Chapter 14

Cousin Anice paused to put her finger in her mouth; thus moistened, she touched it to the flat-iron, which hissed smartly, and which she applied then to the apron on the board.

"Laws-a-massy! chile, the polls is jes' closed, an' all the country deestric's ter be hearn from. We won't know till ter-morrer--till late ter-night, nohow."

Theodosia leaned against the gate. How could she wait! How could she endure the suspense! She thought of Justus, and of her promise to fix the date of the wedding on election day, but only as an additional factor of trouble in her own anxiety and indecision.

"Wat's been hyar ez cross ez two sticks," said Mrs. Elmer. She paused to hold up the apron, exquisitely white, and sheer, and stiff, and to gaze with critical professional eyes upon it; she was what is known as a "beautiful washer and ironer," although otherwise not comely. "Wat's beat plumb out o' sight, ef the truth war knowed, I reckon. He 'lows he's powerful 'feared. Ef't war Justus, now, _he'd_ hev been 'lected sure. Justus is a mighty s'perior man; pity he never hed no eddication. He could hev done anything--sharp ez a brier. Yes; Wat's beat, I reckon."

In the instant Theodosia's heart sank. But she turned from the palings, and sauntered resolutely on. It well behooved her to take counsel with herself. "I mought hev made a turr'ble, turr'ble mistake," she muttered. She was sensible of a sharp pang pervading her consciousness. Nevertheless, judgment clamored for recognition.

"Everybody gins Justus a good name, better'n Wat," she argued. "An' ef Wat _ain't_ 'lected"--

She walked down the street with a freer step, her head lifted, her self-respect more secure. With the possible collapse of her prospect of living in Colbury, and her ambition to adjust herself to the exigent demands of its more ornate civilization, her natural untrained grace was returning to her. She felt that she was certainly stylish enough for the hills, where she was likely to live all her days, and with this realization she quite unconsciously seemed easy enough, unconstrained enough, graceful enough, to pass muster in a wider sphere. Her heart was beating placidly now with the casting away of this new expectation that had made all its pulses tense. The still air was cooler, or at least darker. A roseate suffusion was in the sky, although a star twinkled there. More people were in the streets; doors and windows were open, and faces appeared now and again among the vines and curtains. As she hesitated on the street corner, two young girls in white dresses and with fair hair passed her. She watched them with darkening brow as they drew hastily together, and suddenly she overheard the half-smothered exclamation which had a dozen times to-day barely escaped her ears.

"What a pretty, pretty girl! Oh, my! how pretty, how pretty!"

Theodosia stood like one bewitched; a light like the illumination of jewels was in her sapphire eyes; the color surged to her cheek; she lifted up her head on its round, white throat; her lips curved. "Oh, poor fool!" she thought in pity for herself, for this was what the Colbury people had been saying all day in their swift, recurrent glances, their half-masked asides, their furtive turning to look after her. And she--to have given herself a day of such keen misery unconscious of their covert encomiums!

"I live up thar in the wilderness till I jes' don't sense nothin'," she said.

All the wilting prospects of life were refreshed as a flower in the perfumed dew-fall. She felt competent, able to cope with them all; her restored self-confidence pervaded her whole entity, spiritual and material. She walked back with an elastic step, a breezy, debonair manner, and she met Justus Hoxon at the gate of her cousin's yard with a jaunty assurance, and with all the charm of her rich beauty in the ascendant.

He would fain have detained her in the twilight. "What's that ye promised to tell me 'lection day?"

"I 'lowed the day Wat war 'lected," she temporized, laying her hand on the gate, which his stronger hand kept still closed.

"Waal, this is the day Wat is 'lected."

She drew back. Even in the dim light he could see her blue eyes widening with inquiry as she looked at him.

"I 'lowed the returns warn't all in," she said doubtfully.

"They ain't, but enough hev kem in sence the polls closed ter gin him a thumpin' majority. He's safe." The tense ring of triumph was in his voice.

The scene was swimming before her; she was dazed by the sudden alternations of hope and despair, of decision and counter-decision, by the seeming instability of all this. Once more she thought, in a tremble, and with a difference, of the mistake she might have made. She held to the gate to keep her feet, no longer to open it.

"What did ye promise ter tell me 'lection day?" he demanded once more, clasping her hand as it lay on the palings.

"'Lection day?" she said with a forced laugh--"'t ain't e-ended yit. An'," with a sudden resolution of effecting a diversion--"afore it _is_ e-ended I want ter git a peep through that thar thing they call a tellingscope, ef they let women folks look through it."

He was instantly intent.

"Laws-a-massy, yes!" he exclaimed. "I seen Mis' Dr. Kane and Mis' Jedge Peters, an' thar darters, an' a whole passel o' women folks over thar one night las' week. The young folks jes' amble up an' down the court-house yard, bein' moonlight, like a lot o' young colts showin' thar paces. An' even ef they ain't thar ter-night, I'll take ye over thar arter supper, with yer cousin Anice ter keep ye in countenance."

But after supper there was a sufficiency of fluttering white dresses astir in the court-house yard, and now and again crossing the wide, ill-paved street thither, to warrant Theodosia in dispensing with her cousin's company, much to that sophisticated worthy's relief.

"I hev seen all Colbury's got ter show," she said with sated pride. "An' bein' ez I hev hed a hard day's ironin', I hev got a stitch in my side."

"I'd onderstan' that better if ye hed hed a hard day's sewin'," said Justus. He was in high feather, eager, jubilant, drinking in all the rich and subtle flavors of success with the gusto of personal triumph.

"He air prouder'n Wat," more than one observer opined.

There was another fine exhibition of pride on display in the court-house yard that evening. One might have inferred that Dr. Kane had made the comet, from his satisfaction in its proportions, his accurate knowledge and exposition of its history, its previous appearances, and when its coming again might be expected. He was the principal physician of the place, and the little telescope was his property, and he had thus generously loaned it to the public with the hope of illuminating the general ignorance by a nearer view of the starry heavens, while it served his own and his neighbors' interest in the nightly progress of the great comet. Total destruction had been prophesied as the imminent fate of the telescope, but it had so far justified its owner's confidence in the promiscuous politeness of Kildeer County, and had been a source of infinite pleasure to the country folks from the coves and mountains, who had never before seen, nor in good sooth heard of, such an instrument. For weeks past almost all night curious groups took possession of it at intervals, and doubtless it did much to enlarge their idea of science and knowledge of celestial phenomena, for often Dr. Kane's idle humor induced him to stand by and explain the various theories touching comets,--their velocity, their substance or lack of substance, their recurrence, their status in the astral economy,--and cognate themes. As he was a man of very considerable reading and mental qualifications, of some means for the indulgence of his taste, and a good deal of leisure, the synopsis of astronomical science presented in the successive expositions was very well worth listening to, especially by the more ignorant of the community, who were thus enlightened as to facts hitherto foreign even to their wildest imaginings.

But following hard on every benefaction is the trail of ingratitude, and certain of the irreverent in the crowd found a piquant zest in secret derision of the doctor, who sometimes did, in truth, present the air of a showman with a panorama. More especially was this the case when his enthusiasm waxed high, and his satisfaction in the glories of the comet partook of a positive personal pride.

"What's he goin' ter do about it?" demanded one grinning rustic of another on the outskirts of the crowd.

"Put salt on its tail," responded his interlocutor.

Others affected to believe that the doctor was performing a great feat with the long bow, especially in the tremendous measurements of which he seemed singularly prodigal. A reference to the height of the mountains of the moon as compared with the neighboring ranges elicited a whispered hope that the roads were better there than those of the Great Smoky; and an inquiry concerning the probable fate of the comet provoked a speculation that when he was done with it he would sell it at public outcry to the highest bidder at the east door of the court-house.

Close about the stand, however, the crowd took on something of the demeanor of a literary society. Discussions were in order, questions asked and answered, authorities quoted and refuted: the other physician, who practiced much in consultation with Dr. Kane, two or three clergymen, several of the officers of the court, and a number of lawyers, all taking part. The more youthful members of the gathering affected the role of peripatetic philosophers, and sauntered to and fro, arm in arm, in the light of the waxing moon.

The big black shadows of the giant oaks were all dappled with silver as the beams pierced the foliage and fell to the ground below; only the cornice of the building threw an unbroken image, massive and sombre, on the sward. The low clustering roofs of the town had a thin bluish haze hovering about them, and were all softly and blurringly imposed on the vaguely blue sky and the dim hills beyond. Among them a vertical silver line glinted, sharply metallic,--the steeple of a church. Here and there a yellow light gleamed from a lamp within a window. No sound came from the streets; all the life of the place seemed congregated here.

There was a continual succession of postulants to gaze through the telescope, some gravely curious, some stolidly iconoclastic and incredulous, others with covert levity, and still others, self-conscious, solicitous, secretly determined to affect to see all that other people could see, lest some subtle incapacity, some flagrant rusticity, be inferred from failure. These last were hasty observers, scarcely waiting to adjust the eye to the lens, fluttered, and prolific of inapt exclamations, which too often betrayed the superficial character of the investigation. To this class did Theodosia belong.

"Plumb beautiful!" she murmured under her breath, after a momentary contact of her dazzled eye with the brass rim of the telescope.

"Try ag'in, 'Dosia!" exclaimed Justus, aghast at this perfunctory dismissal of the comet, as she turned to go away.

She winced a little from his voice, clear, vibrant and urgent, for Justus had no solicitude concerning the superior canons of Colbury touching etiquette, and suffered none of her anxieties. She caught Dr. Kane's eyes fixed upon him as she moved hastily away, and then he came up beside Justus, who stood near the telescope.

"Let me explain the thing to you, Hoxon," he said. "Try a peep yourself."

Justus glanced after her. Walter had joined her--not so soon, however, but that she heard a half-suppressed criticism on her lover as he turned to the telescope and Dr. Kane's exposition.

"Pity he's got no education--smart fellow, but can't even read and write."

"Smart" enough to be an apt pupil. The others pressed close around, listening to the measured voice of the physician and the quick, pertinent questions of the star-gazer.

It is as an open scroll, that magnificent, wonder-compelling cult of the skies, not the sealed book of other sciences. Since the days of the Chaldean, all men of receptive soul in solitary places, the sailor, the shepherd, the hunter, or the hermit, whether of the wilderness of nature or the isolation of crowds, have read there of the mystery of the infinite, of the order and symmetry of the plan of creation, of the proof of the existence of a God, who controls the sweet influences of Pleiades and makes strong the bands of Orion. The unspeakable thought, the unformulated prayer, the poignant sense of individual littleness, of atomic unimportance, in the midst of the vast scheme of the universe, inform every eye, throb in every breast, whether it be of the savant, with all the appliances of invention to bring to his cheated senses the illusion of a slightly nearer approach, or of the half-civilized llanero of the tropic solitudes, whose knowledge suffices only to note the hour by the bending of the great Southern Cross. It is the heritage of all alike.

For Justus Hoxon, who had followed the slow march of the stars through many a year in the troubled watches of the night, when anxiety and foreboding could make no covenant with sleep, there was, in one sense, little to learn. He knew them all in their several seasons, the time of their rising, when they came to the meridian, and when they were engulfed in the west, till with another year they sparkled on the eastern rim of the sky. He listened to Dr. Kane's explanation of this with an air of acceptance, but he hardly heeded the detail of their distance from the earth and from one another--he knew that they were far,--and he shook his head over speculations as to their physical condition, vegetation, and inhabitation. "Ye ain't got no sort o' means o' knowin' sech, Doctor," he said reprehensively, gauging the depths of the ignorance of the wise man.

He heard their names with alert interest, and repeated them swiftly after his mentor to set them in his memory. "By George!" he cried delightedly, "I hed no idee they hed names!"

And as the amateur astronomer, pleased with so responsive a glow, began the tracing of the fantastic imagery of the constellations, detailing the story of each vague similitude, he marked the sudden dawn of a certain enchantment in his interlocutor's mind, the first subtle experience of the delights of the ideal and the resources of fable. It exerted upon Dr. Kane a sort of fascinated interest, the observation of this earliest exploration of the realms of fancy by so keen and receptive an intelligence. The comet, the telescope, the crowd, were forgotten, as with Hoxon at his elbow he made the tour of the court-house yard, from point to point, wherever the best observation might be had of each separate sidereal etching on the deep blue. For a time the crowd casually watched them with a certain good-natured ridicule of their absorption, and the telescope maintained its interest to the successive wights who peered through at the comet still splendidly ablaze despite the light of the gibbous moon. The ranks of young people promenaded up and down the brick walks and the grassy spaces. Elder gossips sat on the court-house steps, or stood in groups, and discussed the questions of the day. Gradually disintegration began. The clangor of the gate rose now and then as homeward-bound parties passed through, becoming constantly more frequent. Still the shifting back and forth of the thinning ranks of the peripatetic youth went on, and laughter and talk resounded from the court-house steps. At intervals the telescope was deserted; the motionless trees were bright with the moon and glossy with the dew. The voice of guard-dogs was now and again reverberated from the hills. The languid sense of a late hour had dulled the pulses, and when Justus Hoxon turned back to earth it was to an almost depopulated scene, the realization of the approach of midnight, and the sight of Theodosia sitting alone in the moonlight on the steps of the east door of the court-house, waiting for him with a touching patience, as it seemed to him at the moment.

"Air you-uns waitin' fur me, 'Dosia, all by yerse'f?" he demanded hastily, with a contrite intonation.

"I _'pear_ to be all by myse'f," she said, with a playful feigning of uncertainty, glancing about her. She gave a forced laugh, and the constraint in her tone struck his attention.

"I 'lowed ez Wat war with ye," he said apologetically. "Air ye ready ter go over ter yer cousin Anice's now?"

He was standing leaning against one of the columns of the portico, his face half in the shadow of his hat and half in the moonlight.

She sat still upon the steps, looking up at him, her upturned eyes taking an appealing expression from her lowly attitude. She was silent for a moment, as if at a loss. Then suddenly her eyes fell.

"'Pears ter me ter be right comical ter hev ter remind _ye_ o' what _I_ promised ter tell ye 'lection day," she said.

"Why, 'Dosia," he broke in vehemently, "I hev axed ye twice ter-day, an' I didn't ax ye jes' now 'kase ye hed been hyar so long alone, an' I wanted ter take ye ter yer cousin Anice's ef so be ye wanted ter go." He stopped for a moment. Then, with a change of tone, "Ye can't make out ez I hev been anything but hearty in lovin' ye--nearly all yer life long!" His voice rang out with a definite note of conviction, of assertion.

Reproach was an untenable ground. She desisted from the effort. Her eyes wandered down the street that lay shadowy with gable, and dormer-window, and long chimneys, in sharp geometric figures in the moonshine, alternating with the deeper shadow of the trees. There were no lights save a twinkle here and there in an upper window.

A flush rose to his pale cheeks. His heart was beating fast with heavy presage. He hesitated to demand his fate at so untoward a moment. He took off his hat, mechanically fanning with its broad brim, and gazing about him at the slowly dulling splendor of the moonlight as the disk tended further and further toward the west. The stars were brightening gradually, and within the range of his vision flared the great comet, every moment the lustre of its white fire intensifying. He only saw; he did not note. His every faculty was concentrated on the girl's drawling voice as she began again, hesitating, and evidently at a loss.

"Waal, I hate ter tell ye, Justus, but I hev ter do it, an' I mought ez well the day that I promised ter set _the day_. It's--it's--_never_! I ain't goin' ter marry ye at all!"

He recoiled as from a blow. And yet he could not accept the fact.

"The'dosia," he said, "air ye mad with me 'kase ye 'low I forgot ye this evenin'?"

Theodosia had recovered her poise. Now that she had begun she felt suddenly fluent. It did not accord with her estimate of her own attractions to dismiss a lover because he had forgotten her. She began to find a relish in the situation, and sought to adjust its details more accurately to her preferences.

"Justus, I know ye never furgot me fur one minute. I kin find no fault with yer likin' fur me."

She had never seen a stage. She had never heard of a theatre, but she was posing and playing a part as definitely as if it graced the boards.

He detected a certain spurious note in her voice. It bewildered him. He stared silently at her.

"I can't marry you-uns. I never kin."

"Why?" he demanded in a measured tone. "How kem ye hev changed yer mind? Ye hev told me often that ye would."

"W-a-al," she drawled, looking away at the skies, her unthinking eyes arrested, too, by the blazing comet, "I _did_ 'low wunst I would. But a man with eddication would suit me bes', an' ye hain't got none."

"No more hev ye," he argued warmly. He was clinging for dear life to his vanishing hope of happiness. He did not realize depreciation in his words--only the facts that made them suited to each other. "Ye know ye _wouldn't_ take l'arnin' at school--an' I _couldn't_ git it; 'pears ter me we air 'bout ekal."

"It air a differ in a 'oman," said Theodosia, quickly. "A 'oman hev got no call to be l'arned like a man."

This very subordinate view failed in this instance of the satisfaction it is wont to give to the masculine mind.

"Waal, ye didn't git enough l'arnin' ter hurt ye," he retorted. Then, relenting, he added, "But I don't find no fault with ye fur that nuther."

The color flared into her face. How she resented his clemency to her ignorance! She still sat in her lowly posture on the step, leaning her bare head against the column of the porch, for her bonnet lay on the floor beside her; but there was a suggestion of self-assertion in her voice.

"I ain't expectin' ter live all my days in the woods, like a deer or suthin' wild. I expec' ter live in town with eddicated folks, ez be looked up ter, an' respected by all, an' kin make money, an' hev a sure-enough house." Her ambitious eyes swept the shadowy gables down the street.

He broke out laughing; his voice was softer; his face relaxed.

"Laws-a-massy! Dosia," he exclaimed, "yer head's plumb turned by one day's roamin' round town. Ye won't be in sech a hurry ter turn me off whenst we git back ter the mountings."

"I ain't goin' back ter the mountings!" she cried; "I be a-goin' ter marry a town man ez hev got position, an' eddication, an' place." She paused, stung by the fancied incredulity in his eyes. "Why not? Ain't I good-lookin' enough?"

She had risen to her feet; her eyes flashed upon him; her beautiful face wore a look of pride. It might have elicited from another man a protest of its beauty. He stared at her with an expression of alarm that was almost ghastly.

"Other men like me fur my looks, ef ye don't, Justus Hoxon," she said in indignation.

"Ef they jes' likes ye fur yer looks they won't like ye long," Hoxon said severely. "I'll like ye when yer brown head is ez white ez cotton--ez much ez I like ye now--more!--_more_, I'll be bound! O 'Dosia," with a sudden renewal of tenderness, "don't talk this hyar cur'ous way! I dunno what's witched ye. But let's go home ter the mountings, ter yer mother, an' see ef she can't straighten out any tangle yer feelin's hev got inter."

It needed only this--the allusion to her commonplace mother, the recollection of the forlorn little mountain home, the idea of her mother's insistent championship of Justus Hoxon--to bring the avowal so long trembling on her lips.

"I won't! I ain't likin' ye nowadays, Justus Hoxon, nor fur a long time past. I ain't keerin' nothin' 'bout ye."

There was something in her tone that carried conviction.

"Air ye in earnest?" he said, appalled.

"Dead earnest."

He gazed at her in the ever dulling light, that yet was clear enough to show every lineament--even the long black eyelashes that did not droop or quiver above her great blue eyes.

"Then thar's no more to be said." He spoke in a changed voice, calm and clear, and she stared at him in palpable surprise. She had expected an outburst of reproach, of beseechings, of protestation. She had braced herself to meet it, and she felt the reaction. She was hardly capable of coping with seeming indifference. It touched her pride. She missed the tribute of the withheld pleadings. She sought to rouse his jealousy.

"It's another man I like," she said, "better--oh, a heap better--than you-uns."

"That's all right, then."

He wondered to hear the words so glibly enunciated. His lips seemed to him stiff, petrifying. He looked very white about them. She did not heed. She was angered, wounded, perplexed, by his acquiescence, his calmness, his taciturnity. A wave of anxiety that was half regret went over her. She felt lost in the turmoil of these complex emotions. With that destructive impulse to hurl down, to tear, to strike, that is an element of a sort of blind irritation, she went on tumultuously: