Chapter 13

Such as it was, however, it satisfied all of Justus Hoxon's sense of the appropriate and the picturesque when Theodosia Blakely stepped out from the door and came slowly to meet him. The painter's art, if she were to be esteemed part of the foreground, might have seemed redeemed in her. Her dress was of light blue homespun; her sunbonnet of deep red calico, pushed back, showed her dark brown hair waving upward in heavy undulations from her brow, her large blue eyes with their thick black lashes, her rich brunette complexion, her delicate red lips cut in fine lines, and the gleam of her teeth as she smiled. She had a string of opaque white, wax-like beads around the neck of her dress, and the contrast of the pearly whiteness of the bauble with the creamy whiteness and softness of her throat was marked with much finish. Her figure was hardly of medium height, and, despite the suppleness of youth, as "plump as a partridge," according to the familiar saying. The clear iris of her eyes gave an impression of quick shifting, and by them one could see her mood change as she approached.

She looked at him intently, speculatively, a sort of doubtful curiosity furtively suggested in her expression; but there was naught subtle or covert in the gaze that met hers--naught but the frankest pleasure and happiness. He did not move, as she advanced, nor offer formal greeting; he only smiled, secure, content, restful, as she came up and sat down on the end of the bench. The children, playing noisily in the back yard on the wood-pile, paused for a moment to gaze with callow interest at them; but the spectacle of "The'dosia's sweetheart" was too familiar to be of more than fleeting diversion, and they resorted once more to their pastime. Mrs. Blakely too, who with rolling-pin in her hand had turned to gaze out of the window, went back to rolling out the dough vigorously, with only the muttered comment, "Wish The'dosia didn't know how much I'd like that man fur a son-in-law, then she'd be willin' ter like him better herse'f."

He was unconscious of them all, as he leaned his elbow on the projecting rails of the fence at their intersection close at hand.

"Hev ye hed yer health, The'dosia?" he said.

"Don't I look like it?" she replied laughingly.

There was something both of cordiality and coquetry in her manner. Her large eyes narrowed as she laughed, and albeit they glittered between their closing lids, the expression was not pleasant. Levity did not become her.

"Yes, ye do," he said seriously. "Ye 'pear ter be real thrivin' an' peart an' healthy."

His look, his words, were charged with no sort of recognition or value of her beauty: clearly her challenge had fallen to the ground unnoticed.

"He'd like me jes' ez well ef I war all pitted up with the smallpox, or ez freckled ez a tur-r-key-aig," she thought, flushing with irritation.

Beauty is jealous of preeminence, and would fain have precedence even of love. She could take no sort of satisfaction in a captive that her bright eyes had not shackled. Somehow this love seemed to flout, to diminish, her attractions. It was like an accident. She could account for his subjection on no other grounds. As she sat silent, grave enough now and very beautiful, gazing askance and troubled upon him, he went on:--

"I war so oneasy an' beset lest suthin' hed happened on the mounting, whilst I war away, ter trouble you-uns or some o' yer folks. I never hed time ter study much 'bout sech in the day, but I dreamt 'bout ye in the night, an' _all night_,"--he laughed a little,--"all sort'n mixed up things. I got ter be a plumb Joseph fur readin' dreams--only I could read the same one forty diff'rent ways, an' every way made me a leetle mo' oneasy than the t'other one. I s'pose ye hev been perlite enough ter miss me a leetle," he concluded.

She flashed her great eyes at him with a pretended stare of surprise. "My--no!" she exclaimed. "We-uns hev hed the comet ter keep us comp'ny--we ain't missed nobody!"

He laughed a little, as at a repartee, and then went on:--

"Waal, the comic war a-cuttin' a pretty showy figger down yander at Colbury. 'Ston-ishin' how much store folks do 'pear ter set on it! They hed rigged up some sort'n peepin'-glass in the Court-House yard, an' thar war mighty nigh the whole town a-squinchin' up one eye ter examinate the consarn through it--all the court off'cers, 'torney-gin'ral, an' sech, an' old Doctor Kane an' Jedge Peters, besides a whole passel o' ginerality folks. They 'lowed the glass made it 'pear bigger."

"Did it?" she asked, with sudden interest.

"Bless yer soul, chile, _I_ didn't hev time ter waste on it. Jedge Peters he beckoned ter me, an' 'lowed he'd interjuce me ter it; but I 'lowed the comic outside war plenty big enough fur me. 'Jedge,' I says, 'my mission hyar air ter make onnecessary things seem _small_, not magnified. That's why I'm continually belittlin' Rolf Quigley. Wat kin go on lookin' cross-eyed at the stars, ef so minded, but I be bound ter tend ter the 'lection.' An' the jedge laffed and says: 'Justus, nex' time I want ter git 'lected ter office, I'm goin' ter git _ye_ ter boost me in. Ye hev got it a sight mo' at heart than yer brother.' Fur thar war Wat, all twisted up at the small e-end o' the tellingscope, purtendin' ter be on mighty close terms with the comic, though lots o' other men said it jes' dazed thar eyes, an' they couldn't see _nuthin'_ through it, an' mighty leetle arterward through sightin' so long one-eyed."

"Waal, how's the prospects fur the 'lection?" she asked.

"Fine! Fine!" he answered with gusto. "Folks all be so frien'ly everywhar ter we-uns."

He leaned his shoulder suddenly back against the rough rails of the fence. His hat was in his hand. His hair, fine, thin, chestnut-brown, and closely clinging about his narrow head, was thrown back from his forehead. His clear blue eyes were turned upward, with the light of reminiscence slowly dawning in them. It may have been the reflection of the dazzling flake of cloud, it may have been some mental illumination, but a sort of radiance was breaking over the keen, irregular lines of his features, and a flush other than the floridity of a naturally fair complexion was upon his thin cheek and hollow temple.

"O The'dosia," he cried, "I can't holp thinkin', hevin' so many frien's nowadays,--whenst it's 'Hail!' hyar, an' 'Howdy!' thar, an' a clap on the shoulder ter the east, an' a 'How's yer health?' ter the west, an' a handshake ter the north, an' 'Take a drink?' ter the south, from one e-end o' the county ter the t'other,--how I fared whenst I hed jes' _one_ frien' in the worl', an' that war yer mother! An' how she looked the fust day she stood in the door o' my cabin up thar--kem ter nuss Elmiry through that spell she hed o' the scarlet fever. An' arterward she says ter me: 'Ye do manage s'prisin', Justus; an' I be goin' ter save ye some gyardin seed out'n my patch this year, an' ef ye'll plough my patch I'll loan ye my horse-critter ter plough your'n. An' the gals kin kem an' l'arn ter sew an' churn, an' sech, long o' 'Dosia.' An' how they loved ye, 'Dosia--special Elmiry!"

His eyes filled with sudden tears. They did not fall; they were absorbed somehow as he resumed:--

"Sech a superflu'ty o' frien's nowadays! Ef 't warn't they'd count fur all they're wuth in the ballot-box, I'd hev no use fur 'em. I kin sca'cely 'member thar names. But then I hed jes' _one_--jes' _one_ in all the worl'--yer mother! Bless her soul!" he concluded enthusiastically.

He was still and reflective for a moment. Then he made a motion as though he would take one of Theodosia's hands. But she clasped both of them demurely behind her.

"I don't hold hands with no man ez blesses another 'oman's soul by the hour," she said, with an affectation of primness.

There may have been something more serious in her playful rebuff, but in the serenity of his perfect security he did not feel it or gauge its depth.

A glimpse of her mother at the window added its suggestion--a lean, sallow, lined face, full of anxious furrows, with a rim of scanty gray-streaked hair about the brow, with spectacles perched above, and beneath the flabby jaw a scraggy, wrinkled neck.

"An' she's so powerful pretty!" Theodosia exclaimed, with an irreverent burst of laughter, "I don't wonder ye feel obligated ter bless her soul."

"She 'pears plumb beautiful to my mind," he said unequivocally,--"all of a piece with her beautiful life."

Theodosia was suddenly grave, angered into a secret, sullen irritation. These were words she loved for herself: it was but lately she had learned so to prize them. Her eyes were as bright as a deer's! Had not some one protested this, with a good round rural oath as attestation? Her hair on the back of her head, and its shape to the nape of her neck, were so beautiful--she had never seen it: how could she say it wasn't? Her chin and her throat--well, if people could think snow was a prettier white, he wouldn't give much for _their_ head-stuffin'. And her blush! her blush! It was her own fault. He would not have taken another kiss if she had not blushed so at the first that he must needs again see her cheek glow like the wild rose.

These were echoes of a love-making that had lately taken hold of her heart, that had grown insistently sweet and dear to her, that had established its sway impetuously, tyrannically, over her life, that had caused her to seem more to herself, and as if she were infinitely more to her new lover.

She wondered how she could ever have even tolerated this dullard, with his slow, measured preference, his unquestioning security of her heart, his doltish credulity in her and her promise, his humble gratitude to her mother,--who had often enough, in good sooth, got full value in return for aught she gave,--who appeared "beautiful" to his mind. She broke forth abruptly, her cheeks flushing, her eyes brave and bright, the subject nearest her heart on her lips, in the sudden influx of courage set astir by the mere contemplation of it.

"Waal now, tell 'bout Wat--how he enj'ys bein' a candidate, an' sech." Then, with a tremor because of her temerity: "I have hearn o' that thar beautisome old 'oman a time or two afore, but Wat ez a candidate air sorter fraish an' new."

He turned his clear, unsuspicious eyes upon her. He had replaced his wide wool hat on his head, and he leaned forward, resting his cheek on his hand and his elbow on his knee. He aimlessly flicked his long spurred boot, as he talked, with a willow wand which he carried in lieu of horsewhip.

"Waal, Wat is some similar ter a balky horse. He don't seem ter sense a word I say, nor ter be willin' ter do a thing I advise, nor even ter take heart o' grace 'bout bein' 'lected, till we gets out 'mongst folks, an' _thar_ handshakin's and frien'liness seems ter hearten up the critter. I hev jes' hed ter baig an' baig, an' plead an' plead, with that boy 'bout this an' that an' t'other, till I wouldn't go through ag'in what I _hev_ been through ter git 'lected doorkeeper o' heaven. But," with a sudden change of tone and a flush of pride, "The'dosia, ye dunno what a' all-fired pretty speaker Wat hev got ter be. Jes' stan's up ez straight an' smilin' afore all the crowd, an' jes' tells off his p'ints, one, two, three, ez nip! An' the crowd always cheers an' cheers--jes' bawls itse'f hoarse. Whenever thar's a chance ter speak, Wat jes' leaves them t'other candidates nowhar."

Ah, Theodosia's beauty well deserved the guerdon of sweet words. She might have been pictured as a thirsting Hebe. She had a look of quaffing some cup of nectar, still craving its depths, so immediate a joy, so intense a light, were in her widely open eyes; her lips were parted; the spray of blackberry leaves that she held near her cheek did not quiver, so had her interest petrified every muscle. She was leaning slightly forward; her red sunbonnet had fallen to the ground, and the wind tossed her dark brown hair till the heavy masses, with their curling ends disheveled, showed tendrils of golden hue. Her round, plump arm was like ivory. The torn sleeve fell away to the elbow, and her mother, glancing out of the window, took remorseful heed of it, and wished that she herself had set a stitch in it.

"The'dosia shows herself so back'ard 'bout mendin', an' sech--she air enough ter skeer any man away. An' Justus knows jes' what sech laziness means. Kin mend clothes hisse'f ez good ez the nex' one, an' useter do it too, strong an' taut, with a double thread, whenst the fambly war leetle chil'n an' gin ter bustin' out'n thar gear."

But Justus took no note of the significance of the torn sleeve.

"Why, 'Dosia," he went on, "everybody 'lowed ez Wat's speeches seemed ter sense what the people wanted ter hear. Him an' me we'd talk it over the night before, an' Wat he'd write down what we said on paper an' mem'rize it; an' the nex' day, why, folks that wouldn't hev nuthin' ter say ter him afore he spoke would be jes' aidgin' up through the crowd ter git ter shake han's with him."

She smiled with delight at the picture. If it were sweet to him to praise, how sweet it was to her to listen! "Tell on!" she said softly.

Her interest flattered him; it enriched the reminiscence, dear though his memory held it. He had no doubt as to the unity of feeling with which they both regarded the incidents he chronicled. He went on with the certainty of responsive sentiment, the ease, the serenity of a man who opens his heart to the woman he loves.

"Why, 'Dosia," he said, "often, often if it hed n't been fur the folks, I could hev run up an' dragged him off'n the rostrum an' hugged him fur pride, he looked so han'some an' spoke so peart! An' ter think 't war jes' our leetle Wat--the Fambly's leetle Wat--growed up ter be sech a man! Ye'll laff at me--other folks did--whenst I tell ye that ag'in an' ag'in I jes' cotch' myse'f cheerin' with the loudest. I could n't holp it."

"He'll be 'lected, Justus?" she breathlessly inquired, and yet imperatively, as if, even though she asked, she would brook no denial.

"Oh, they all say thar's no doubt--no doubt at all."

She drew a long breath of contentment, of pleasure. She leaned back, silent and reflective, against the rail fence behind the bench, her eyes fixed, absorbed, following the outline of other scenes than the one before them, which indeed left no impression upon her senses, scenes to come, slowly shaping the future. All trace of the red glow of the sun had departed from the landscape. No heavy, light-absorbing, sad-hued tapestries could wear so deep a purple, such sombre suggestions of green, as the circling mountains had now assumed: they were not black, and yet such depths of darkness hardly comported with the idea of color. The neutral tints of the sky were graded more definitely, with purer transparency, because of the contrast. The fine grays were akin to pearl color, to lavender, even, in approaching the zenith, to the palest of blue--so pale that the white glitter of a star alternately appeared and was lost again in its tranquil inexpressiveness. The river seemed suddenly awake; its voice was lifted loud upon the evening air, a rhythmic song without words. The frogs chanted by the waterside. Fireflies here and there quivered palely over the flat cornfields at the back of the house. There was a light within, dully showing through the vines at the window.

"An' then, 'Dosia," said Justus softly, "when the 'lection is over, it's time fur ye an' me ter git married."

She roused herself with an obvious effort, and looked uncomprehendingly at him for a moment, as if she hardly heard.

"The las' one o' Fambly will be off my han's then. Fambly will hev been pervided fur--every one, Wat an' all. I hev done my bes' fur Fambly, an' I dunno but I hev earned the right ter think some fur myse'f now."

He would not perhaps have arrogated so much, except to the woman by whom he believed himself beloved. She said nothing, and he went on slowly, lingering upon the words as if he loved the prospect they conjured up.

"We-uns will hev the gyardin an' orchard, an' pastur' an' woods-lot an' fields, ter tend ter, an' the cows an' bees, an' the mare an' filly, an' peegs an' poultry, ter look arter. An' the house air all tight, the roof an' all in good repair, an' we-uns will have it all ter ourselves."

She turned upon him with sudden interest.

"What will kem o' Wat?"

"Oh, he mus' live in town whilst sher'ff, bein' off'cer o' the court an' official keeper o' jail, though he kin app'int a jailer."

"Live in Colbury!" she exclaimed in wonderment.

Justus laughed in triumph. "Oh, I tell ye, Wat's 'way up in the pictur's! He'll be a reg'lar town man 'fore long, I reckon, dandified an' sniptious ez the nex' one, marryin' one o' them finified town gals ez wear straw hats stiddier sunbonnets,--though they _do_ look ter be about ez flimsy an' no-'count cattle ez any I ever see," the sterling rural standpoint modifying his relish of Walter's frivolous worldly opportunities.

She tossed her head in defiance of some sudden unspoken thought. As she lifted her eyes, fired by pride, she saw the comet all a-glitter in the darkening sky.

She hardly knew that he had seized her hand; but his importunity must be answered.

"D'rec'ly after the 'lection--'lection day, 'Dosia?" he urged.

"Ain't ye got no jedgmint," she temporized, laughing unmirthfully, "axin' sech a question ez that under that onlucky comet!"

"I hev been waitin' so long, 'Dosia!"

It was the first suggestion of complaint she had ever heard from him.

"Then ye air used ter waitin', an' 't won't kill ye ter wait a leetle longer. I'll let ye know 'lection day."

II.

It was a hot day in the little valley town, the first Thursday in August, the climax of a drought, with the sun blazing down from dawn to dusk, and not a cloud, not a vagrant mist, not even the stir of the impalpable ether, to interpose. The mountains that rimmed the horizon all around Colbury shimmered azure, through the heated air. No wind came down those darker indentations that marked ravines. A dazzling, stifling stillness reigned; yet now and again an eddying cloud of dust would spring up along the streets, and go whirling up-hill and down, pausing suddenly, and settling upon the overgrown shrubbery in the pretty village yards, or on white curtains hanging motionless at the windows of large, old-fashioned frame houses. Even the shade was hot with a sort of closeness unknown in the open air, yet as it dwindled to noontide proportions some alleviation seemed withdrawn; and though the mercury marked no change, all the senses welcomed the post-meridian lengthening of the images of bough and bole beneath the trees, and the fantastic architecture of the shadows of chimney and gable and dormer-window, elongated out of drawing, stretching across the grassy streets and ample gardens. There among the grape trellises, and raspberry bushes, and peach and cherry trees, the locusts chirred and chirred a tireless, vibrating panegyric on hot weather. The birds were hushed; sometimes under a clump of matted leaves one of the feathered gentry might be seen with wings well held out from his panting sides. The beautiful green beetle, here called the "June-bug," hovered about the beds of thyme, its jeweled, enameled green body and its silver gauze wings flashing in the sun, although June was far down the revolving year. Blue and lilac lizards basked in the garden walks, which were cracked by the heat. Little stir was in the streets; the languid business of a small town was transacted if absolute need required, and postponed if a morrow would admit of contemplation. The voters slowly repaired to the polls with a sense of martyrdom in the cause of party, and the election was passing off in a most orderly fashion, there being no residuum of energy in the baking town to render it disorderly or unseemly. Often not a human being was to be seen, coming or going.

To Theodosia it was all vastly different from the picture she had projected of Colbury with an election in progress. In interest, movement, populousness, it did not compare with a county-court day, which her imagination had multiplied when she estimated the relative importance of the events. She had made no allowance for the absence of the country people, specially wont to visit the town when the quarterly court was in session, but now all dutifully in place voting in their own remote districts. The dust, the suffocating heat, the stale, vapid air, the indescribable sense of a lower level--all these affected her like a veritable burden, accustomed as she was to the light and rare mountain breeze, to the tempered sun, the mist, and the cloud. The new and untried conditions of town life trammeled and constrained her. She had a certain pride, and she feared she continually offended against the canons of metropolitan taste. In every passing face she saw surprise, and she fancied contempt. In every casual laugh she heard ridicule. Her brain was a turmoil of conflicting anxieties, hopes, resolutions, and in addition these external demands upon her attention served to intensify her absorbing emotions and to irritate her nerves rather than to divert or soothe them. She had escaped from the relative at whose house she was making a visit, craftily timed to include election day, on the plea that she wished to see something of the town. "Ye don't live up on the mounting, Cousin Anice, 'mongst the deer, an' b'ar, an' fox, like me," she had said jestingly, "or ye'd want ter view all the town ye kin." And once outside the shabby little palings, she returned no more for hours.

Along the scorching streets she wandered, debating within herself anxious questions which, she felt, affected all her future, and unfitting herself still further to reach that just and wise conclusion she desired to compass. She could not altogether abstract her mind, despite the interests which she had at stake. She noticed that her unaccustomed feet stumbled over the flag-stones of the pavement--"Fit fur nothin' but followin' the plough!" she muttered in irritation. She hesitated at the door of a store, then sidled sheepishly in, tearing her dress on a nail in a barrel set well in the corner and out of the way.

But while looking over the pile of goods which she had neither the wish nor the money to purchase, she could have sunk with shame with the sudden thought that perhaps it was not the vogue in Colbury to keep a clerk actively afoot to while away the idle time of a desperately idle woman. She could not at once decide how she might best extricate herself, and for considerable time the empty show of an impending purchase went on.

"I'll--I'll kem an' see 'bout'n it ter-morrer," she faltered at last. "Much obleeged."

"No trouble to show goods," said the martyr of the counter, politely. In truth he had in the course of his career shown them as futilely to women who were much older and far, far uglier, and contemplating purchase as remotely.

She went out scarlet, slow, tremulous, and walking close into the wall like an apprehensive cat, looking now and again over her shoulder. She wondered if he laughed when he was alone.

Her shadow was long now as it preceded her down the street, lank, awkward, clumsy. She took note of the late hour which it intimated, and followed the extravagant, lurching caricature of herself to her cousin's house, a little unpainted, humble building set far back in the yard, against the good time coming when a more ornate structure should be prefixed. The good time seemed still a long way off. Her cousin's ironing-board was on the porch, and presently a lean, elderly, active woman whisked out, her flat-iron in her hand.

"Cousin Anice," called Theodosia from the gate, "how's the 'lection turned out?"