Chapter 2

“Nehemiah Yerby!” she exclaimed. “I would hev knowed ye in the happy land o' Canaan.”

“Let's pray we may all meet thar, Sister Sudley,” he responded. “Let's pray that the good time may find none of us unprofitable servants.”

Mrs. Sudley experienced a sudden recoil. Not that she did not echo his wish, but somehow his manner savored of an exclusive arrogation of piety and a suggestion of reproach.

“That's my prayer,” she retorted, aggressively. “Day an' night, that's my prayer.”

“Yes'm, fur us an' our households, Sister Sudley--we mus' think o' them c'mitted ter our charge.”

She strove to fling off the sense of guilt that oppressed her, the mental attitude of arraignment. He was a young man when he journeyed away in that snowy dawn. She did not know what changes had come in his experience. Perchance his effervescent piety was only a habit of speech, and had no significance as far as she was concerned. The suspicion, however, tamed her in some sort. She attempted no retort. With a mechanical, reluctant smile, ill adjusted to her sorrow-lined face, she made an effort to assume that the greeting had been but the conventional phrasings of the day. “Kem in, kem in, Nehemiah; Tyler will be glad ter see ye, an' I reckon ye will be powerful interested ter view how Lee-yander hev growed an' prospered.”

She felt as if she were in some terrible dream as she beheld him slowly wag his head from side to side. He had followed her into the large main room of the cabin, and had laid his saddle-bags down by the side of the chair in which he had seated himself, his elbows on his knees, his hands held out to the flickering blaze in the deep chimney-place, his eyes significantly narrowing as he gazed upon it.

“Naw, Sister Sudley,” he wagged his head more mournfully still. “I kin but grieve ter hear how my nevy Lee-yander hev 'prospered,' ez ye call it, an' I be s'prised ye should gin it such a name. Oh-h-h, Sister Sudley!” in prolonged and dreary vocative, “I 'lowed ye war a godly woman. I knowed yer name 'mongst the church-goers an' the church-members.” A faint flush sprang into her delicate faded cheek; a halo encircled this repute of sanctity; she felt with quivering premonition that it was about to be urged as a testimony against her. “Elsewise I wouldn't hev gin my cornsent ter hev lef the leetle lam', Lee-yander, in yer fold. Precious, precious leetle lam'!”

Poor Laurelia! Were it not that she had a sense of fault under the scathing arraignment of her motives, her work, and its result, although she scarcely saw how she was to blame, that she had equally with him esteemed Leander's standpoint iniquitous, she might have made a better fight in her own interest. Why she did not renounce the true culprit as one on whom all godly teachings were wasted, and, adopting the indisputable vantage-ground of heredity, carry the war into the enemy's country, ascribing Leander's shortcomings to his Yerby blood, and with stern and superior joy proclaiming that he was neither kith nor kin of hers, she wondered afterward, for this valid ground of defence did not occur to her then. In these long mourning years she had grown dull; her mental processes were either a sad introspection or reminiscence. Now she could only take into account her sacrifices of feeling, of time, of care; the illnesses she had nursed, the garments that she had made and mended--ah, how many! laid votive on the altar of Leander's vigor and his agility, for as he scrambled about the crags he seemed, she was wont to say, to climb straight out of them. The recollection of all this--the lesser and unspiritual maternal values, perchance, but essential--surged over her with bitterness; she lost her poise, and fell a-bickering.

“'Precious leetle lam','” she repeated, scornfully. “Precious he mus' hev been! Fur when ye lef him he hedn't a whole gyarmint ter his back, an' none but them that kivered him.”

Nehemiah Yerby changed color slightly as the taunt struck home, but he was skilled in the more aesthetic methods of argument.

“We war pore--mighty pore indeed, Sister Sudley.”

Now, consciously in the wrong, Sister Sudley, with true feminine inconsistency, felt better. She retorted with bravado.

“Needle an' thread ain't 'spensive nowhar ez I knows on, an' the gov'mint hev sot no tax on saaft home-made soap, so far ez hearn from.”

She briskly placed her chair, a rude rocker, the seat formed of a taut-stretched piece of ox-hide, beside the fire, and took up her knitting. A sock for Leander it was--one of many of all sizes. She remembered the first that she had measured for the bare pink toes which he had brought there, forlorn candidates for the comfortable integuments in which they were presently encased, and how she had morbidly felt that every stitch she took was a renunciation of her own children, since a stranger was honored in their place. The tears came into her eyes. It was only this afternoon that she had experienced a pang of self-reproach to realize how near happiness she was--as near as her temperament could approach. But somehow the air was so soft; she could see from where she sat how the white velvet buds of the aspen-trees in the dooryard had lengthened into long, cream-tinted, furry tassels; the maples on the mountain-side lifted their red flowering boughs against the delicate blue sky; the grass was so green; the golden candlesticks bunched along the margin of the path to the rickety gate were all a-blossoming. The sweet appeal of spring had never been more insistent, more coercive. Somehow peace, and a placid content, seemed as essential incidents in the inner life as the growth of the grass anew, the bursting of the bud, or the soft awakening of the zephyr. Even within the house, the languors of the fire drowsing on the hearth, the broad bar of sunshine across the puncheon floor, so slowly creeping away, the sense of the vernal lengthening of the pensive afternoon, the ever-flitting shadow of the wren building under the eaves, and its iterative gladsome song breaking the fireside stillness, partook of the serene beatitude of the season and the hour. The visitor's drawling voice rose again, and she was not now constrained to reproach herself that she was too happy.

“Yes'm, pore though we war then--an' we couldn't look forward ter the Lord's prosperin' us some sence--we never would hev lef the precious leetle lam'”--his voice dwelt with unvanquished emphasis upon the obnoxious words--“'mongst enny but them persumed ter be godly folks. Tyler war a toler'ble good soldier in the war, an' hed a good name in the church, but _ye_ war persumed to be a plumb special Christian with no pledjure in this worl'.”

Laurelia winced anew. This repute of special sanctity was the pride of her ascetic soul. Few of the graces of life or of the spirit had she coveted, but her pre-eminence as a religionist she had fostered and cherished, and now through her own deeds of charity it seemed about to be wrested from her.

“Lee-yander Yerby hev larnt nuthin' but good in this house, an' all my neighbors will tell you the same word. The Cove 'lows I hev been _too_ strict.”

Nehemiah was glancing composedly about the room. “That thar 'pears ter be a fiddle on the wall, ain't it, Mis' Sudley?” he said, with an incidental air and the manner of changing the subject.

Alack, for the aesthetic perversion! Since the playing of those melancholy minor strains in that red sunset so long ago, which had touched so responsive a chord in Laurelia's grief-worn heart, the crazy old fiddle had been naturalized, as it were, and had exchanged its domicile under the porch for a position on the wall. It was boldly visible, and apparently no more ashamed of itself than was the big earthen jar half full of cream, which was placed close to the fireplace on the hearth in the hope that its contents might become sour enough by to-morrow to be churned.

Laurelia looked up with a start at the instrument, red and lustrous against the brown log wall, its bow poised jauntily above it, and some glistening yellow reflection from the sun on the floor playing among the strings, elusive, soundless fantasies.

Her lower jaw dropped. She was driven to her last defences, and sore beset. “It air a fiddle,” she said, slowly, at last, and with an air of conscientious admission, as if she had had half a mind to deny it. “A fiddle the thing air.” Then, as she collected her thoughts, “Brother Pete Vickers 'lows ez he sees no special sin in playin' the fiddle. He 'lows ez in some kentries--I disremember whar--they plays on 'em in church, quirin' an' hymn chunes an' sech.”

Her voice faltered a little; she had never thought to quote this fantasy in her own defence, for she secretly believed that old man Vickers must have been humbugged by some worldly brother skilled in drawing the long bow himself.

Nehemiah Yerby seemed specially endowed with a conscience for the guidance of other people, so quick was he to descry and pounce upon their shortcomings. If one's sins are sure to find one out, there is little doubt but that Brother Nehemiah would be on the ground first.

“Air you-uns a-settin' under the preachin' o' Brother Peter Vickers?” he demanded in a sepulchral voice.

“Naw, naw,” she was glad to reply. “'Twar onderstood ez Brother Vickers wanted a call ter the church in the Cove, bein' ez his relations live hyar-abouts, an' he kem up an' preached a time or two. But he didn't git no call. The brethren 'lowed Brother Vickers war too slack in his idees o' religion. Some said his hell warn't half hot enough. Thar air some powerful sinners in the Cove, an' nuthin' but good live coals an' a liquid blazin' fire air a-goin' ter deter them from the evil o' thar ways. So Brother Vickers went back the road he kem.”

She knit off her needle while, with his head still bent forward, Nehemiah Yerby sourly eyed her, feeling himself a loser with Brother Vickers, in that he did not have the reverend man's incumbency as a grievance.

“He 'pears ter me ter see mo' pleasure in religion 'n penance, ennyhow,” he observed, bitterly. “An' the Lord knows the bes' of us air sinners.”

“An' he laughs loud an' frequent--mightily like a sinner,” she agreed. “An' whenst he prays, he prays loud an' hearty, like he jes expected ter git what he axed fur sure's shootin.' Some o' the breth-erin' sorter taxed him with his sperits, an' he 'lowed he couldn't holp but be cheerful whenst he hed the Lord's word fur it ez all things work tergether fur good. An' he laffed same ez ef they hedn't spoke ter him serious.”

“Look at that, now!” exclaimed Nehemiah. “An' that thar man ez good ez dead with the heart-disease.”

Laurelia's eyes were suddenly arrested by his keen, pinched, lined face. What there was in it to admonish her she could hardly have said, nor how it served to tutor her innocent craft.

“I ain't so sure 'bout Brother Vickers bein' so wrong,” she said, slowly. “He 'lowed ter me ez I hed spent too much o' my life a-sorrowin', 'stiddier a-praisin' the Lord for his mercies.” Her face twitched suddenly; she could not yet look upon her bereavements as mercies. “He 'lowed I would hev been a happier an' a better 'oman ef I hed took the evil ez good from the Lord's hand, fur in his sendin' it's the same. An' I know that air a true word. An' that's what makes me 'low what he said war true 'bout'n that fiddle; that I ought never ter hev pervented the boy from playin' 'round home an' sech, an' 'twarn't no sin but powerful comfortable an' pleasurable ter set roun' of a cold winter night an' hear him play them slow, sweet, dyin'-away chunes--” She dropped her hands, and gazed with the rapt eyes of remembrance through the window at the sunset clouds which, gathering red and purple and gold on the mountain's brow, were reflected roseate and amethyst and amber at the mountain's base on the steely surface of the river. “Brother Vickers 'lowed he never hearn sech in all his life. It brung the tears ter his eyes--it surely did.”

“He'd a heap better be weepin' fur them black sheep o' his congregation an' fur Lee-yander's short-comin's, fur ez fur ez I kin hear he air about ez black a sheep ez most pastors want ter wrestle with fur the turnin' away from thar sins. Yes'm, Sister Sudley, that's jes what p'inted out my jewty plain afore my eyes, an' I riz up an' kem ter be instant in a-do-in' of it. 'I'll not leave my own nevy in the tents o' sin,' I sez. 'I hev chil'in o' my own, hearty feeders an' hard on shoe-leather, ter support, but I'll not grudge my brother's son a home.' Yes, Laurely Sudley, I hev kem ter kerry him back with me. Yer jewty ain't been done by him, an' I'll leave him a dweller in the tents o' sin no longer.”

His enthusiasm had carried him too far. Lau-relia's face, which at first seemed turning to stone as she gradually apprehended his meaning and his mission, changed from motionless white to a tremulous scarlet while he spoke, and when he ceased she retorted herself as one of the ungodly.

“Ye mus' be mighty ambitious ter kerry away a skin full o' broken bones! Jes let Tyler Sudley hear ez ye called his house the tents o' the ungodly, an' that ye kem hyar a-faultin' me, an' tellin' me ez I 'ain't done my jewty ennywhar or ennyhow!” she exclaimed, with a pride which, as a pious saint, she had never expected to feel in her husband's reputation as a high-tempered man and a “mighty handy fighter,” and with implicit reliance upon both endowments in her quarrel.

“Only in a speritchual sense, Sister Sudley,” Nehemiah gasped, as he made haste to qualify his asseveration. “I only charge you with havin' sp'iled the boy; ye hev sp'iled him through kindness ter him, an' not _ye_ so much ez Ty. Ty never hed so much ez a dog that would mind him! His dog wouldn't answer call nor whistle 'thout he war so disposed. _I_ never faulted ye, Sister Sudley; 'twar jes Ty I faulted. I know Ty.”

He knew, too, that it was safer to call Ty and his doings in question, big and formidable and belligerent though he was, than his meek-mannered, melancholy, forlorn, and diminutive wife. Nehemiah rose up and walked back and forth for a moment with an excited face and a bent back, and a sort of rabbit-like action. “Now, I put it to you, Sister Sudley, air Ty a-makin' that thar boy plough terday?--jes _be-you-ti-ful_ field weather!”

Sister Sudley, victorious, having regained her normal position by one single natural impulse of self-assertion, not as a religionist, but as Tyler Sud-ley's wife, and hence entitled to all the show of respect which that fact unaided could command, sat looking at him with a changed face--a face that seemed twenty years younger; it had the expression it wore before it had grown pinched and ascetic and insistently sorrowful; one might guess how she had looked when Tyler Sudley first went up the mountain “a-courtin,” She sought to assume no other stand-point. Here she was intrenched. She shook her head in negation. The affair was none of hers. Ty Sudley could take ample care of it.

Nehemiah gave a little skip that might suggest a degree of triumph. “Aha, not ploughin'! But _Ty_ is ploughin', I seen him in the field. An' Lee-yander ain't ploughin'! An' how did I know? Ez I war a-ridin' along through the woods this mornin' I kem acrost a striplin' lad a-walkin' through the undergrowth ez onconsarned ez a killdee an' ez nimble. An' under his chin war a fiddle, an' his head war craned down ter it.” He mimicked the attitude as he stood on the hearth. “He never looked up wunst. Away he walked, light ez a plover, an' _a-ping, pang, ping, pang_,” in a high falsetto, “went that fiddle! I war plumb 'shamed fur the critters in the woods ter view sech idle sinfulness, a ole _owel_, a-blinkin' down out'n a hollow tree, kem ter see what _ping, pang, ping, pang_ meant, an' thar war a rabbit settin' up on two legs in the bresh, an' a few stray razor-back hawgs; I tell ye I war mortified 'fore even sech citizens ez them, an' a lazy, impident-lookin' dog ez followed him.”

“How did ye know 'twar Lee-yander?” demanded Mrs. Sudley, recognizing the description perfectly, but after judicial methods requiring strict proof.

“Oh-h! by the fambly favor,” protested the gaunt and hard-featured Nehemiah, capably. “I knowed the Yerby eye.”

“He hev got his mother's eyes.” Mrs. Sudley had certainly changed her stand-point with a vengeance. “He hev got his mother's _be-you-ti-ful blue_ eyes and her curling, silken brown hair--sorter red; little Yerby in _that_, mebbe; but sech eyes, an' sech lashes, an' sech fine curling hair ez none o' yer fambly ever hed, or ever will.”

“Mebbe so. I never seen him more'n a minit. But he might ez well hev a _be-you-ti-ful_ curlin' nose, like the elephint in the show, for all the use he air, or I be afeard air ever likely ter be.”

*****

Tyler Sudley's face turned gray, despite his belligerent efficiencies, when his wife, hearing the clank of the ox-yoke as it was flung down in the shed outside, divined the home-coming of the ploughman and his team, and slipped out to the barn with her news. She realized, with a strange enlightenment as to her own mental processes, what angry jealousy the look on his face would have roused in her only so short a time ago--jealousy for the sake of her own children, that any loss, any grief, should be poignant and pierce his heart save for them. Now she was sorry for him; she felt with him.

But as he continued silent, and only stared at her dumfounded and piteous, she grew frightened--she knew not of what.

“Shucks, Ty!” she exclaimed, catching him by the sleeve with the impluse to rouse him, to awaken him, as it were, to his own old familiar identity; “ye ain't 'feared o' that thar snaggle-toothed skeer-crow in yander; he would be plumb comical ef he didn't look so mean-natured an' sech a hyper-crite.”

He gazed at her, his eyes eloquent with pain.

“Laurely!” he gasped, “this hyar thing plumb knocks me down; it jes takes the breath o' life out'n me!”

She hesitated for a moment. Any anxiety, any trouble, seemed so incongruous with the sweet spring-tide peace in the air, that one did not readily take it home to heart. Hope was in the atmosphere like an essential element; one might call it oxygen or caloric or vitality, according to the tendency of mind and the habit of speech. But the heart knew it, and the pulses beat strongly responsive to it. Faith ruled the world. Some tiny bulbous thing at her feet that had impeded her step caught her attention. It was coming up from the black earth, and the buried darkness, and the chill winter's torpor, with all the impulses of confidence in the light without, and the warmth of the sun, and the fresh showers that were aggregating in the clouds somewhere for its nurture--a blind inanimate thing like that! But Tyler Sudley felt none of it; the blow had fallen upon him, stunning him. He stood silent, looking gropingly into the purple dusk, veined with silver glintings of the moon, as if he sought to view in the future some event which he dreaded, and yet shrank to see.

She had rarely played the consoler, so heavily had she and all her griefs leaned on his supporting arm. It was powerless now. She perceived this, all dismayed at the responsibility that had fallen upon her. She made an effort to rally his courage. She had more faith in it than in her own.

“'Feard o' _him!_” she exclaimed, with a sharp tonic note of satire. “Kem in an' view him.”

“Laurely,” he quavered, “I oughter hev got it down in writin' from him; I oughter made him sign papers agreein' fur me ter keep the boy till he growed ter be his own man.”

She, too, grew pale. “Ye ain't meanin' ter let him take the boy sure enough!” she gasped.

“I moughtn't be able ter holp it; I dun'no' how the law stands. He air kin ter Lee-yander, an' mebbe hev got the bes' right ter him.”

She shivered slightly; the dew was falling, and all the budding herbage was glossed with a silver glister. The shadows were sparse. The white branches of the aspens cast only the symmetrical outline of the tree form on the illumined grass, and seemed scarcely less bare than in winter, but on one swaying bough the mocking-bird sang all the joyous prophecies of the spring to the great silver moon that made his gladsome day so long.

She was quick to notice the sudden cessation of his song, the alert, downward poise of his beautiful head, his tense critical attitude. A mimicking whistle rose on the air, now soft, now keen, with swift changes and intricate successions of tones, ending in a brilliant borrowed roulade, delivered with a wonderful velocity and _elan_. The long tail feathers, all standing stiffly upward, once more drooped; the mocking-bird turned his head from side to side, then lifting his full throat he poured forth again his incomparable, superb, infinitely versatile melody, fixing his glittering eye on the moon, and heeding the futilely ambitious worldling no mote.

The mimicking sound heralded the approach of Leander. Laurelia's heart, full of bitterness for his sake, throbbed tenderly for him. Ah, what was to be his fate! What unkind lot did the future hold for him in the clutches of a man like this! Suddenly she was pitying his mother--her own children, how safe!

She winced to tell him what had happened, but she it was who, bracing her nerves, made the disclosure, for Sudley remained silent, the end of the ox-yoke in his trembling hands, his head bare to the moon and the dew, his face grown lined and old.

Leander stood staring at her out of his moonlit blue eyes, his hat far back on the brown curls she had so vaunted, damp and crisp and clinging, the low limp collar of his unbleached shirt showing his round full throat, one hand resting on the high curb of the well, the other holding a great brown gourd full of the clear water which he had busied himself in securing while she sought to prepare him to hear the worst. His lips, like a bent bow as she thought, were red and still moist as he now and then took the gourd from them, and held it motionless in the interest of her narration, that indeed touched him so nearly. Then, as she made point after point clear to his comprehension, he would once more lift the gourd and drink deeply, for he had had an active day, inducing a keen thirst.

She had been preparing herself for the piteous spectacle of his frantic fright, his futile reliance on them who had always befriended him, his callow forlorn helplessness, his tears, his reproaches; she dreaded them.

He was silent for a reflective moment when she had paused. “But what's he want with me, Cap'n?” he suddenly demanded. “Mought know I warn't industrious in the field, ez he seen me off a-fiddlin' in the woods whilst Neighbor war a-ploughin'.”

“Mebbe he 'lows he mought _make_ ye industrious an' git cornsider'ble work out'n ye,” she faltered, flinching for him.

After another refreshing gulp from the gourd he canvassed this dispassionately. “Say his own chil'n air 'hearty feeders an' hard on shoe-leather?' Takes a good deal o' goadin' ter git ploughin' enough fur the wuth o' feed out'n a toler'ble beastis like old Blaze-face thar, don't it, Neighbor?--an' how is it a-goin' ter be with a human ez mebbe will hold back an' air sot agin plough-in' ennyhow, an' air sorter idle by profession? 'Twould gin him a heap o' trouble--more'n the ploughin' an' sech would be wuth--a heap o' trouble.” Once more he bowed his head to the gourd.

“He 'lowed ye shouldn't dwell no mo' in the tents o' sin. He seen the fiddle, Lee; it's all complicated with the fiddle,” she quavered, very near tears of vexation.

He lifted a smiling moonlit face; his half-suppressed laugh echoed gurglingly in the gourd. “Cap'n,” he said, reassuringly, “jes let's hear Uncle Nehemiah talk some mo', an' ef I can't see no mo' likely work fur me 'n ploughin', I'll think myself mighty safe.”