Part 8

And here the cow’s great head was thrust over the bars, and L’onidas was on hand in full force to engage in combat with the little calf, and Lucindy was alert with the bucket of bran. All through the milking Alethea was sensible of a yearning regret in her heart. And although she had the testimony of good conscience and could say in full faith, “’Tain’t right,” she was not consoled.

She lifted the pail of milk to her head, and as they went back to the log cabin the moon projected their grotesque shadows as a vanguard, and for all Leonidas ran he could not overtake the quaint little man that led the way.

Stars were in the sky, aloof from the moon. A mocking-bird sang on an elder-bush among the blossoms, fragrant and white; and from time to time, as he joyously lifted his scintillating wings, the boughs seemed enriched with some more radiant bloom. The rails of the fence had a subdued glimmer,—the moonlight on the dew.

Her heart, with its regretful disquiet, was out of harmony with the nocturnal peace of the scene; she had somehow an intimation of an impending sorrow before she heard the sound of sobbing from the porch.

The vines that clambered about it were drawn upon the floor with every leaf and tendril distinct. The log cabin was idealized in some sort with the silver lustre of the moon, the glister of the dew, the song of the bird, and the splendid suggestions of the benighted landscape; yet there was the homely loom, the spinning-wheel and its shadow, the cat in the doorway, with the dull illumination of the smouldering fire behind her, eying a swift, volant shadow that slipped in and out noiselessly, and perhaps was a bat. A group of figures stood in the tense attitudes of listening surprise. But a girl had flung herself upon the bench of the loom, now leaning against the frame and weeping aloud, and now sitting erect and talking with broken volubility.

“Hyar be Elviry Crosby,” Mrs. Sayles said, as Alethea stepped upon the porch and set the piggin on the shelf.

The visitor looked up, with her dark eyes glistening with tears. Her face was pale in the moonbeams. She had short dark hair, thin and fine, showing the shape of her delicate head, and lying in great soft rings about her brow and neck. As she spoke, her quivering red lips exhibited the small, regular white teeth. She was slight and about the medium height, and habited in a yellowish dress, from which the moonlight did not annul the idea of color.

“I ain’t got no gredge agin Lethe,” she said, gazing at her with a certain intentness, “but I hev got my feelin’s, an’ I hev got my pride, an’ I ain’t goin’ ter hev no jail-bird a-settin’ up ter me! I’m sorry I ever seen him!” she declared, with a fresh burst of tears, throwing herself back against the loom. “But ez Lethe never hed nobody else, _she_ mought put up with the raccoon ez he fetched me,—fur I won’t gin the critter house-room, now.”

As Alethea gazed at her, amazed and uncomprehending, a sudden movement on the loom caught her attention. About the clumsy beams a raccoon was climbing nimbly, turning his eyes upon her, full of the peculiar brightness of the night-roaming beast. She noticed his grin as he hung above the group, as if he perceived in the situation humor of special zest.

“I ain’t a-goin’ ter keep it!” cried Elvira. “All the kentry will be tellin’, ennyhow, ez I hev kep’ company with a murderer.” A low, muffled cry escaped from Alethea’s lips. “He kem a-makin’ up ter me till I went an’ turned off Pete Rood, ez war mad ez hops. I can’t hender ’em from knowin’ it. But I ain’t a-goin’ ter hev that thar spiteful leetle beast a-grinnin’ at me ’bout’n it, like he war makin’ game o’ me fur bein’ sech a fool. I’d hev killed it, ’ceptin’ I ’lowed thar hed been enough onnecessary killin’ along o’ Mink Lorey.”

“Elviry!” exclaimed Alethea, her voice so tense, so vibrant, so charged with anguish, that, low as it was, it thrilled the stillness as a shriek might hardly do, “what hev Reuben done?”

“Oh, ‘Reuben,’ ez ye calls him,” cried the other, sitting upright on the bench of the loom, her dark eyes flashing and dry,—“yer fine Reuben tore down old Griff’s mill, an’ drownded his nevy, Tad, an’ war put in jail, an’ air goin’ ter be tried, an’ hung, I reckon. That’s what ‘Reuben’ done! He’s Mink by name an’ Mink by natur’—an’ oh! I wish I hed never seen him.”

She once more leaned on the loom behind her, and bowed her head on her hands.

“No!—no!” cried Alethea. She caught her breath in quick gasps; for one moment she seemed losing consciousness. The mountains in the background, the faint stars in the sky, the shadowy roof, the swaying vines, the raccoon in their midst with his grotesque grin, were before her suddenly as if she had just awakened. She had sunk into a chair.

“Ye kin call me a liar! So do!” cried Elvira, lifting her head defiantly. “But he went hisself down ter the court-house an’ told it hisself, an’ wanted ter gin his gun an’ mare ef they’d let him off.” She laughed—a dainty little laugh of scorn. “That’s what he ’lowed the idjit war wuth. But my dad ’lows ez the law sets store on the idjit’s life same ez folks ginerally.”

Alethea felt as if she were turning to stone. Was it her advice that had led him into danger? Was it her fatal insistence that he should see the right as it was revealed to her?

She sprang to her feet, the eager questions crowding to her lips.

“Ye shet up, Lethe!” said her step-mother, entertained by the unwonted spectacle of Elvira’s dramatic grief, and not caring to hear again the news of the tragedy already recited. As to Mink, he had only been overtaken by the disasters which must have fallen upon him sooner or later, and he was in many ways a good riddance. This phase was uppermost in her mind when she said, “Ye see now what gals git fur goin’ agin thar elders’ word. I’ll be bound, Elviry, ’twarn’t yer mother’s ch’ice fur ye ter take Mink an’ gin Pete Rood the go-by.”

“That it warn’t!” cried the repentant Elvira, with a gush of tears. “I wish I hed bided by her word! I reckon I war born lackin’! I hev been sech a fool!”

Mrs. Sayles turned to look at Alethea and nod her head in triumphant confirmation. Then she remarked consolingly, “Waal, waal, I reckon ye kin toll Pete Rood back.”

“I dunno,” sobbed Elvira. “I met him yestiddy at the cross-roads in Piomingo Cove, an’ he jes’ turned his head aside an’ walked by ’thout nare word. I wish—oh, I wish I hed never seen that thar minkish Mink.”

“Waal,” said Mrs. Sayles, who was very human, and who, despite her sympathy for Elvira, had a rankling recollection of her taunt for Alethea’s paucity of the material for “keeping company,” “I hopes Lethe’ll take warning’, an’ not fling away her good chance, fur the sake o’ the wuthless, like Mink an’ sech.”

“Who be her good chance?” exclaimed Elvira, the jealousy nourished on general principles checking her grief.

“Shucks, child! ye purtendin’ not ter know ez Ben Doaks hev mighty nigh wore out his knee-pans a-beggin’ an’ a-prayin’ Lethe ter listen ter him!”

Elvira was meeker after this, and presently rose to go.

“I hed ter kem arter dark, else I couldn’t hev hed Sam an’ the mare, bein’ ez she hev been workin’ in the field ter-day,” she remarked.

There was the mare dozing at the gate, and Sam, a boy with singularly long legs and arms, looking something like an insect of the genus _Tipula_, was waiting too. She mounted behind him, and together they rode off in the moonlight, taking their way over the nearest ridge, and so out of sight.

“Waal, waal, sir!” exclaimed Mrs. Sayles, as she reseated herself on the porch, with her knitting in her hand, “that thar Mink Lorey never hed no jedgmint no-ways. He couldn’t hev tuk ch’ice of a wuss time ter git fetched up afore a court ’n jes’ now. Squair White tole me ez our Jedge Averill hev agreed ter exchange with Jedge Gwinnan from over yander in Kildeer County nex’ term, ez he can’t try his cases, bein’ kin ter them ez air lawing. So Gwinnan will hold court in Shaftesville nex’ term. I’d hate mightily fur sech a onsartin, onexpected critter ez him ter hev enny say-so ’bout me or mine. But shucks! Men folks ennyhow,” she continued, discursively, her needles swiftly moving, as if they were endowed with independent volition, and needed no supervision, “air freakish, an’ fractious, an’ sot in thar way, an’ gin ter cur’ous cavortin’. It never s’prised me none ez arter the Lord made man he turned in an’ made woman, the fust job bein’ sech a failure.”

There was a pause. The regular metre of the katydid’s song pulsed in the interval. The dewdrops glimmered on the chickweed by the porch. The fragrance of mint and ferns was on the air, and the smell of the dark orchard. Now and then an abrupt thud told that a great Indian peach had reached the measure of ripeness and had fallen. Through the open window and door the moonlight lay in glittering rhomboids on the puncheon floor. All the interior was illuminated, and the grotesque figure of the pet cub was distinctly visible to Jacob Jessup, who was lounging on the porch without, as the creature stole across the floor, and rose upon his hind legs to reach the pine table. As he thrust his scooping claw into the bread trough,—the long, shallow, wooden bowl in which batter for corn-dodgers was mixed,—he turned his cautious head to make sure he was unobserved, and his cunning, twinkling eyes met Jessup’s. Somehow the sudden consciousness of the creature, his nervous haste to be off, appealed to Jessup’s lenient mood. He listened to the scuttling claws on the puncheon floor as the beast hurried out of the back door, and while he debated whether or not he should play informer, his wife, sitting on the doorstep with the baby in her arms, asked suddenly,—

“’Pears like ye air sorter sot agin this Jedge Gwinnan, mother. I never hearn afore ez ye knowed him whenst ye lived in Kildeer County. What sorter man be he?”

Mrs. Sayles wagged her head inside her sun-bonnet to intimate contempt.

“A young rooster, ’bout fryin’ size,” she said, laughing sneeringly, the scorn accented by her depopulated gums. It seemed very forlorn to be laughed at like that.

“Waal, a man can’t be ’lected jedge till he’s thirty,” said Jessup, consciously imparting information. “He’s been on the bench right smart time, too.”

Mrs. Sayles looked at him over her spectacles, still knitting, as if her industry were a disconnected function.

“What air thirty?”

“Waal”—began Jessup, argumentatively, puffing at his cob pipe. Thirty seemed to him a mature age. And the constitution of the State evidently presumes folly to be permanent if it is not in some sort exorcised before reaching that stage of manhood. He did not continue, however, seeing that thirty was held to be very young by Mrs. Sayles, who, to judge from her wrinkles, might be some four or five hundred.

“I ain’t ’quainted with the man myself,” she went on presently, “an’ what’s more I ain’t wantin’ ter be. But,” impressively, “I know a woman ez knowed that man’s mother whenst he war a baby. She ’lowed he war a powerful cantankerous infant, ailin’ an’ hollerin’ all night an’ mighty nigh all day; couldn’t make up his mind ter die, an’ yit warn’t willin’ ter take the trouble ter live.”

Jessup felt it a certain injustice that the nocturnal rampages of infancy should be as rancorously animadverted upon as the late hours of a larger growth.

“Waal, Jedge Gwinnan is powerful pop’lar now’days,” he urged. “He made a mighty fine race when he war ’lected.”

“Shucks! ye can’t tell me nuthin’!” said his mother, self-sufficiently. “I know all ’bout him, an’ Jedge Burns too, ez war on the bench afore Jeemes Gwinnan. Whenst I war a widder-woman an’ lived in Kildeer County we-uns useter hev Jedge Burns on the circuit. He war a settled, middle-aged man ’bout fifty, an’ the law war upheld, an’ things went easy, an’ he war ’lected time arter time, till one year they all turned crazy ’bout this hyar feller, ez war run by his party through fools bein’ sca’ce, I s’pose. Jeemes war ’lected. I tell ye I know all ’bout him. He war born right yander nigh Colbury, an’ I know a woman ez useter be mighty friendly with his mother.”

“What fambly in Colbury did he marry inter?” asked her daughter-in-law, more interested in items of personal history than in his judicial record.

“Bless yer soul, he air a single man. His heart air set on hisself. He wouldn’t marry no gal ’thout she hed some sorter office she could ’lect him ter, ez be higher’n jedge. He be plumb eat up with scufflin’ an’ tryin’ ter git up in the world higher’n the Lord hev set him, an’ ’tain’t religion; that ’tain’t. He minds me o’ Lucifer. He’ll fall some day. Not out o’ heaven, mebbe, ’kase he ain’t never goin’ ter git thar, but leastwise out’n his circuit. Somebody’ll top him off, an’ mebbe I’ll live ter see the day. I dunno, though, I—Laws-a-massy!” she exclaimed, so suddenly that both her listeners started, “look-a-yander at that thar perverted tur-r-key hen an’ her delikit deedies, ez air too leetle ter roost! She’s a-hoverin’ of ’em in that thar tall grass, wet with the dew, an’ it’ll be the death o’ ’em! Whyn’t Lethe tend ter ’em when she kem up from milkin’? Lethe! Lethe! Whar’s that gal disappeared ter?”

With the vagrant instinct of the wild fowl still strong in the domesticated turkey, she had distrusted the hen-house, and because of her brood she was prevented from roosting high up in the old dead tree.

There was no answer to Mrs. Sayles’s call. The daughter-in-law made a feint of busily rocking the baby, and after a doubtful glance at her Mrs. Sayles got up briskly, putting her knitting-needles into her ball of yarn, and thrusting them both into her deep pocket. She clutched her bonnet further forward on her head, took up a splint basket, and presently there arose a piping sound among the weeds, as she darted this way and that in the moonlight with uncanny agility, catching the deedies one by one and transferring them to her basket. The turkey hen, her long neck stretched, her wings outspread, ran wildly about, now and then turning and showing irresolute, futile fight for a moment, and again striving to elude the whole misfortune with her long, ungainly strides. When Mrs. Sayles in triumph unbent her back for the last time and started toward the house, the fluttered mother following, clamoring hysterically, she exclaimed:

“Whar _be_ that thar triflin’ Lethe?”

“’Pears like ter me ez I hearn Lethe go up the ladder ter the roof-room a consider’ble while ago,” said the old man slowly, speaking for the first time during the evening.

Once more Mrs. Sayles paused irresolute.

“Laws-a-massy, then, ef the gal’s asleep I reckon I mought ez well put the tur-r-key an’ deedies inter the hen-house myse’f; but ’pears ter me the young folks does nuthin’ nowadays but doze.”

She took a step further, then suddenly bethought herself. “Hyar, Jacob,” she said to her son, handing him the basket, “make yerse’f nimble. I reckon ye hev got sense enough ter shet that thar tur-r-key an’ deedies up in the hen-house. Leastwise I’ll resk it.”

Sleep was far from Alethea that night. For hours she sat at the roof-room window, looking out with wide, unseeing eyes at the splendid night. And so she had given her counsel freely in the full consciousness of right, and the man she loved had done her bidding. What misery she had wrought! She winced to know how his thoughts must upbraid her. She remembered his petulant taunts, his likening her to the Herder on Thunderhead, whose glance blights those on whom he looks; and she wondered vaguely if the harnt knew the woe it was his fate to wreak, and if it were grief to him as he rode in the clouds on the great cloud-mountain.

“I reckon I know how he feels,” she said.

An isolated star blazing in the vast solitudes of the sky above the peak of Thunderhead burst suddenly into a dazzling constellation before her eyes, for she felt the hot tears dropping down one by one on her hand.

Alas, Alethea! one needs to be strong to attain martyrdom for the sacred sake of the right.

Her tears wore out the night, but when the sun rose she was fain to dry them.

VII.

The site of the old mill continued the scene of many curious groups long after all efforts for the recovery of the body had ceased. The river was dragged no more, and hope was relinquished. There had never been any strong expectation of success. The stream was abnormally high considering the season of the year, and running with great impetuosity. Though with the aggregations of its tributaries swollen by the late rains it had the volume of a river, it retained all the capricious traits of the mountain torrent which it had been. It was full of swirling rapids, of whirlpools, of sudden cataracts. Its bed was treacherous with quicksands and rugged with bowlders. Hitched to the miller’s orchard fence were rows of horses, dozing under their old Mexican saddles or the lighter weight of a ragged blanket or a folded quilt; teams of oxen stood yoked under the trees of the open space beyond; children and dogs sat on the roots or lay in the grass, while the heavy, jeans-clad figures of the mountaineers explored the banks as they chewed their quids with renewed vigor, and droned the gossip in drawling voices.

The same faces were seen day after day,—often enough to excite no particular remark that, whoever came or was absent, Peter Rood was here with the dawn, and night found him still strolling along the banks, looking upon the swollen floods with gloomy, insistent dark eyes, as if he were seeking to read in the writhing lines of the current the inscrutable secret of the Scolacutta River. Sometimes, with his hands in his pockets, his lowering face shadowed by his broad hat, he would silently listen to the speculations of those who found solace for the futility of the undertaking in the enlarged conjectural field which failure afforded, discussing the relative probabilities whether the body had floated down to the Tennessee River, or whether it had been engulfed by the quicksands and buried forever, or caught among the rocks of the jagged bank and wedged in, to be found some day—a ghastly skeleton—by a terrified boy, fishing or wading at low water.

It was only when these bootless surmises had palled at last, through many repetitions and lack of further developments, that the ruins of the old mill asserted an interest. There seemed a strange hush on the landscape, here where the wheel would whir no more. A few timbers scattered about, a rotten old stump that had served as part of the foundation, the hopper washed up by the waters, several of the posts which had upheld the race, were all that was left of the old mill, so long the salient feature of the place that more than one mountaineer was beset with bewilderment at the sight,—the recollection of the oblique line of the roof against the mountain, the open door, the reflections in the water, having more reality than the bereft bank of the river.

And now the old miller—seeming older than before—was wont to come tottering out with his stick, the gay sunshine on his long, white hair, and sit on the broken timbers, forlorn amidst the ruins of his poverty. At first his appearance created renewed excitement, and his old customers and friends pressed up to speak to him and hear what he would say, feeling a certain desire to mark the moral phenomena of loss and the fine processes of grief. But he held his clasped hands upon the stick, and silently shook his bowed gray head in his ragged old hat.

“I reckon ye’d better leave him alone,” his pretty granddaughter said; for she always accompanied him, and stood, as radiant as youth may ever be, twirling the end of her tattered apron between her fingers, her tangled yellow hair, like skeins of sunshine, hanging down on her shoulders, and her blue, undismayed eyes looking with a shallow indifference upon the scene. It was replete with interest and curiosity, not to say awe, to the little four-year-old sister who hung upon her skirts, or thrust a tow head from behind her grandfather. Sometimes her lips were wreathed with a smile as she saw some child in the crowd, but if the demonstration were returned she straightway hid her head in the old man’s sleeve and for a while looked out no more.

Once old Griff spoke suddenly. “’Gustus Tom,” for his favorite kept beside him, “ye wouldn’t treat nobody mean, would ye?”

“Would ef they treated me mean,” said ’Gustus Tom, with an unequivocal nod, which intimated that his code of ethics recognized retribution. “’Thout,” he qualified, “’twar sister Eudory thar,”—he glanced at the little girl,—“I’d gin ’em ez good ez they sent.”

“’Tain’t religion, ’Gustus Tom,—’tain’t religion,” said the old man brokenly. ’Gustus Tom, with his fragment of hat on the side of his tow head, hardly looked as if he cared.

A grizzled old mountaineer in jeans, with a stern, square face and a deep-set eye, that was lighted suddenly, spoke abruptly in a sepulchral voice.

“Ye oughter go ter camp, Brother Griff,” he said in a religious twang,—“ye oughter go ter camp, an’ tell yer ’speriunce! Ye hev lived long. Ye hev wrastled with the devil. Ye hev seen joy, ye hev knowed sorrow, ye hev fund grace. Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Ye air full o’ ’speriunce, brother, an’ ye oughter go ter camp an’ comfort yerse’f, an’ sing, an’ pray.”

“I pray no mo’,” said the old man, lifting his aged, piteous face. “I’m ’feared the Lord mought hear me an’ answer my prayer.” He smote his breast. “I ain’t keerin’ fur the mill. I ain’t keerin’ for the chill’n,—they’ll make out somehows. But ef my prayers could take back every word o’ wrath I ever spoke ter the idjit, every lick I struck him, I’d weary the very throne o’ grace. Ef I could git him back an’ begin over—but I can’t! An’ I won’t pray fur myself, fur the Lord mought hear me. An’ I want ter remember every one o’ them words an’ every lick, an’ pay back fur ’em, wropped in the flames o’ Torment.”

He got up and tottered away toward the house, followed by his grandchildren, leaving the by-standers staring after him, strangely thrilled.

“Waal, I hopes they won’t hear at the camp-meetin’ o’ his talkin’ sech ez that,” remarked the elderly adviser in dismay. “They hev been a-sermonizin’ a good deal ’bout Tad’s early death an’ Mink Lorey’s awful crime, an’ sech, ter them young sinners over yander ter camp, an’ it ’peared ter be a-sorter skeerin’ of ’em, a-sorter a-shooin’ of ’em inter the arms o’ grace. An’ I hopes none o’ ’em will hear ’bout the old man a-repentin’ an’ wantin’ ter burn, an’ sech, fur the boy’s hevin’ been c’rected by his elders; they air perverted enough now agin them ez hev authority over ’em.”

“Old Griff would change his mind ’bout burnin’ ef he seen the fire one time,” said another, winking seriously, as if he spoke from pyrotechnic experience. Then with a sudden change of tone, “What ails Pete Rood?”

For Rood was leaning against a tree, his swarthy face overspread with a sallow paleness, his lips blue, his eyes half closed, his hand clutching at his heart.

He said it was nothing much; he had been “tuk” this way often before; he would be better presently. Indeed, he was shortly able to walk down to the bank of the river, and sit and listen to the surmises of a half dozen idle fellows, lying in the grass, as to the drowning of Tad and the fate of Mink, and the terrible illustrations that both had furnished in the sermons at the camp-meeting in Eskaqua Cove.

And when he left them at last it was to the camp-meeting he went.