Part 10

“We’ve got some time, though, before we have to face ’em, Mink. We’re entitled to one continuance, on account of the inflamed state of public sentiment.”

The brooding, abstracted look passed suddenly from Mink’s face, leaving it more recognizable with its wonted bright intentness.

“Air ye ’lowin’ ye’d put off the trial furder ’n the day be set fur, Mr. Harshaw?” he asked, with the accents of dismay. “Fur Gawd’s sake, don’t let ’em do that. I wouldn’t bide hyar, all shet up”—his eyes turned from wall to wall with the baffled eagerness of a caged beast—“I wouldn’t bide hyar a day longer ’n I’m ’bleeged ter, not ter git shet o’ damnation. Lord A’mighty, don’t go a-shovin’ the day off; hurry it up, ef ye kin. I want ter kem ter trial an’ git back ter the mountings. I feel ez ef I be bound ter go.”

The lawyer still looked at him with his keen sidelong glances.

“The jury stands ’twixt you and the mountains, Mink. Mightn’t get out, after all’s said and done.”

Mink looked at him with a sudden alarm in his dilated eyes, as if the contingency had been all undreamed of.

“They’ll be bound ter let me out,” he declared. “I ain’t feared o’ the jury.”

“If you don’t know what you did yourself, you can’t expect them to be much smarter in finding it out,” reasoned the lawyer.

“I ain’t done nuthin’ ter keep me jailed this hyar way,” said Mink, hardily. “I feel it in my bones I’ll git out. I never try them bars,” nodding at the window, “but what I looks fur ’em ter break in my hand.”

“See here,” said the lawyer, sternly, “you let ‘them bars’ alone; you ain’t going ter do yourself any good breaking jail.”

He looked down meditatively at his feet, and stamped one of them that his trousers might slip further down over his boot-leg, which deported itself assertively and obtrusively, as if it were in the habit of being worn on the outside.

“I don’t know,” he said reflectively, “if you want to be tried speedily, but what it’s best, anyhow. We won’t have Averill to preside; he’s incompetent in a number of civil cases, and Jim Gwinnan will hold court. He’s a”—he pursed up his red lips again, and looked about with an air intimating a high degree of contempt; Mink hung upon his words with an oppressive sense of helplessness and eagerness, that now and then found vent in an unconscious long-drawn sigh—“well, he’s a selfish, ambitious sort of fellow, and he’s found out it’s mighty popular to make a blow about cleaning up the docket, and avoiding the law’s delays, and trotting the lawyers right through. He’ll hold court till twelve o’clock at night, and he just opposes, tooth and nail, every motion for delay. I reckon he’d make it look as if we were afraid to come to trial, if we wanted a continuance; so it’s just as well, if you feel ready, for we mightn’t get it, after all.”

Mink experienced a new fear. “Ain’t he a mighty bad kind of a jedge ter hev?” he faltered, quaking before the mental vision of the man who held his fate in the hollow of his hand.

“No,” said Harshaw musingly, “he ain’t a bad judge for us for this reason,—though he’s mighty apt to lean to public opinion, he’s a sound lawyer, and he’s mighty careful about his rulings. He don’t get reversed by the S’preme Court. That’s what he sits on the bench for: not to administer justice,—he don’t think about justice once a week,—but to be affirmed by the S’preme Court. He’s more particular than Averill in little things, and he won’t let the attorney-general walk over him, like Averill does,—sorter spunky.”

“I hev seen the ’torney-gineral,—hearn him speak wunst. They ’lowed he war a fine speaker,” submitted Mink, anxious concerning the untried, unmeasured forces about to be arrayed against him.

“Mighty fine,” said Harshaw, derisively. “Got a beautiful voice—for calling hogs!”

He laughed and rose. “Oh, bless my soul, I plumb forgot!” he exclaimed. “There’s a girl out here wanting to see you. Don’t know but what she may be your sweetheart;” he winked jocosely. “Perkins said she might come in if you want to see her. Looks like she’s walked about forty mile,—plumb beat out.”

Mink was flattered. Instantly he thought of Elvira, and he remembered the journey with his offering of the raccoon that fateful night.

“She hev got dark hair an’ eyes, an’ air toler’ble leetle ter be growed up?” he asked. The remark was in the form of a question, but it was uttered with the conviction of certainty.

“Lord, no! Sandy hair, big brown eyes, and tall, and”—

He paused, for Mink had risen suddenly.

“Ye go tell her,” he said, passionately, pointing at the door,—“go straight an’ tell her ter keep in mind what I said bout’n the harnt on Thunderhead, an’ how I ’lowed she favored him; ef she can’t kill, she sp’iles yer chance.”

“Why, look here, Mink,” remonstrated the lawyer.

“Go ’long an’ tell her!” cried Mink, imperatively. “Tell her I want her ter cl’ar out from hyar. Tell her I can’t breathe ef she’s nigh.” He clutched at his throat, tearing open his collar with both hands. “’Twar her ez brung me hyar. ’Twar her ez got me locked an’ barred up. An’ now I don’t want ter see her no mo’ ez long ez I live. Gin her that word from me,—an’ the Herder on Thunderhead what she favors.”

The lawyer, with a gesture of expostulation, left the cell, appreciating that it was an unpleasant job to tell the travel-stained apparition at the door that her journey was in vain.

She was sitting upon the doorstep, in the sunshine, her brown bonnet hanging half off her golden head; her homespun dress seemed dark upon the rough gray stone. She watched absently, with her serious brown eyes, the gauzy wings of a blue-bottle that droned slumberously by. She held with idle hands the yellow blossoms of the golden-rod that she had plucked by the way. There was no passing in the street, hardly a sound; so still she sat that a lizard, basking in the sun, did not scruple to run across her motionless feet. She had taken off her coarse shoes to ease them after her long walk, for they were swollen and bruised.

She looked up with a start when the lawyer stood in the door. “No, sis,” he said in a debonair fashion, glancing about the street. “Mink ain’t in a good humor to-day, and you can’t see him.”

She cast up to him her haggard eyes, full of appeal, of fear, of woe. He had no intention of stabbing her with the cruel words of the message. “You can’t see him to-day; some other day.” He waved his hand with a promissory gesture, and was turning away.

She sprang up with a cry. “They hendered him! They wouldn’t let him!” she said, with quivering lips.

“Yes, yes. They hindered him,” he kindly prevaricated.

Her eyes were suddenly all on fire. As he caught their gleam he hesitated, looking at her. Her cheeks were flushed. Her teeth were set. She raised her clenched hand.

“He lied ter me, that thar jailer. He ’lowed I mought see Reuben. He lied! he lied! I’ll—I’ll”—She dropped her threatening hand. “Lord! Lord! what kin I do!”

“Look here, girl,” said the lawyer, alarmed at the idea of an indignant demonstration on the part of any of his client’s friends. “’Tain’t the jailer’s fault. Mink said he wouldn’t see you.”

She stood as if stunned for a moment. Then, her confidence in Mink rebounding, “I don’t b’lieve ye!” she said, bluntly.

“Well, then, maybe you will when I tell you that he told me to ask you to clear out, and to remind you of the ‘harnt’ on Thunderhead that he said you favored.”

She shrank back as if he had struck her. He eyed her indignantly. “I reckon you’ll believe me now. Well, begone. We’ve had enough of you.”

He turned and walked off briskly. He heard the court-house bell jangling out its summons, for the chancery court was in session, and he quickened his pace. He gave a start of irritation when he became aware that she was following him. He turned and faced her.

“What do you want?” he said, abruptly.

“I want ter tell ye su’thin’,” she gasped. She leaned forward as if to touch his arm. He moved suddenly back, and she almost fell. She showed no anger, but came a faltering pace nearer, with the same imploring gesture. “I mus’ tell ye suthin’ ’bout Reuben, soon ez I git my breath,—suthin’ ye’d never b’lieve.”

Perhaps it was an unreasoning anger which possessed him, but he was late, and she had cast the lie in his teeth, and somehow her presence irked him, and he vaguely sought to forecast what she had to say.

“No, you won’t, for I ain’t going to listen. You just take yourself off, and stay at home if you know how, and satisfy yourself with the harm you have done already. You’d better put out, and so I tell you.”

He turned once more and strode away rapidly. He heard a faint cry behind him, and, for a time, pursuing steps. He quickened his own. In fact, he presently ran lightly,—marvelously lightly for a man of his bulk,—laughing within himself the while at the absurdity and incongruity of the episode, should it be noticed by any one in the sleepy streets. After a little he looked over his shoulder, half in relenting, half in curiosity.

She was not following him. She was limping back toward her shoes, that lay on the steps of the jail.

IX.

It was close upon nightfall when Alethea, on her homeward journey, reached the banks of the Scolacutta River. It still had a melancholy version of the sunset imprinted upon its surface. It was full of dreamy crimson tints, and olive-green shadows, and gentle pensive effects of undistinguishable lustres. Its ceaseless monotone was on the air; its breath was of freshness and fragrance; the bluffs that towered above it gave the austerity of rugged rocks and the dignity of great heights to the incidents of its margin. Stunted trees clung to the niches of these splintered cliffs; everywhere along the banks the leaves of the sourwood were red and gay as a banner, the tassels all gleaming and white; the dogwood showed a flaunting ochreous tint, but the sweet-gum was as yet only a dull purple, and the sumach had merely hung out its garnet tufts. An amethystine haze rested on the nearest mountains, softening the polychromatic richness that glimmered all along the great slopes; further away they wore the softened blue of autumn. The scene was familiar to her, for she had already passed through the gap of the mountain down into Eskaqua Cove, and her aunt Dely’s house lay among the tawny corn-fields on the other side. Very lonely this habitation was among the great company of the mountains; they rose about the cove on every side with a visible immensity of wilderness which belittled the slight hold of humanity expressed in the house, the fields, the road that seemed itself a vagrant, for there was no bourne in sight of the wide landscape to which it might be supposed to tend.

The log cabin had heard the river sing for nearly a century. It appeared for many years the ready prey of decay: the chimney leaned from the wall, the daubing was falling from the chinking, there were holes in the floor and the roof. Suddenly a great change came over it. The frivolity of glass enlivened the windows where batten shutters had formerly sufficed; a rickety little porch was added; a tiny room was partitioned off from this, and Mrs. Purvine rejoiced in the distinction of possessing a company bedroom, which was far from being a haven of comfort to the occasional occupant of those close quarters. She had always been known to harbor certain ambitions. Her husband’s death, some two or three years before, had given her liberty to express her tastes more fully than when hampered by his cautious conservatism. And now, although the fields might be overrun with weeds, and the sheep have the rot, and the poultry the cholera, and the cow go dry, and the “gyarden truck” defer to the crab-grass, and the bees, clever insects, prepare only sufficient honey for their own use, Mrs. Purvine preserved the appearance of having made a great rise in life, and was considered by the casual observer a “mighty spry widder woman.” Such a one as Mrs. Sayles shook her head and spared not the vocabulary. “Dely,” she would observe, “air my husband’s sister, an’ I ain’t goin’ ter make no words about her. Ef she war ennybody else’s sister, I’d up an’ down declar’ ez she hev been snared in the devices o’ the devil, fur sech pride ez hern ain’t godly,—naw sir! nur religion nuther. Glass in the winder! Shucks! she’d better be thinkin’ ’bout gittin’ light on salvation,—that she hed! Folks ez knowed Dely whenst she war a gal knowed she war headin’ an’ sot agin her elders, an’ run away from home ter git married, an’ this is what kem of sech onregenerate ways. _Glass_ in the winder! I’ll be bound the devil looks through that winder every day at yer aunt Dely whenst she sets thar an’ spins. He gits a glimge o’ her when she ain’t a-lookin’. The pride o’ the yearth is mighty strong in her. Ye oughter sati’fy yerse’f with ’sociatin’ with her in this life, fur ye ain’t a-goin’ ter meet up with her in heaven. Naw, sir, yer aunt Dely’ll remember that winder in the darkness o’ Torment, an’ ef she war ennybody else’s sister than my own husband’s _I’d say so_.”

Mrs. Purvine was standing on the porch, so fine a manifestation of her pride, and gazing with unrecognizing curiosity at Alethea as the girl came up the stony hillside.

Mrs. Purvine hardly looked the woman of a vaulting worldly ambition. She had a broad, moon-like face and blue eyes with much of the whites showing, the more as she had a trick of peering over her spectacles. She had no teeth; despite her social culture she had never heard of a false set, or her mouth would have been a glittering illustration of the dentist’s art. She held in her hand a short clay pipe, from which the smoke slowly curled. She wore a blue-checked homespun apron, but a calico gown, being, according to report, “too triflin’” to do very much weaving at home, and the cross-roads store was only ten miles from her house, on the road to Shaftesville. She had journeyed even to the town, twice or thrice in her life, mounted on a gray mare with a colt at her heels, and had looked from beneath her sun-bonnet at the metropolitan splendors and habits with a starveling’s delight in such of the meagre conventional graces of life as the little village possessed, and as were vouchsafed to her comprehension. Nobody knew whence she derived her “vagrantin’ ways;” for these excursions earned for her the reputation of an insatiate traveler, and her frivolous disposition and pride were the occasion of much reprehension and comment. They could hardly take the form of remonstrance, however, without open rupture; for Mrs. Purvine, right well aware of them, with an acumen and diplomacy grafted like some strange exotic upon her simple character, was always bewailing the frivolous tendency of the times, the pride of “some folks,” the worthless nature of women nowadays, and foisting herself upon her interlocutor as an example of all homely and primitive tastes and virtues.

Her moon face suddenly assumed an expression of recognition and of stern reprobation as she came solemnly down from the door, a feat which it was difficult to perform with stateliness or even safety; for the two or three plank steps were only set against the wall, and although far more imposing than the hewn logs or rough stones customary elsewhere, they were extremely insecure. Often when a foot was placed upon the lowest of the number they careened forward with the weight.

Mrs. Purvine accomplished the descent with dignity, and as she held the gate open she addressed her niece, looking full in her tear-stained face:—

“I knowed it would kem ter this,—I knowed it, sooner or later. What’s that thar step-mother o’ yourn been doin’ ter ye?”

Albeit Mrs. Sayles had few equals as a censor, Mrs. Purvine, with a secret intuition of her animadversions, returned them as best she might, and Mrs. Sayles’s difficult position as a step-mother rendered her as a shorn lamb to the blast.

“Nuthin’,” sobbed Alethea,—“nuthin’ ez I knows on.” She started up the steps, which bounded forward with a precipitancy that had a startling effect as if the house had jumped at her. Alethea stumbled, and Mrs. Purvine commented upon her awkwardness:—

“Look at the gal,—usin’ her feet with no mo’ nimbleness ’n a cow. Laws-a-massy, young folks ain’t what they war in my day. Whenst I war a gal, ’fore I jined the church an’ tuk ter consortin’ with the saints, ye oughter hev seen me dance! Could shake my foot along with the nimblest! But I ain’t crackin’ up bran dances, nuther. I’m a perfessin’ member,—bless the Lord! Satan hides in a fiddle. Ye always remember yer aunt Dely tole ye that word. An’ ef ever ye air condemned ter Torment, don’t ye up an’ ’low ez ye hed no l’arnin’; don’t ye do it.” Then looking over her spectacles, “What ails ye, ef ’tain’t that step-mother?”

“I hev been ter Shaftesville. I bided all night at Cousin Jane Scruggs’s in Piomingo Cove, an’ next day I footed it ter town.”

This announcement would have surprised any one more than the roving Mrs. Purvine. Even she demanded, as in duty bound, with every intimation of deep contempt, “Laws-a-massy, what ye wanter go ter Shaftesville fur?”

“I went ter see Reuben Lorey in jail,” replied Alethea.

Mrs. Purvine looked at her with an expression of deep exasperation. “Waal,” she observed sarcastically, “I’d hev liked ter seen him thar, too. I ain’t seen ez good a fit ez Mink Lorey an’ the county jail fur this many a day. Kem hyar one night, an’ tuk them bran’ new front steps o’ mine, an’ hung ’em up on the martin-house. An’ thar war a powerful deep snow that night, an’ it kivered the consarn so ez nex’ mornin’ we couldn’t find out what unyearthly thing hed fell on the martin-house, an’ we war fairly feared ’twar a warnin’ or a jedgmint till we missed them front steps. They ain’t never been so stiddy sence.”

Alethea had laid aside her bonnet and bathed her face. She was going about the house in a way which was a tribute to Mrs. Purvine’s hospitality, for she felt much at home there. She had glanced toward the great fireplace, where the ashes piled on the top of the oven and the coffee-pot perched on the trivet over the coals told that the work of preparing supper was already done. She suddenly took down the quilting frame, suspended to the beams above by long bands of cloth, produced thread and thimble from her pocket, and, seating herself before it as before a table, began to quilt dexterously and neatly where Mrs. Purvine’s somewhat erratic performance had left off long before. The smouldering firelight touched her fine, glistening hair, her pensive, downcast face; there was still light enough in the room through the pernicious glass window to reveal the grace of her postures and her slender figure. Aunt Dely, with some instinct for beauty native in her blood along with her “vagrantin’ ways” and her original opinions, contemplated her for a time, and presently commented upon her.

“I’m yer father’s own sister,” she averred. “I ain’t denyin’ it none, though he did go an’ marry that thar Jessup woman, ez nobody could abide; an’ I hate ter see a peart gal like you-uns, ez air kin ter me, a-sp’ilin’ her eyes an’ a-cryin’ over a feller ez her folks don’t favor no-ways. Yer elders knows bes’, Lethe.”

“Why, aunt Dely, you-uns _married_ a man ez yer elders never favored; they war powerful sot agin him.”

Mrs. Purvine was clad in logic as in armor.

“An’ look how it turned out,—him dead an’ me a widder woman!”

Alethea stitched on silently for a moment. Then she observed with unusual softness, for she feared being accounted “sassy,” “I ’lowed I hed hearn ye say he war fifty-five year old, when he died.”

“What’s fifty-five?” demanded Mrs. Purvine aggressively. “I knowed a man ez war a hunderd an’ ten.”

And so Alethea was forced to acquiesce in the proposition that Mrs. Purvine’s consort had been cut off in the flower of his youth as a judgment for having some thirty years previous eloped with the girl of his heart.

Both women looked conscious when a sudden step sounded in cautious ascent of the flight before the door, which illustrated so pointedly the truism that pride goes before a fall, and a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered, red-headed fellow strode in at the door.

“Air yer eyesight failin’ ye, Jerry Price?” Mrs. Purvine admonished him. He was her husband’s nephew. “Thar’s Lethe Sayles.”

Being called to order in this manner might well embarrass the young man, who had not expected to see Alethea, and who was rebuked for the dereliction before he was well in the room.

He shambled up to shake hands with her with a somewhat elaborate show of cordiality.

“Waal, Lethe,” he exclaimed, “ye air a sight fur sore eyes! Ain’t seen ye fur a month o’ Sundays.”

“Looks like she hed sore eyes herself, bound with red ferretin’,” commented Mrs. Purvine gruffly. She often had a disposition, as she averred, to knock these young people’s heads together,—a sufficiently dangerous proceeding, for according to her account there were not two such hard heads in all Eskaqua Cove and Piomingo to boot. She had cherished an earnest desire to make a match between them, frustrated only by their failure to second the motion. They were well aware of this, and it impaired the ease of their relations, hampering even the exchange of the compliments of the season.

“Young folks take the lead!” Mrs. Purvine often exclaimed, oblivious of her own sentimental history. “Ef nobody war wantin’ ’em ter marry they’d be runnin’ off with one another.”

She had considered this breach of obedience on the part of her husband’s nephew a special instance of filial ingratitude, and had begun to remind him, and in fact to remember, all that she had done for him.

“Folkses ’lowed ter me, whenst Jerry Price’s mammy died, ez I hed better leave him be, an’ his aunt Melindy Jane would keer fur him. An’ I hedn’t been merried but a few years, an’ bein’ ez I runned away my folks wouldn’t gin me nuthin’, an’ me an’ my old man war most o’ the furniture we hed in the house. But law! we hed plenty arter a while, an’ ter spare!” cried the rich aunt Dely. “An’ they all ’lowed I hed better not lumber myse’f up with other folkses chill’n. Waal, I never expected ter, when I went ter the fun’el. But thar on the floor sot the hardest-featured infant I ever seen, red-headed, blinkin’ eye, lean, an’ sucked his thumb! An’ all them folks war standin’ ’round him, lookin’ down at him with thar eyes all perverted an’ stretched, like a gobbler looks at a deedie ’fore he pecks him on the noodle. An’ they were all pityin’ Melindy Jane fur hevin’ ter keer fur him. Thar she war settin’ wropped in a shawl, an’ ’pearin’ ez ef she could bite a ten-penny nail in two, sayin’ she mus’ submit ter the Lord! Waal, ’peared ter me ez I jes’ could view the futur’, an’ the sorter time Red-head would hev along o’ a woman ez war submittin’ on account o’ him ter the Lord! An’ I jes’ ups an’ lied afore ’em all. I sez, ‘That’s the purties’ child I ever see. Surely he is!’ An’ I sez right hearty ter the b’reaved husband, ‘Ephr’im, ef ye’ll gin him ter me, I’ll keer fur him till he’s able ter keer fur me.’ An’ Eph looked up ez s’prised an’ pleased, and says, ‘_Will_ ye, Dely?’ An’ ef ye’ll b’lieve me, arter I hed called him ‘purty’ Melindy Jane ’lowed _she_ wanted him, an’ hed nuthin’ ter say ’bout the Lord. But I jes’ stepped inter the floor an’ snatched him up under my arm, an’ set out an’ toted him five mile home. An’ lean ez he ’peared, he war middlin’ heavy. I rubbed some pepper on his thumb that night. He ain’t sucked it sence.”

Jerry Price used to listen, calmly smoking, hardly identifying himself—as what man would!—with the homely subject of the sketch; and yet with a certain sense of obligation to Mrs. Purvine, returning thanks in some sort in behalf of the unprepossessing infant.

“Ye an’ me made a right good trade out’n it, ain’t we, aunt Dely?” he would say.