no danger of meeting Flenton, hurried the others promptly up to the house. As soon as she came in sight, Little Liza, six feet tall, with a jimber-jaw and bass voice, came and fell upon her neck and wept. Little Liza Hands got her descriptive adjective from being the third of the name. To-day she was especially prominent, because Granny Yearwood, the first Eliza, ninety pounds of fiery energy and ambition, had at last laid down the burden of her days. Her daughter, Eliza the second, had lain beside her husband, Eliphalet Hands, in churchyard mold these twenty years; and her big daughter, with the bovine profile, the great voice, and the timid, fluttered soul of a small child, remained in the world, the only Eliza Hands—yet still Little Liza to those about her. And for her name's sake, Little Liza was chief mourner. The Hands girls all had a sort of adoring attitude toward Callista Gentry. Flenton wanted her, and they had been trying to get Flenton everything he wanted since he was small enough to cry for the moon, and strike at the hand which failed to pluck it down for him. Callista had not intended to stay. She was to be over later in the day—or the same night, rather—with the young people who sat up. But Little Liza managed to detain her on one pretext or another until the coffin arrived and Granny was finally placed therein. "Just look at them thar shiny trimmin's on that thar coffin," admired Little Liza, jogging Callista's elbow. "That's Flent. That's my brother Flent. They ain't a thing he grudges to them he loves." Callista uttered a soothing and satisfactory reply, and was making her escape, when Hands himself overtook her at the door. His features were drawn to an expression of great solemnity, one which suited them ill, for he had the upslanting brow, the pointed face and the narrow eye that, lightened by mirth, may be antic, but without the touch of humor is forbidding and even sinister. "You're not going to leave us, air you?" he inquired in a carefully muffled tone, as though indeed Granny was sleeping lightly and might be easily wakened. "Mother's going to stay now, and I'm coming back to-night," Callista hastened to say. "I'm mighty glad you air," returned Flenton, with a heavy sigh. "In these times of affliction, hit's a powerful comfort to me to have you in sight." Callista edged closer to the others. She was not unwilling to be seen standing whispering with Flenton. He was a good match, a creditable captive of any girl's bow and spear; yet she did not enjoy his love-making, least of all now that it was mingled with this ill-sorted solemnity. "Flenton, have they sent word to your Uncle Billy's folks?" asked Octavia Gentry, making her appearance in the doorway behind the two. "Yes'm," returned Flenton, not pleased to be interrupted, yet necessarily civil to the woman whom he hoped to have for a mother-in-law. "And does the Bushareses and Adam Venable and his wife know hit? Is Mary a-comin'?" she pursued the catalog. "What about the Aspel Yearwoods out in Big Buck Gap—has anyone went out there? And Faithful Yearwood, that married Preacher Crowley—ain't they livin' down in the Tatum neighborhood?" "Yes'm, they air," confirmed Flenton. "Cousin Ladd 'lowed to send one o' his chaps on a nag to Faithful Crowley's folks; and Ab Straley was to let them at Big Buck Gap know." Though impatient, he made a decent end. When he looked around, Callista had quietly moved away. The day's work was over; men and boys began to arrive at the Hands place, some carrying lanterns. From early candle lighting till near the turn of the night the house would be full; then the elders, men and women on whose day labor a family must depend, would begin to slip away, except a few old widowers and bachelors who might remain 22 23 24 25 26 smoking on the steps outside; and a circle of young folks who would be left sitting in the lamplight and fireshine of the main room. Flenton knew of old experience just how the night would go. He longed inexpressibly to be one of those up-sitting young people that he might push his chair close to Callista Gentry's and whisper to her in the privilege of the hour. Yet he was held back by a consideration for his dignity as one of the bereaved. "Miz. Gentry," said Roxy Griever, "will you stay and he'p with the supper—they aim to have a reg'lar meal put on the table at about midnight—settin' up with the dead is mighty wearin'." "I 'low the gals would rather tend to that theirselves," deprecated Octavia, mildly. "I mind how it was when I was a gal. I never did want some old women pesterin' around at sech a time." She cast a swift glance to where Callista sat, her fair head bent, the lamplight upon its bright burden of corn- colored braids, Lance Cleaverage, his hands in his pockets, standing before the girl regarding her, and evidently about to say something. The Widow Griever's look followed Octavia's to the front room in which half-a-dozen couples had paired off, whispering, giggling a bit if the truth must be told, with an occasional undernote of hysteria in the giggles. "That's jest the reason," she announced, straightening up from the hearth where she had been stirring a vast boiler full of very strong coffee. "The gals that lets tham men have their way is foolish. They'll rue the day they done so. Men persons would always have the old folks leave, and the young folks run things to suit theirselves; but I don't believe in sech." On the mental horizon of the Widow Griever there hovered ever a vast, dun, evil-promising cloud known as "tham men." She never alluded to the opposite sex in any way other than collectively, and named them in this manner, which held in it all of reproach. Her father—gentle soul—presented himself to her under the name of Poppy, as somewhat set apart from the raging mass of predatory males addressed more or less openly and directly to destruction. Poppy and a young brother, Sylvanus, though belonging to the vicious sex and thereby under suspicion, were possible; but Lance, the lawless and debonair, was not only one of the enemy—he was Roxy Griever's horrible example. The church-house where "tham men" were kept on the one side so that the gentler half of creation might sit peacefully on the other, was to her thinking the only safe and proper place of public gathering. "I tell you, Miz. Gentry," she now pursued, her reprehending eye going past the person she answered to fasten itself on Lance's lounging figure and note the careless, upward fling of his head, "I tell you that I ain't never been back to the Settlement sence I left it a widder. What would I be doin' down thar amongst all tham men? But Lance, he goes down, and every time he goes, I think he gits more of the Old Boy in him, 'caze evil is a-walkin' around at noonday down in tham settlements, and you cain't be safe anywhars." "Might just as well quit being scared then," drawled Lance's soft voice. He had stepped noiselessly to the door, at Callista's suggestion to see if the coffee were ready. "You Lance Cleaverage!" returned his sister in a carefully suppressed tone that was sufficiently acid to make up for its lack of volume, "I ain't a-goin' to quit bein' scared for yo' say-so. You ought to be ashamed to name such—in the house with the dead this a-way. No, the coffee'll not be ready for somewhile yet. When hit is, you'ns can fetch cheers and he'p yourselves to it. I'm a-goin' to show Miz. Gentry my gospel quilt that I brung with me to lay over Granny." Roxanna Cleaverage had married rather late in life. Girlhood had been but an unsatisfactory season to her; young women in a primitive society are not given much prominence, and Roxy had neither beauty nor charm to command what was to be had. Lacking these, she made a great point of religion, which led incidentally to her marriage with John Griever, an itinerant preacher, and brought her two blissful years and Mary Ann Martha. As the wife of a preacher she had been able to assume some dignity, to instruct, to lay down the law, to keep herself measurably in the public eye. When she was widowed, it was bitter to her to go back to Kimbro Cleaverage's poor home and drop once more into obscurity. She yearned desperately to wear some mark of distinction, to have at least some semblance of social power. And in direct response to this longing, there came a vision in the night, and Roxy rose up and took her bits of quilt pieces and began to fashion a new thing. Other women might have the Rising Sun, the Log Cabin, the Piney- blow, the Basket of Posies; she had conceived and would execute a master work in the way of quilts, quite outside the line of these. Roxy lacked entirely that crude art sense which finds its expression in the mountain woman's beautifully pieced quilt; she only burned to startle admiration, to command respectful attention by some means. The big square of muslin was bought at the expense of considerable pinching and saving, and she began to set upon it those figures which had occupied her mind, her time and her fingers through the years since. Clumsily done, with no feeling whatever for form, proportion, or color, she poured into it a passion of desirous energy which yet produced its effect. The quilt was always at hand for such occasions as this, or when the Presiding Elder came on one of his rare visits. And it was useful to bring out if there were trouble, if someone needed to be overawed or to be threeped down. But that member of the Cleaverage Clan who in her eyes most needed threeping was proof against the gospel quilt. She had never put it forth for Lance's confusion since the day he took such an expressive interest in the undertaking, and advised—in the presence of Preacher Drumright—the adding of a sightly little border of devils around the semi-sacred square. "A fine row o' davils would help the looks of it mightily, Sis' Roxy," he had argued. "They're named frequent in the Bible, and I'd cut 'em out for you. I would sure enough," he laughed, as she looked heavy reproach at him. "You give 27 28 29 30 me a sharp pair o' shears and I can cut out as fine a lookin' davil as you or anybody need wish for!" After that she let him alone, aware that his more gifted eye criticized her failures, even when he did not seek the circle about the exhibited quilt and wilfully mistake her angels for turkey buzzards. The two older women now passed into that cool, shaded little chamber where lay the dead. The windows were open, and the white curtains blew gustily in the night breeze, making the candle Roxy carried flicker. She set it on a high shelf, and got out a thick roll of stuff, unwrapping and spreading forth her contribution to the solemnity of the occasion. "Hit's jest the top on it," she communicated in a hoarse whisper. "I hain't got the heart to put it in frames and quilt it, 'caze I keep thinkin' of something else that ort to go on it, time I say I'm done. Cur'us that I ain't never showed it to you before." (This was a common formula with the widow, and nobody ever disputed it). "See, that's Adam and Eve, to begin on," and she indicated a pair of small, archaic figures cut from blue checked gingham, their edges turned neatly in and whipped to the white domestic background—when one thinks of it, a domestic background is fairly proper for Adam and Eve. "That ginghams they' cut out'n was a piece o' John's shirt—the last one I made him." "Tut, tut," responded Octavia, making that little clicking sound with the tongue which does duty variously to express sympathy, reprehension, surprise, or deprecation. She regarded the artistic achievement before her with attention and respect. One could readily distinguish Eve from Adam, because Eve was endowed with petticoats, while Adam rejoiced in legs. Of course Eve had feet; but it would have taken someone less well acquainted with the moral character of the Widow Griever than was Octavia Gentry to deduce legs from those feet. "What's that thar?" she made the customary inquiry, putting her finger on a twisty bit of polka-dotted calico. "That must be the sarpent." "Hit air." Roxy returned the expected answer solemnly. The Ancient Evil was represented as standing sociably on his tail, facing the tempted pair. "My! Don't he look feisty?" commented Octavia, with courteous admiration. "Watch him jest a-lickin' out his tongue in Eve's face. Lord," she sighed conventionally, "how prone women air to sin!" "Women? Huh!" snorted Mrs. Griever. "Not nigh so prone as tham men. Look-a-here," turning the quilt to get at the Tree of Good and Evil; "look at them thar apples. Now I made some of 'em out of red calico, and some out of yellow. Do you think I ort to have a few green, Miz. Gentry? Look like green apples is mighty sinful and trouble makin'." "I don't know," Octavia debated, as she ran her fingers over a brave attempt at one of the Beasts of Revelation. "You might add a few green ones. Hit does stand to reason that the Old Boy is in green apples more than in ripe ones; but ef them that Eve tempted Adam with had been green—do you reckon he'd 'a' bit?" The scandal was such an old one, that Roxy was evidently a little irritated at its revival. "Well, o' course," she said with some asperity, "a body cain't gainsay what's in the Bible; but I have my doubts about that thar apple fuss. Hit's men that prints the Good Book, and does about with it—not women; an' I've always had a feelin' that mo' likely hit was Adam got into that apple business first." "Well, I don't know," repeated Octavia doubtfully. "I always 'lowed the Bible was the Bible. But what's a-goin' to be here?" pointing to a sizable blank space. "Why, that's a part that I ain't got to finish yet," explained Roxy. "Miz. Abner Dowst given me the prettiest piece o' goods last time I was at her house, and I been studyin' whether to use hit a-depicturin' the Queen of Sheba or Phar'oh's daughter; and then I thought I'd do better to show up Joseph a-dreamin', and the sun and the moon and eleven stars jist over his head—see, they'd set around sorter biassin' this-a-way, betwixt Adam-an'-Eve and this golden harp. Hit's a piece of that dress her gals all had on a-Sunday—you know Dows the always gits a bolt, and time her and the gals all has a dress out of hit, and him a shirt and the boys a shirt apiece, why the bolt's about gone. Well, this time that The'dory May, she axed for something bright, and he was bent on pleasin' her, so he picked for the brightest thing in the store. Hit looked sort o' gay a-comin' into church, one behind another; but now hit'll do fine for Joseph's coat. Ah, law, Miz. Gentry, hit'll be right here in my quilt long after their dresses is wore out and forgot about." "Yes, indeed, hit will that, Sister Griever," her listener assented, a good deal impressed. "Is these sorter round things—" "Them's the loaves an' fishes," Roxy hastened to elucidate. "They ain't so very well done, ye see. I was a-workin' on them when I hearn that Granny Yearwood was about to go, an' I hurried 'em up, 'caze I'd promised her that I'd spread the quilt over her when she was laid out. You he'p me with it now, Miz. Gentry, and we'll fold it back this-a- way so as not to show the part that ain't done." "Laws, Miz. Griever," said Octavia, as the great square, with its many small, gaily colored figures, whipped laboriously into place, was spread out between their hands, "I don't see how you ever did think of all them things." "I reckon it comes from havin' a preacher for a mate," returned Roxy. "Mr. Griever, he was always a cotin' scriptur' round the house, and now he's gone I remember his words—and put 'em down on the quilt, as a body may say. I love to have it by me to work on in time of trouble, an' I love to put it on the bed if a preacher sleeps the night at 31 32 33 34 35 our house. Looks like a body ought to have good dreams un'neath the gospel that-a-way. Thar, ain't that fixed all right now? Cain't we leave here? I 'low them young folks out in the other room might need attention." Octavia glanced through the slightly open door and saw that Lance and Callista had gone into the kitchen alone to look after the supper. They were talking together, and the mother noted hopefully that neither of them was laughing, and that the girl's color had risen, while her eyes looked troubled. "Law honey," she said smiling, "sho'ly they can manage for theirselves one while. I'm plumb tired, an' I know good an' well you air. Le's sit here a spell whar it's cool an' quiet, an' have a little visit." This was a sort of invitation which Roxy Griever could not refuse, and the courting couples were spared her surveillance for a little longer. "Callista," Lance began abruptly, when they were out of earshot of those in the front room, "I raised the roof- beams of my cabin to-day—two big rooms and a porch between, with a cooking place for summer. Ain't that about right?" Callista looked toward the other room uneasily. She had no audience now—how should she act, how demean herself so as to seem indifferent? Lance's undecipherable, clear hazel eyes were on her; they rested carelessly in what seemed a passing glance; yet at the back of that regard looked out a demand which she could scarcely comprehend. "I—I don't know," she faltered. "Lance, won't you please lift that there coffee off o' the fire? It's boiled enough." Lance bent lithely to the hearth and did her bidding. "I've got me two horses now," he said in the same even undertone. "I matched Satan with a little black filly that Derf brought over from the Far Cove neighborhood. They're jest of a size, and they step together like a couple of gals wi...