Part 12

“We jest _had_ to take action,” affirmed the self-constituted speaker for the others. “The opinions you have expressed,” and Odell at once began to warm up to his task, “are so undoctrinal an’ so p’int blank ag’in’ the articles of faith that, believin’ as you seem to believe, you are plumb out o’ j’int with Big Cabin Church, an’ a resky man in any God-feerin’ community. God Almighty”--and those who saw Odell’s twitching upper lip and indignantly flashing eye knew that the noted “exhorter” was about to become mercilessly personal and vindictive--“God Almighty is the present ruler of the universe, but sence you have set up to run ag’in’ Him it looks like you’d need a wider scope of territory to transact business in than jest heer in this settlement.”

The blood had left Calihan’s face. His eyes swept from one stern, unrelenting countenance to another till they rested on his wife and daughter, who sat side by side, their faces in their aprons, their shoulders quivering with soundless sobs. They had forsaken him. He was an alien in his own house, a criminal convicted beneath his own roof. His rugged breast rose and fell tumultuously as he strove to command his voice.

“I hain’t meant no harm--not a speck,” he faltered, as he wiped the perspiration from his quivering chin. “I hain’t no hand to stir up strife in a community. I’ve tried to be law-abidin’ an’ honest, but it don’t seem like a man kin he’p thinkin’. He--”

“But he kin keep his thinkin’ to hisse’f,” interrupted Odell, sharply; and a pause came after his words.

In a jerky fashion Calihan spit over his shoulder again. He looked at his wife and daughter for an instant, and nodded several times as if acknowledging the force of Odell’s words. Bart Callaway took out his tobacco-quid and nervously shuffled it about in his palm as if he had half made up his mind that Odell ought not to do all the talking, but he remained mute, for Mrs. Calihan had suddenly looked up.

“That’s what I told him,” she whimpered, bestowing a tearful glance on her husband. “He mought ‘a’ kep’ his idees to hisse’f ef he had to have ‘em, and not ‘a’ fetched calumny an’ disgrace down on me an’ Sally. When he used to set thar atter supper an’ pore over the _True Light_ when ever’body else wuz in bed, I knowed it’d bring trouble, kase some o’ the doctrine wuz scand’lous. The next thing I knowed he had lost intrust in prayer-meetin’, an’ ‘lowed that Brother Washburn’s sermons wuz the same thing over an’ over, an’ that they mighty nigh put him to sleep. An’ then he give up axin’ the blessin’ at the table--somethin’ that has been done in my fam’ly as fur back as the oldest one kin remember. An’ he talked his views, too, fer it got out, an’ me nur Sally narry one never cheeped it, fer we wuz ashamed. An’ then ever’ respectable woman in Big Cabin meetin’-house begun to sluff away from us as ef they wuz afeerd o’ takin’ some dreadful disease. It wuz hard enough on Sally at the start, but when Eph up an’ tol’ her that you had give him a good tongue-lashin’, an’ had refused to deed him the land you promised him ef he went any further with her, it mighty nigh prostrated her. She hain’t done one thing lately but look out at the road an’ pine an’ worry. The blame is all on her father. My folks has all been good church members as fur back as kin be traced, an’ narry one wuz ever turned out.”

Mrs. Calihan broke down and wept. Calihan was deeply touched; he could not bear to see a woman cry. He cleared his throat and tried to look unconcerned.

“What step do you-uns feel called on to take next to--to what you are a-doin’ of now?” he stammered.

“We ‘lowed,” replied Odell, “ef we couldn’t come to some sort o’ understandin’ with you now, we’d fetch up the case before preachin’ to-morrow an’ let the membership vote on it. The verdict would go ag’in’ you, Ab, fer thar hain’t a soul in sympathy with you.”

The sobbing of the two women broke out in renewed volume at the mention of this dreadful ultimatum, which, despite their familiarity with the rigor of Big Cabin Church discipline, they had up to this moment regarded as a vague contingent rather than a tangible certainty.

Calihan’s face grew paler. Whatever struggle might have been going on in his mind was over. He was conquered.

“I am ag’in’ bringin’ reproach on my wife an’ child,” he conceded, a lump in his throat and a tear in his eye. “You all know best. I reckon I have been too forward an’ too eager to heer myself talk.” He got up and looked out toward the towering cliffy mountains and into the blue indefiniteness above them, and without looking at the others he finished awkwardly: “Ef it’s jest the same to you-uns you may let the charge drap, an’--an’ in future I ’ll give no cause fer complaint.”

“That’s the talk,” said Odell, warmly, and he got up and gave his hand to Calihan. The others followed his example.

“I ’ll make a little speech before preachin’ in the mornin’,” confided Odell to Calihan after congratulations were over. “You needn’t be thar unless you want to. I ’ll fix you up all right.”

Calihan smiled faintly and looked shamefacedly toward the meadow, and reached outside and took hold of the handle of his pitchfork.

“I want to try to git through that haystack ‘fore dark,” he said, awkwardly. “Ef you-uns will be so kind as to excuse me now I ’ll run down and finish up. I’d sorter set myself a task to do, an’ I don’t like to fall short o’ my mark.”

Down in the meadow Calihan worked like a tireless machine, not pausing for a moment to rest his tense muscles. He was trying to make up for the time he had lost with his guests. Higher and smaller grew the great haystack as it slowly tapered toward its apex. The red sun sank behind the mountain and began to draw in its long streamers of light. The gray of dusk, as if fleeing from its darker self, the monster night, crept up from the east, and with a thousand arms extended moved on after the receding light.

Calihan worked on till the crickets began to shrill and the frogs in the marshes to croak, and the hay beneath his feet felt damp with dew. The stack was finished. He leaned on his fork and inspected his work mechanically. It was a perfect cone. Every outside straw and blade of grass lay smoothly downward, like the hair on a well-groomed horse. Then with his fork on his shoulder he trudged slowly up the narrow field-road toward the house. He was vaguely grateful for the darkness; a strange, new, childish embarrassment was on him. For the first time in life he was averse to meeting his wife and child.

“I’ve been spanked an’ told to behave ur it ’ud go wuss with me,” he muttered. “I never wuz talked to that away before by nobody, but I jest had to take it. Sally an’ her mother never would ‘a’ heerd the last of it ef I had let out jest once. No man, I reckon, has a moral right to act so as to make his family miserable. I crawfished, I know, an’ on short notice; but law me! I wouldn’t have Bill Odell’s heart in me fer ever’ acre o’ bottom-lan’ in this valley. I wouldn’t ‘a’ talked to a houn’ dog as he did to me right before Sally an’ her mother.”

He was very weary when he leaned his fork against the house and turned to wash his face and hands in the tin basin on the bench at the side of the steps. Mrs. Calihan came to the door, her face beaming.

“I wuz afeerd you never would come,” she said, in a sweet, winning tone. “I got yore beans warmed over an’ some o’ yore brag yam taters cooked. Come on in ‘fore the coffee an’ biscuits git cold.”

“I ’ll be thar in a minute,” he said; and he rolled up his sleeves and plunged his hot hands and face into the cold spring-water.

“Here’s a clean towel, pa; somebody has broke the roller.” It was Sally. She had put on her best white muslin gown and braided her rich, heavy hair into two long plaits which hung down her back. There was no trace of the former redness about her eyes, and her face was bright and full of happiness. He wiped his hands and face on the towel she held, and took a piece of a comb from his vest pocket and hurriedly raked his coarse hair backward. He looked at her tenderly and smiled in an abashed sort of way.

“Anybody comin’ to-night?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Eph Odell, I ’ll bet my hat!”

The girl nodded, and blushed and hung her head.

“How do you know?”

“Mr. Odell ‘lowed I mought look fer him.”

Abner Calihan laughed slowly and put his arm around his daughter, and together they went toward the steps of the kitchen door.

“You seed yore old daddy whipped clean out to-day,” he said, tentatively. “I reckon yo ‘re ashamed to see him sech a coward an’ have him sneak away like a dog with his tail tucked ’tween his legs. Bill Odell is a power in this community.”

She laughed with him, but she did not understand his banter, and preceded him into the kitchen. It was lighted by a large tallow-dip in the center of the table. There was much on the white cloth to tempt a hungry laborer’s appetite--a great dish of greasy string-beans, with pieces of bacon, a plate of smoking biscuits, and a platter of fried ham in brown gravy. But he was not hungry. Slowly and clumsily he drew up his chair and sat down opposite his wife and daughter. He slid a quivering thumb under the edge of his inverted plate and turned it half over, but noticing that they had their hands in their laps and had reverently bowed their heads, he cautiously replaced it. In a flash he comprehended what was expected of him. The color surged into his homely face. He played with his knife for a moment, and then stared at them stubbornly, almost defiantly. They did not look up, but remained motionless and patiently expectant. The dread of the protracted silence, for which he was becoming more and more responsible, conquered him. He lowered his head and spoke in a low, halting tone:

“Good Lord, Father of us all, have mercy on our sins, and make us thankful fer these, Thy many blessings. Amen.”

THE TENDER LINK

I

|Several customers were gathered in Mark Wyndham’s store at the cross-roads. They were rough farmers, wearing jean clothing, slouch hats, and coarse, dusty brogans.

A stranger, a man of quite a different type, came in and sat down near the side door. At first the crowd gazed at him curiously, but after a while he seemed to pass out of their minds. When he had waited on all his customers, Mark approached the stranger.

“By hookey!” he exclaimed, pausing in astonishment, and then extending his hand, “as the Lord is my Maker, it’s Luke King! Who’d ever expect to see you turn up?”

“Yes; Luke King it will have to be, since you, like all the rest, won’t call me by my right name.”

Mark laughed apologetically. “Oh, I forgot you never could bear to be called by yore step-daddy’s name; but you wuz raised up with the King layout, an’ Laramore is not a easy word to handle. Well, I reckon you are follerin’ what you started--writin’ books?”

“Yes.”

“I ‘lowed you’d stick to it. I never seed a feller study harder an’ want to do a thing as bad.”

Lucian Laramore smiled. “Did any one here ever find out that I had adopted that profession?”

“Not a soul, Luke. I never let on to anybody that I knowed it, an’ the folks round heer don’t read much. They mought ‘a’ suspected some ‘n’ ef Luke King had been signed to yore books and stories, but nobody ever called you by yore right name. What on earth ever made you come home?”

“It was my mother that brought me here, Mark--not the others,” said Laramore. “If a man is a man, no sort of fame or prosperity can make him forget his mother. I planned to come back several times, but something always prevented it. However, when you wrote me that the last time you saw her she was not looking well, I decided to come at once.”

Mark was critically surveying his old friend from head to foot while he was speaking. Laramore smiled, and added, “You are wondering why I am so plainly dressed, Mark; you needn’t deny it.”

Mark flushed when he replied: “Well, I did ’low you fellers ’ud put on more style ’n we-uns down here.”

“It’s an old suit I have worn out hunting in Canada. I put it on because I intended to do a good deal of walking; and then, to tell the truth, I thought it would look better for me to go back very simply dressed.”

“That’s a fact, now I think of it; well, I wish you luck over thar. Goin’ ter foot it over?”

“Yes; it is only three miles, and I have plenty of time.”

But the walk was longer than Laramore thought it would be, and he was hot, damp with perspiration, and covered with dust when he reached the four-roomed cabin among the stunted pines and wild cedars.

Old Sam King sat out in front of the door. He wore no shoes nor coat, and his hickory shirt and jean trousers had been patched many times. His hair was long, sun-burned, and tangled, and the corrugated skin of his cheek and neck was covered with straggling hairs.

As the stranger came in view from behind the pine-pole pig-pen, the old man uttered a grunt of surprise that brought to the door two young women in homespun dresses, and a tall, lank young man in his shirt-sleeves.

“I suppose you don’t remember me,” said Laramore, and he put his satchel on a wash-bench by a tub and a piggin of lye soap.

“Well, I reckon nobody in this shack is gwine to ’spute with you,” rumbled the old man, as with his chin in his hand, he lazily looked at the face before him.

“I might not have known you either if I had not been told that you lived here. I am the fellow you used to call Luke King.”

“By Jacks!” After that ejaculation the old man and the others stared speechlessly.

“Yes, that’s who I am,” continued Laramore. “How do you do, Jake?” (to the lank young man in the door). “We might as well shake hands. You girls have grown into women since I left. I’ve stayed away a long time, and been nearly all over the world, but I’ve always wanted to get back. Where is mother?”

Neither of the girls could summon up the courage to answer, and they seemed under stress of great embarrassment.

“She is porely,” said the old man, inhospitably keeping his seat. “She’s had a hurtin’ in ’er side from usin’ that thar battlin’-stick too much on dirty clothes, an’ her cold has settled on ’er chest. Mary, go tell yore maw Luke’s got back. Huh, we all ‘lowed you wuz dead ‘cept her. She al’ays contended you wuz alive som ‘ers. How’s times been a-servin’ uv you?”

“Pretty well.” Laramore put his satchel on the ground and sat down wearily on the bench by the tub.

“Things is awful slow heer. Whar have you been hangin’ out?”

“Nowhere in particular--that is, I have lived in a good many places.”

“Huh! ’bout as I expected; an’ I reckon you hain’t got nothin’ at all ter show fer it ‘cept what you’ve got on yore back.”

“That’s about all.”

“What you been a-follerin’?”

Laramore colored sensitively.

“Writing for papers and magazines.”

“I ‘lowed you mought go at some ‘n’ o’ that sort; you used to try mighty hard to write a good hand; you never would work. Married?”

“No.”

“Hain’t able to support a woman I reckon. Well, you showed a great lot of good sense thar; a feller can sorter manage to shift fer hisse’f ef he hain’t hampered by a pack o’ children an’ er sick woman.”

At that juncture Mary returned. She flushed as she caught Laramore’s expectant glance. She spoke to her father.

“Maw said tell ’im ter come in thar.” Laramore went into the front room and turned into a small apartment adjoining. It was windowless and dark, the only light filtering through the front room. On a low, narrow bed beneath a ladder leading to a trap-door above, lay a woman.

“Here I am, Luke,” she cried out, excitedly. “Don’t stumble over that pan o’ water! I’ve been taking a mustard footbath to try an’ git my blood warm. La, me! How you did take me by surprise! I’ve prayed for little else in many er yeer, an’ I was jest about ter give it up.”

His foot touched a three-legged stool, and he drew it to the head of her bed and sat down. He took one of her hard, thin hands and bent over her. Should he kiss her? She had not taught him to do so when he was a child, and he had never kissed her in his life, but he had seen the world and grown wiser. He turned her face toward him and pressed his lips to hers. She was much surprised, and drew herself from him and wiped her mouth with a corner of the sheet, but he knew she was pleased.

“Why, Luke, what on earth do you mean? Have you gone plumb crazy?” she said, quickly.

“I wanted to kiss you, that’s all,” he said, awkwardly. They were both silent for a moment, then she spoke, tremblingly: “You al’ays was womanish an’ tender-like; it don’t do a body any harm; none o’ the rest ain’t that way. But, my stars! I cayn’t tell a bit how you look in this pitch dark. Mary! oh, Mary!”

Laramore released his mother’s hand, and sat up erect as the girl came to the door.

“What you want, maw?”

“I cayn’t see my hand’fore me; I wish you’d fetch a light heer. You ‘ll find a piece o’ candle in the clock; I hid it there to keep Jake from usin’ it in his lantern.”

The girl lit the bit of tallow-dip, and fastened it in the neck of a bottle. She brought it in, stood it on a box filled with cotton-seed and ears of corn, and shambled out. Laramore’s heart sank as he looked around him. The room was nothing but a lean-to shed walled with upright slabs and floored with puncheons. The bedstead was a crude wooden frame supported by perpendicular saplings fastened to floor and rafters. The cracks in the wall were filled with mud, rags, and newspapers. Bunches of dried herbs hung above his head, and piles of old clothing and agricultural implements lay about indiscriminately. Disturbed by the light, a hen flew from her nest behind a dismantled loom, and with a loud cackling went out at the door.

The old woman gazed at him eagerly. “You hain’t altered so overly much,” she observed, “‘cept yore skin looks mighty white, and yore hands feel soft.”

Then she lowered her voice into a whisper, and glanced furtively toward the door. “You favor yore father--I don’t mean Sam, but Mr. Laramore. Yore as like as two peas. He helt his head that away, an’ had yore way o’ bein’ gentle with womenfolks. You’ve got his high temper, too. La, me! that last night you was at home, an’ Sam cussed you, an’ kicked yore books into the fire, I didn’t sleep a wink. I thought you’d gone off to borrow a gun. It was almost a relief to know you’d left, kase I seed you an’ Sam couldn’t git along. Yore father was a different sort of a man, Luke; he loved books an’ study, like you. He had good blood in ‘im; his father was a teacher an’ a circuit-rider. I don’t know why I married Sam, ’less it was ’kase I was young an’ helpless, an’ you was a baby.”

There was a low whimper in her voice, and the lines about her mouth tightened. Lara-more’s breast heaved, and he suddenly put out his hand and began to stroke her thin, gray hair. A strange, restful feeling stole over him. The spell was on her, too; she closed her eyes, and a blissful smile lighted her wan face. Then her lips began to quiver, and she turned her face from him.

“I’m er simpleton,” she sobbed, “but I cayn’t he’p it. Nobody hain’t petted me nur tuk on over me a bit sence yore paw died. I never treated you right, nuther, Luke; I ort never to ‘a’ let Sam run over you like he did.”

“Never mind that,” Laramore replied, tenderly; “but you must not lie here in this dingy hole; you need medicine and good food.”

“I’m gwine ter git up,” she answered. “I’m not sick; I jest laid down ter rest. I must git the house straight. Mary and Jane hain’t no hands at housework ‘thout I stand over ‘em, and Jake an’ his paw is continually a-fussin’. I feel stronger already; ef you ’ll go in t’other room I ’ll rise. They ’ll never fix you nothin’ ter eat, nur nowhar to sleep. I reckon you ’ll have to lie with Jake, like you useter, tel I can fix better. Things is in a awful mess sence I got porely.”

He went into the front room. The old man had brought his satchel in. He had opened it in a chair, and was coolly examining the contents in the firelight. Jake and the two girls stood looking on. Laramore stared at the old man, but the latter did not seem at all abashed. Finally he closed the satchel and put it on the floor.

In a few minutes Mrs. King came in. She blew out the candle, and as she crossed to the mantelpiece she carefully extinguished the smoking wick. The change in her was more noticeable to her son than it had been a few minutes before. She looked very frail and white in her faded black cotton gown. Her shoes were worn and her bare feet showed through the holes.

“Mary,” she asked, “have you put on the supper?”

“Yes’m; but it hain’t tuk up yit.” The girl went into the next room, which was used for kitchen and dining-room in one, and her mother followed her. In a few minutes the old woman came to the door.

“Walk out, all of you,” she said, wearily. “Luke, you ’ll have to put up with what is set before you; hog-meat is mighty sca’ce this yeer. Just at fattenin’ time our hogs tuk the cholera an’ six was found dead in one day. Meat is fetchin’ fifteen cents a pound in town.”

II

|After supper Laramore left his mother and sisters removing the dishes from the table and went out. He did not want to be left alone with his stepfather.

He crossed the little brook that ran behind the cabin, and leaned against the rail fence which surrounded the pine-pole corn-crib. He could easily leave them in their poverty and ignorance, and return to the great intellectual world from which he had come--the world which understood and honored him; but, after all, could he do it now that he had seen his mother?

The cabin door shone out a square of red light against the blackness of the hill and the silent pines beyond. He heard Jake whistling a tune he had whistled long ago when they had worked in the fields together, and the creaking of the puncheon floor as the family moved about within.

A figure appeared in the door. It was his mother, and she was coming out to search for him.

“Here I am, mother,” he said, as she advanced through the darkness; “look out and don’t get your feet wet!”

She chuckled childishly as she stepped across the brook on the stones. When she reached him she put her hand on his arm and laughed: “La, me, boy, a little wet won’t hurt me--I’m used to it; I’ve milked the cows in that thar lot when the mire was shoe-mouth deep. I ‘lowed I’d find you heer some’rs. You used to be a mighty hand to sneak off from the rest, an’ you hain’t got over it. But you have changed. You don’t talk our way exactly, an’ I reckon that’s what aggravates Sam. He was goin’ on jest now about yore bein’ stuck up in yore talk an’ eatin’.”

He looked past her at the full moon which was rising above the trees.

“Mother,” said he, abruptly, and he put his arm around her neck, and his eyes filled--“mother, I don’t see how I can stay here long. Your health is bad and you are not comfortable; the others are strong and can stand it, but you can’t. Come away with me, for a while anyway. I ’ll put you under a doctor and make you comfortable.”

She looked up into his eyes steadily for a moment, then she slapped him playfully on the breast and drew away from him. “How foolish you talk!” she laughed; “why, you know I couldn’t leave Sam an’ the children. He’d go stark crazy ‘thout me round, an’ they’d be ‘thout advice an’ counsel. La, me! What makes you think I ain’t comfortable? This house is a sight better ’n the last one we had, an’ dryer, an’ a heap warmer inside. Hard times is likely to come anywhar an’ any time. It strikes rich an’ pore alike. Thar’s ‘Squire Loften offerin’ his big river-bottom plantation an’ the best new house in the county at a awful sacrifice, kase he is obliged to raise money to pay out ’n debt. He offers it fer ten thousand dollars, an’ it’s wuth every dollar of twenty. Now, ef we-all jest had sech a place as that we’d ax nobody any odds. Sam an’ Jake are hard workers, but they’ve had ’nough bad luck to dishearten anybody.”