Part 21

She was solitary in her isolated life, with her exalted moral ideal that could compromise with nothing less than the right. She had known no human being dominated by a supreme idea. The reformers, the martyrs, all who have looked upward, sacrificed in vain for her—not even as a tradition, an exemplar might they uphold when she failed. Religion was vague, distorted, uncomprehended, in the primitive expoundings to which she was accustomed. Her inherent conscience prevailed within her like some fine, ecstatic frenzy. It was of an essence so indomitably militant that in her ignorant musings it seemed that it must be this which marshals the human forces, and fights the battle of life, and is unconquered in death, and which the stumbling human tongue calls the soul. And yet so strange it was, she thought, that she could not always recognize the right,—that she must sedulously weigh and canvass what she had done and what she might have done, and what had resulted.

She dwelt long on the moonshiner’s story. She was heart-sore for the hungry idiot, filching from the hogs,—and what forlorn fate had he found at last! She drew her shawl closer about her head, and shivered more with her fears than with the wind. She was very tired; not in body, for she was strong and well, but in mind and heart and life. Somehow, she felt as if she were near the end,—surely there was not enough vitality of hope to sustain her further,—the frequent illusion of sturdy youth, with the long stretches of weary years ahead. There was even a certain relaxation of Mink’s tyrannous hold upon her thoughts. It was not that she cared for him less, but she had pondered so long upon him that her imagination was numb; she had beggared her invention. She could no more project scenes where he walked with all those gentler attributes with which her affection, despite the persistent contradictions of her subtler discernment, had invested him. She could no longer harass herself with doubts of his state of mind, with devising troublous reasons why he had avoided her, with fears of harm and grief menacing him. She had revolted at last from the thrall of these arid unrealities. She felt, in a sort of grief for herself, that they were but poor delusions that occupied her. He must come, and come soon, her heart insistently said. And yet so tired was her heart that she felt in a sort of dismay that were he here to-night there would be no wild thrill of ecstasy in her pulses, no trembling joys. All that she had suffered—despair, and frantic hope that was hardly less poignant, and keen anxieties, and a stress of care—had made apathy, quiet, rest, nullity, the grave, seem dearer than aught the earth could promise.

“He oughter hev kem afore,” she said to herself, in weary deprecation.

And then she thought that perhaps now, since he was at liberty again, he was happy with Elvira, and she experienced another pang to know that she was not jealous.

The clouds had obscured the few stars. The wind was flagging; the smoke grew denser; the forest flames emitted only a dull red glow; the file of peaks that they had conjured from the blackness of night was lost again in the deepening gloom.

She was roused suddenly to the fact that it was intensely quiet in-doors. She could even hear the sound of the fire in the deep chimney-place; it was “treadin’ snow,” the noise being very similar to the crunch of a footfall on a frozen crust. She rose, looking upward and holding her hand to the skies; the glow from within fell upon her fair face, half hooded in the shawl, and upon her pensive eyes. Flakes were falling; now, no more; and again she felt the faint touch in her palm.

Her first thought was of Mrs. Jessup, and the impediment that a snow-storm might prove to her return; and thus she was reminded that the pedestrian within was still, for she no longer heard the thud of his bare feet on the floor. He had fallen asleep in a corner of the hearth, with a gourd in one hand, and in the other a doll, made, after the rural fashion, of a forked twig arrayed in a bit of homespun. Tige watched him as he was borne off to his cradle with an envy that was positively human.

It was for the baby’s sake that Mrs. Jessup returned the next day, despite the deep snow that covered the ground. She had had a dream about him, she declared,—a dreadful dream, which she could not remember. It had roused all the maternal sentiment of which she was capable. She had endured some serious hardship in coming to assure herself of his well-being, for she was obliged to walk much of the way up the mountain,—the snow and ice making the road almost impracticable, and rendering it essential that there should be as little weight as possible in the wagon; to a woman of her sedentary habit this was an undertaking of magnitude. After her wild-eyed inquiry, “Air Ebenezer well ez common?” she seemed to hold him responsible for the deceit of her dream, as if he were in conspiracy with her sleeping thoughts, and to be disappointed that the trouble which she had given herself was altogether unnecessary.

“Ye fat gopher!” she remarked, contemptuously, eying his puffy red cheeks. “Don’t lean on me. I’m fit ter drap. Lean on yer own dinner. I’ll be bound Lethe stuffed ye ez full ez a sassidge.”

She addressed herself to bewailing that she had curtailed her visit, having enjoyed it beyond the limits which the lugubrious occasion of the funeral might seem to warrant.

“Mis’ Purvine war mighty perlite an’ saaft-spoken. I never see a house so fixed up ez hem air,—though I don’t b’lieve that woman hev more’n two or three hogs ter slarter fur meat this year, ef that. I slep’ in the bedroom; ’twar mighty nice, though colder’n ’twar in the reg’lar house, through hevin’ no fire. I reckon that’s what sot me off ter dreamin’ a pack o’ lies ’bout that thar great hearty catamount, fairly bustin’ with fatness. I wisht I hed bided in the cove! Mis’ Purvine begged me ter bide. We-uns went ter the fun’el tergether, an’ the buryin’, an’ we went round an’ seen my old neighbors, an’ traded ter the sto’. An’ I spun some fur Mis’ Purvine.”

“Mighty little, I’ll bet,” declared her husband inopportunely, “ef what ye do hyar be enny sign.”

Whereupon Mrs. Jessup retorted that she wished she had made an excuse of the snow to remain with Mrs. Purvine until the thaw, and retaliated amply by refusing to tell what hymns were sung at the funeral, and to recite any portion of the sermon.

This resolution punished the unoffending members of the family as severely as Jessup himself; but it is a common result that the innocent many must suffer for the guilty unit,—justice generally dealing in the gross. The old man’s lower jaw fell, dismayed at the deprivation. He had relinquished sorting his “lumber,” and had roused himself to listen and note. The details would long serve him for meditation, and would gradually combine in his recollection in dull mental pictures to dwell on hereafter, and to solace much lonely vacant time. Mrs. Sayles was irritated. Alethea had looked to hear something from Mink, and Jessup was unexpectedly balked.

Nothing could be more complete than Mrs. Jessup’s triumph, as she held her tongue,—having her reason. Her blue eyes were bright with a surface gleam, as it were; there was a good deal of fresh color in her face. She was neater than usual, having been “smartened up ter meet the folks in the cove.” Her snuff-brush, however, was very much at home in the corner of an exceedingly pretty mouth. As they all sat before the fire, she took off the socks which Aunt Dely had lent her, and which she had worn up the mountain over her shoes, because of the snow; and she could not altogether refrain from remark.

“Ef these hyar socks hedn’t been loant ter me,” she said, holding one of them aloft, “I couldn’t holp noticin’ how Mis’ Purvine turned them heels, knittin’ ’em. I do declar’, ef these hyar socks fits Jerry Price, he hev got a foot shaped like Buck’s, an’ no mistake.”

It jumped with her idle humor to keep them all waiting, uncertain whether or not she would relent and disclose the meagre gossip they pined to hear. Nothing was developed till Jacob Jessup, retaliating in turn, flatly refused to go and feed Buck, still harnessed in the wagon.

Alethea rose indignantly.

“I don’t lay off ter do yer work ginerally, but I ain’t goin’ ter let the steer go hongry,” she said, “’kase ye air idle an’ onfeelin’.”

“Don’t ye let him go hongry, then,” said Jessup, provokingly.

It had ceased to snow. When Alethea opened the door many of the traits of Wild-Cat Hollow were so changed amid the deep drifts that one who had seen it only in its summer garb might hardly recognize it. Austere and bleak as it was, it had yet a symmetry that the foliage and bloom, and even the stubble and fallen leaves of autumn, served only to conceal. The splendid bare slope down the mountain, the precipitous ascent on either side of the deep ravine, showed how much the idea of majesty may be conveyed in mere lines, in a gigantic arc. The boles of the trees were deeply imbedded in drifts. On the mountain above, the pines and the firs supported great masses of snow lodged amongst the needles. Sometimes a sharp crack told that a branch had broken, over-burdened. The silence was intense; the poultry had hardly ventured off their roosts to-day; the gourds that hung upon a pole as a martin-house were whitened, and glittered pendulous. Once, as Alethea stood motionless, a little black-feathered head was thrust out and quickly withdrawn. Down in the cove the snow lay deep, and the forests seemed all less dense, lined about as they were with white, which served in some sort as an effacement. Through the narrow gap of the ridges was revealed the long mountain vista, with the snowy peaks against the gray sky. Very distinct it all was, sharply drawn, notwithstanding that there lacked but an hour, perhaps, of the early nightfall. For a moment she had forgotten her errand; the next she turned back in surprise. “Whar’s Buck an’ the wagin?”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Jessup, still serenely casual, “he’s a-kemin’ up the mounting along o’ Ben Doaks. I met Ben, an’ I ’lowed ez I didn’t know how I’d make out ter drive sech a obstinate old steer up the mounting in all this snow. Buck hev fairly tuk ter argufyin’ ’bout the road ter go, till ye dunno whether ye air drivin’ the steer or the steer air drivin’ you-uns. I mos’ pulled off his hawns sence I been gone. So Ben, he ’lowed he’d like ter kem an’ spen’ a few days along o’ we-uns, ennyhow.”

“Whyn’t ye tell that afore?” demanded her mother-in-law angrily. “Ye want him ter ’low ez we air a-grudgin’ him victuals. Lethe, put in some mo’ o’ them sweet ’taters in the ashes ter roast, an’ ye hed better set about supper right now.”

For Mrs. Sayles had been accounted in her best days a good housekeeper, for the mountains, and she cherished the memory of so fair a record. Perhaps her reputation owed something to the fact that she entertained a unique theory of hospitality, and made particularly elaborate preparations when the guests were men. “Wimmen don’t keer special ’bout eatin’. Show ’em all the quilts ye have pieced, an’ yer spun truck, an’ yer gyardin, an’ they’ll hev so much ter study ’bout an’ be jealous ’bout ez they won’t want nuthin’ much ter eat.”

Now she proceeded to “put the big pot into the little pot,” to use a rural expression, singularly descriptive of the ambitious impossibilities achieved. She did it chiefly by proxy, directing from her seat in the chimney corner Alethea’s movements, but wearing the absorbed, anxious countenance of strategy and resource. The glory of the victory is due rather to the head that devised than to the hands that executed; as in greater battles the pluck of the soldiery is held subordinate to the science of the commander.

It was no mean result that smoked upon the table when the sound of Buck’s slow hoofs was heard on the snow without, and a warm welcome was in readiness besides. A cheerful transition it was from the bleak solitudes: the fire flared up the chimney; the peppers and the peltry hanging from the rafters might sway in draughts that naught else could feel; the snow without was manifested only by the drifts against the batten shutters, visible in thin white lines through the cracks, and in that intense silence of the muffled earth which appeals to the senses with hardly less insistence than sound.

Ben’s aspect was scarcely so negative, so colorless, as usual, despite his peculiarly pale brown hair and beard. The sharp sting of the cold air had brought a flush to his face; his honest, candid gray eyes were bright and eager. His manner was very demure and propitiatory, especially to Mrs. Sayles, who conducted herself with an ideally motherly air, which was imbued with many suggestions of approval, even of respect.

“Howdy, Ben, howdy? We-uns air mighty glad ter see ye, Ben.”

“Don’t ye git too proud, Ben,” said Mrs. Jessup, roused from her inertia by the unwonted excitements of her journey to the cove, and, since she was not too lazy to exercise her perversity, thoroughly relishing it. “They’d be jes’ ez glad ter see ennybody,—it air so beset an’ lonesome up hyar. They fairly tore me ter pieces with thar questions whenst I kem.”

And this reminded old man Sayles that the details of the funeral could be elicited from Ben Doaks. Upon request the young man lugubriously rehearsed such portions of the sermon as he could remember, prompted now and then by Mrs. Jessup, who did not disdain to refresh his recollection when it flagged; he even lifted his voice in a dolorous refrain to show how a certain “hyme chune” went. But his attention wandered when supper was over, and he observed Alethea, with a bowl of scraps in her hand and a shawl over her head, starting toward the door.

The dogs ran after her, with voracious delight in the prospect of supper, and bounded up against the door so tumultuously that she had difficulty in opening it.

“Goin’ ter feed the dogs, Lethe?” said Ben Doaks, seizing the opportunity. “I’ll keep ’em back till ye kin git out.”

He held the door against the dogs, and when he shut it he too was on the outer side. It was not yet quite dark; the whiteness of the snow contended with the night. The evening star showed through the rifts in the clouds, and then was obscured. The dogs were very distinct as they ran hither and thither on the snow at Alethea’s feet, while she leaned against the post of the porch and threw to them scraps from the bowl.

Ben knew that his time was short. “Lethe,” he said, with a lamentable lack of tact, “I hearn ez how ye hev done gin up waitin’ fur Mink.”

Her lustrous eyes seemed all undimmed by the shadows. The sheen of her hair was suggested beneath the faded shawl, drawn half over her head. What light the west could yet bestow, a pearly, subdued glimmer, was on her face. She said nothing.

He lifted his hand to the low eaves of the porch,—for he was very tall,—and the motion dislodged a few flakes that fell upon her head. He did not notice them.

“I hearn Mis’ Purvine ’low ye air all plumb outdone with Mink, an’ wouldn’t hev him ef he war ter ax ye agin,—an’ I reckon ye won’t see him no mo’. ’Tain’t likely, ye know. An’ Mis’ Purvine ’lowed ye hed been mightily struck with a man in Shaftesville,—a town cuss” (with acrimony), “ez war mighty nigh demented ’bout yer good looks an’ sech. Now, Lethe, ye dunno nuthin’ ’bout’n them town folks, an’ the name they hev got at home, ’mongst thar neighbors.”

She looked steadily at him, never moving a muscle save to cast more scraps to the hounds, who, when their tidbits became infrequent, or were accidentally buried in the snow by inopportune movements of their paws, gamboled about to attract her attention; rising upon their hind legs, and almost dancing, in a manner exceedingly creditable to untrained mountain dogs.

“An’ I ’lowed I war a tremenjious fool ter hev kep out’n the way ’count o’ Mink,—jes’ ’kase ye seemed ter set so much store by him. T’other folks mought kem in whilst I war a-holdin’ back. Nobody ain’t never goin’ ter keer fur ye like I do, Lethe. Mink don’t—never did. An’ my house air ready fur ye enny day ye’ll walk in. I got ye a rockin’-cheer the t’other day, an’ a spinnin’-wheel. It looks like home, sure enough, down thar, Lethe. I jes’ gazed at that thar rockin’-cheer afore the fire till I could fairly see ye settin’ in it. But shucks, I kin hear ye callin’ chickens roun’ thar,—‘Coo-chee, Coo-chee!’—enny time I listens right hard.” He laughed in embarrassment because of his sentimentality. “I reckon I mus’ be gittin’ teched in the head.”

It was snowing again. From those stupendous heights above the Great Smoky Mountains down into the depths of Piomingo Cove the flakes steadily fell. Myriads of serried white atoms interposed a veil, impalpable but opaque, between Wild-Cat Hollow and the rest of the world. Doaks looked about him a little, and resumed suddenly:——

“I ain’t purtendin’ I’m better ’n other men. I never _could_ git religion. I ain’t nigh good enough fur ye,—only I think mo’ of ye. I’m mean ’bout some things. I couldn’t holp but think, whenst I hearn ’bout Mink, ez now ye’d gin him up. I warn’t _bodaciously_ glad, but I couldn’t _holp_ thinkin’ ’twar better fur ye an’ me. Ye’d be happier married ter me, Lethe, than ter him, enny time.”

“I ain’t never goin’ to marry you-uns, Ben,” she said drearily. “An’ now ye hev hed yer say, an’ thar’s no use a-jawin’ no mo’ ’bout’n it.”

She turned to go in. Tige was already scratching at the door, as eager for the fire as he had been for his supper. She glanced at Ben over her shoulder, with some appreciation of his constancy, some pity for his disappointment.

“Ye hed better go make a ch’ice ’mongst some o’ them gals in the cove,” she suggested.

He cast a glance of deep reproach upon her, and followed her silently into the house. Their return was the occasion of some slight flutter in the home circle, in which had prevailed the opinion that the young folks out in the cold “war a-courtin’.”

All relics of the supper were cleared away; the fire leaped joyously up the chimney. L’onidas and Lucindy were asleep. The baby in his night-gown, all unaware that he cut an unpresentable figure before company, pounded up and down the floor, unmolested. The pipes were lighted. As Ben Doaks leaned down to scoop up a coal from the fire, his face was distinct in the flare, and Mrs. Jessup noted the disappointment and trouble upon it. Mrs. Sayles too deduced a sage conclusion. A glance was exchanged between the two women. Then Mrs. Jessup, with a view to righting matters between these young people, whom fate seemed to decree should be lovers, asked abruptly, “Did ye tell Lethe the news ’bout Mink?”

“Naw,” Doaks responded, somewhat shortly. “I ’lowed she knowed it long ago.”

“Naw, she don’t,” said Mrs. Jessup; “none o’ we-uns hyar on the mounting knowed it.”

She paused to listen to the wind, for it was astir without. A hollow, icy cry was lifted in the dark stillness,—now shrill and sibilant, now hoarsely roaring, then dying away in the distance, to be renewed close at hand. The boughs of the bare trees beat together. The pines were voiced with a dirge. The porch trembled, and the door shook.

“Why, Lethe,” resumed Mrs. Jessup, turning toward the girl, as she sat in a low chair in the full radiance of the firelight, “Mink ain’t out’n jail. The rescuers never tuk him out.”

The color left Alethea’s face. Her doubting eyes were dilated. Mrs. Jessup replied to the expression in them.

“Mis’ Purvine, she ’lowed ez she an’ you-uns hearn everybody sayin’ the rescuers tuk him out afore ye lef’ Shaftesville that mornin’. That war town talk. But ’twarn’t true. The jailer an’ the sher’ff tied an’ gagged him, an’ tuk him out tharse’fs in the midst o’ the dark, whenst nobody could see ’em. Makes me laff ter think how they fooled them boys! They jes’ busted up the jail so ez ’twarn’t safe ter try ter keep him thar no mo’, an’ the nex’ day the dep’ty an’ two gyards tuk him down ter the jail at Glaston,—an’ thar he’s safe enough.”

Alethea’s first thought, charged with vague, causeless self-reproach, was that she had let Sam Marvin, who had seen Tad since the disaster at the mill, go in the belief that Mink had been released. But how could she have detained him? And would he, a moonshiner, suffer himself to be subpœnaed as a witness, and thus insure his own arrest?

Her lips moved without a sound, as if she were suddenly bereft of the power to articulate.

“Glaston, that’s a fac’,” reiterated Mrs. Jessup, noticing the demonstration, “’kase I see ’Lijah Miles, ez war one o’ the gyards. He kem up ter the cove ter the fun’el, bein’ ez his wife war kin ter the corpse. She war one o’ the Grinnells afore she war married,—not the Jer’miah fambly, but Abadiah’s darter; an’ Abadiah’s gran’mother war own cousin ter the corpse’s mother”—

“I dunno ’bout’n that,” said Mrs. Sayles, following this genealogical detail with a knitted brow and a painstaking attention.

“Corpse war ’bleeged ter hev hed a mother wunst, ef ever he war alive,” said Mrs. Jessup, recklessly.

“I reckon I know _that_” retorted Mrs. Sayles. “But ’Lijah Miles’s wife’s father’s grandmother war the aunt o’ the corpse, stiddier his mother’s cousin,”—she tossed her head with a cheerful sense of accuracy,—“sure ez ye air a born sinner.”

Mrs. Jessup paused in her recital, leaned her elbows on her knees, and fixed her eyes on the fire, as if following some abstruse calculation. The wind swept about the house and whistled down the chimney, till even Tige roused himself, and lifted his head to listen and to growl.

“Waal, hev it so,” said the young woman, unable to contradict. “Howbeit he war kin ter the corpse, he kem ter the fun’el, an’ arterward, ez he war goin’ back ter Shaftesville, he stopped at Mis’ Purvine’s an’ stayed all night. An’ he tole us ’bout’n takin’ Mink ter jail in Glaston. An’ ’twar the fust Mis’ Purvine knowed ez Mink warn’t out. But she ’lowed she’d miss him less in jail ’n out.”

“I reckon everybody feels that-a-way ’bout Mink,” interpolated Mrs. Sayles. “Folks never knowed what _could_ happen onexpected an’ upsettin’ till Mink’s capers l’arned ’em.”

“Waal, none o’ his capers ever war like this las’ one o’ his’n,” said Mrs. Jessup, nodding seriously. “They tuk him ter Glaston, an’ ’Lijah Miles war one o’ the gyards. They tuk him on the steam-kyars.”

“I’ll be bound Mink war fairly skeered by them steam-kyars!” exclaimed Mrs. Sayles, with all the assumption of superior experience, although she herself had never had a glimpse of them.

“Waal, I reckon not, from the way he kerried on ’cordin’ ter ’Lijah,” said Mrs. Jessup, clasping one knee as she talked, eying the fire. “’Lijah ’lowed he never seen sech a fool. Mink got ter talkin’ ter the gyards an’ dep’ty ’bout this hyar Jedge Gwinnan”——

“Needn’t tell me nuthin’ ’bout Jedge Gwinnan. ‘Jeemes’ air what they call him over yander in Kildeer County. An’ ‘Jim,’ too,” said Mrs. Sayles. “I knowed a woman ez knowed that man’s mother whenst he war a baby.”

“Waal, he’s changed some sence then. He ain’t a baby now. Mink kep’ a-talkin’ ter his gyards ’bout Gwinnan, an’ swearin’ Gwinnan had spited him in the trial,—put Pete Rood on the jury an’ sent ’em ter jail, an’ tole the sher’ff ter look arter his prisoner or he’d escape the night Pete Rood fell dead, an’ tole ’em how ter keep the crowd from rescuin’ him, an’ all sech ez that. An’ what d’ ye reckon Mink ’lowed Gwinnan hed done it fur? ’Kase Gwinnan hed tuk a notion hisself ter Lethe Sayles, an’ ’lowed Mink warn’t good enough fur her.”

The incongruity of the idea impressed none of them. They all looked silently expectant as Mrs. Jessup went on:—