the elbow, "jes' quiet down now; ye air a-cussin' yer own gran'son."
"So be! so be!" cried the old man, in a frenzy of rage. "Damn 'em
all--all the Kittredge tribe!" He gasped for breath; his lips still
moved speechlessly as he fell back in his chair.
Kittredge let his gun slip from his shoulder, the butt ringing heavily
as it struck upon the floor. "I ain't a-goin' ter take sech ez that
off'n ye, old man," he cried, pallid with fury, for be it remembered
this grandson was that august institution, a first baby. "He sha'n't sit
up thar an' cuss the baby, Mr. Cheerman." He appealed to the presiding
justice, holding up his right arm as tremulous as old Quimbey's own. "I
want the law! I ain't a-goin' ter tech a old man like him, an' my wife's
father, so I ax in the name o' peace fur the law. Don't deny it"--with a
warning glance--"'kase I ain't school-larned, an' dunno how ter get it.
Don't ye deny me the law! I _know_ the law don't 'low a magistrate an' a
jestice ter cuss in his high office, in the presence of the county
court. I want the law! I want the law!"
The chairman of the court, who had risen in his excitement, turning
eagerly first to one and then to the other of the speakers, striving to
silence the colloquy, and in the sudden surprise of it at a momentary
loss how to take action, sat down abruptly, and with a face of
consternation. Profanity seemed to him so usual and necessary an
incident of conversation that it had never occurred to him until this
moment that by some strange aberration from the rational estimate of
essentials it was entered in the code as a violation of law. He would
fain have overlooked it, but the room was crowded with spectators. The
chairman would be a candidate for re-election as justice of the peace at
the expiration of his term. And after all what was old Quimbey to him,
or he to old Quimbey, that, with practically the whole town looking on,
he should destroy his political prospects and disregard the dignity of
his office. He had a certain twinge of conscience, and a recollection of
the choice and fluent oaths of his own repertory, but as he turned over
the pages of the code in search of the section he deftly argued that
they were uttered in his own presence as a person, not as a justice.
And so for the first time old Joel Quimbey appeared as a law-breaker,
and was duly fined by the worshipful county court fifty cents for each
oath, that being the price at which the State rates the expensive and
impious luxury of swearing in the hearing of a justice of the peace, and
which in its discretion the court saw fit to adopt in this instance.
The old man offered no remonstrance; he said not a word in his own
defence. He silently drew out his worn wallet, with much contortion of
his thin old anatomy in getting to his pocket, and paid his fines on the
spot. Absalom had already left the room, the clerk having made out the
certificates, the chairman of the court casting the scalps into the open
door of the stove, that they might be consumed by fire according to law.
The young mountaineer wore a heavy frown, and his heart was ill at ease.
He sought some satisfaction in the evident opinion of the crowd which
now streamed out, for the excitements within were over, that he had done
a fine thing; a very clever thought, they considered it, to demand the
law of Mr. Chairman, that one of their worships should be dragged from
the bench and arraigned before the quarterly county court of which he
was a member. The result gave general satisfaction, although there were
those who found fault with the court's moderation, and complained that
the least possible cognizance had been taken of the offence.
"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed an old codger in the street. "I jes knowed that
hurt old Joel Quimbey wuss 'n ef a body hed druv a knife through him;
he's been so proud o' bein' jestice 'mongst his betters, an' bein'
'lected at las', many times ez he hev run. Waal, Abs'lom, ye hev proved
thar's law fur jestices too. I tell ye ye hev got sense in yer
skull-i-bone."
But Absalom hung his head before these congratulations; he found no
relish in the old man's humbled pride. Yet had he not cursed the baby,
lumping him among the Kittredges? Absalom went about for a time, with a
hopeful anxiety in his eyes, searching for one of the younger Quimbeys,
in order to involve him in a fight that might have a provocation and a
result more to his mind. Somehow the recollection of the quivering and
aged figure of his wife's father, of the smitten look on his old face,
of his abashed and humbled demeanor before the court, was a reproach to
him, vivid and continuously present with his repetitious thoughts
forever re-enacting the scene. His hands trembled; he wanted to lay hold
on a younger man, to replace this aesthetic revenge with a quarrel more
wholesome in the estimation of his own conscience. But the Quimbey sons
were not in town to-day. He could only stroll about and hear himself
praised for this thing that he had done, and wonder how he should meet
Evelina with his conscience thus arrayed against himself for her
father's sake. "Plumb turned Quimbey, I swear," he said, in helpless
reproach to this independent and coercive moral force within. His
dejection, he supposed, had reached its lowest limits, when a rumor
pervaded the town, so wild that he thought it could be only fantasy. It
proved to be fact. Joel Quimbey, aggrieved, humbled, and indignant, had
resigned his office, and as Absalom rode out of town toward the
mountains, he saw the old man in his crumpled brown jeans suit, mounted
on his white mare, jogging down the red clay road, his head bowed before
the slanting lines of rain, on his way to his cheerless fireside. He
turned off presently, for the road to the levels of the Cove was not the
shorter cut that Absalom travelled to the mountains. But all the way the
young man fancied that he saw from time to time, as the bridle-path
curved in the intricacies of the laurel, the bowed old figure among the
mists, jogging along, his proud head and his stiff neck bent to the
slanting rain and the buffets of his unkind fate. And yet, pressing the
young horse to overtake him, Absalom could find naught but the fleecy
mists drifting down the bridle-path as the wind might will, or lurking
in the darkling nooks of the laurel when the wind would.
* * * * *
The sun was shining on the mountains, and Absalom went up from the sad
gray rain and through the gloomy clouds of autumn hanging over the Cove
into a soft brilliant upper atmosphere--a generous after-thought of
summer--and the warm brightness of Evelina's smile. She stood in the
doorway as she saw him dismounting, with her finger on her lips, for the
baby was sleeping: he put much of his time into that occupation. The
tiny gourds hung yellow among the vines that clambered over the roof of
the porch, and a brave jack-bean--a friend of the sheltering eaves--made
shift to bloom purple and white, though others of the kind hung crisp
and sere, and rattled their dry bones in every gust. The "gyarden spot"
at the side of the house was full of brown and withered skeletons of the
summer growths; among the crisp blades of the Indian-corn a sibilant
voice was forever whispering; down the tawny-colored vistas the pumpkins
glowed. The sky was blue; the yellow hickory flaming against it and
hanging over the roof of the cabin was a fine color to see. The red
sour-wood tree in the fence corner shook out a myriad of white tassels;
the rolling tumult of the gray clouds below thickened, and he could hear
the rain a-falling--falling into the dreary depths of the Cove.
All this for him: why should he disquiet himself for the storm that
burst upon others?
Evelina seemed a part of the brightness; her dark eyes so softly alight,
her curving red lips, the faint flush in her cheeks, her rich brown
hair, and the purplish kerchief about the neck of her yellow dress. Once
more she looked smilingly at him, and shook her head and laid her finger
on her lip.
"I oughter been sati'fied with all I got, stiddier hectorin' other folks
till they 'ain't got no heart ter hold on ter what they been at sech
trouble ter git," he said, as he turned out the horse and strode
gloomily toward the house with the saddle over his arm.
"Hev ennybody been spiteful ter you-uns ter-day?" she asked, in an
almost maternal solicitude, and with a flash of partisan anger in her
eyes.
"Git out'n my road, Eveliny," he said, fretfully, pushing by, and
throwing the saddle on the floor. There was no one in the room but the
occupant of the rude box on rockers which served as cradle.
Absalom had a swift, prescient fear. "She'll git it all out'n me ef I
don't look sharp," he said to himself. Then aloud, "Whar's mam?" he
demanded, flinging himself into a chair and looking loweringly about.
"Topknot hev jes kem off'n her nest with fourteen deedies, an' she an'
'Melia hev gone ter the barn ter see 'bout'n 'em."
"Whar's Pete?"
"A-huntin'."
A pause. The fire smouldered audibly; a hickory-nut fell with a sharp
thwack on the clapboards of the roof, and rolled down and bounded to the
ground.
Suddenly: "I seen yer dad ter-day," he began, without coercion. "He gin
me a cussin', in the court-room, 'fore all the folks. He cussed all the
Kittredges, _all_ o' 'em; him too"--he glanced in the direction of the
cradle--"cussed 'em black an' blue, an' called me a _thief_ fur marryin'
ye an kerry-in' ye off."
Her face turned scarlet, then pale. She sat down, her trembling hands
reaching out to rock the cradle, as if the youthful Kittredge might be
disturbed by the malediction hurled upon his tribe. But he slept
sturdily on.
"Waal, now," she said, making a great effort at self-control, "ye
oughtn't ter mind it. Ye know he war powerful tried. I never purtended
ter be ez sweet an' pritty ez the baby air, but how would you-uns feel
ef somebody ye despised war ter kem hyar an' tote him off from we-uns
forever?"
"I'd cut thar hearts out," he said, with prompt barbarity.
"Thar, now!" exclaimed his wife, in triumphant logic.
He gloomily eyed the smouldering coals. He was beginning to understand
the paternal sentiment. By his own heart he was learning the heart of
his wife's father.
"I'd chop 'em inter minch-meat," he continued, carrying his just
reprisals a step further.
"Waal, don't do it right now," said his wife, trying to laugh, yet
vaguely frightened by his vehemence.
"Eveliny," he cried, springing to his feet, "I be a-goin' ter tell ye
all 'bout'n it. I jes called on the cheerman fur the law agin him."
"Agin _dad_!--the law!" Her voice dropped as she contemplated aghast
this terrible uncomprehended force brought to oppress old Joel Quimbey;
she felt a sudden poignant pang for his forlorn and lonely estate.
"Never mind, never mind, Eveliny," Absalom said, hastily, repenting of
his frantic candor and seeking to soothe her.
"I _will_ mind," she said, sternly. "What hev ye done ter dad?"
"Nuthin'," he replied, sulkily--"nuthin'."
"Ye needn't try ter fool me, Abs'lom Kittredge. Ef ye ain't minded ter
tell me, I'll foot it down ter town an' find out. What did the law do
ter him?"
"Jes fined him," he said, striving to make light of it.
"An' ye done that fur--_spite_!" she cried. "A-settin' the law ter
chouse a old man out'n money, fur gittin' mad an' sayin' ye stole his
only darter. Oh, I'll answer fur him"--she too had risen; her hand
trembled on the back of the chair, but her face was scornfully
smiling--"he don't mind the _money_; he'll never git you-uns _fined_ ter
pay back the gredge. He don't take his wrath out on folkses' _wallets_;
he grips thar throats, or teches the trigger o' his rifle. Laws-a-massy!
takin' out yer gredge that-a-way! It's _ye_ poorer fur them dollars,
Abs'lom--'tain't him." She laughed satirically, and turned to rock the
cradle.
"What d'ye want me ter do? Fight a old man?" he exclaimed, angrily.
She kept silence, only looking at him with a flushed cheek and a
scornful laughing eye.
He went on, resentfully: "I ain't 'shamed," he stoutly asserted. "Nobody
'lowed I oughter be. It's him, plumb bowed down with shame."
"The shoe's on the t'other foot," she cried. "It's ye that oughter be
'shamed, an' ef ye ain't, it's more shame ter ye. What hev he got ter be
'shamed of?"
"'Kase," he retorted, "he war fetched up afore a court on a crim'nal
offence--a-cussin' afore the court! Ye may think it's no shame, but he
do; he war so 'shamed he gin up his office ez jestice o' the peace, what
he hev run fur four or five times, an' always got beat 'ceptin' wunst."
"Dad!" but for the whisper she seemed turning to stone; her dilated
eyes were fixed as she stared into his face.
"An' I seen him a-ridin' off from town in the rain arterward, his head
hangin' plumb down ter the saddle-bow."
Her amazed eyes were still fastened upon his face, but her hand no
longer trembled on the back of the chair.
He suddenly held out his own hand to her, his sympathy and regret
returning as he recalled the picture of the lonely wayfarer in the rain
that had touched him so. "Oh, Eveliny!" he cried, "I never war so beset
an' sorry an'--"
She struck his hand down; her eyes blazed. Her aspect was all instinct
with anger.
"I do declar' I'll never furgive ye--ter spite him so--an' kem an' tell
_me_! An' shame him so ez he can't hold his place--an' kem an' tell
_me_! An' bow him down so ez he can't show his face whar he hev been so
respected by all--an' kem an' tell _me_! An' all fur spite, fur he hev
got nuthin' ye want now. An' I gin him up an' lef him lonely, an' all
fur you-uns. Ye air mean, Abs'lom Kittredge, an' I'm the mos' fursaken
fool on the face o' the yearth!"
He tried to speak, but she held up her hand in expostulation.
"Nare word--fur I won't answer. I do declar' I'll never speak ter ye
agin ez long ez I live."
He flung away with a laugh and a jeer. "That's right," he said,
encouragingly; "plenty o' men would be powerful glad ef thar wives would
take pattern by that."
He caught up his hat and strode out of the room. He busied himself in
stabling his horse, and in looking after the stock. He could hear the
women's voices from the loft of the barn as they disputed about the best
methods of tending the newly hatched chickens, that had chipped the
shell so late in the fall as to be embarrassed by the frosts and the
coming cold weather. The last bee had ceased to drone about the great
crimson prince's-feather by the door-step, worn purplish through long
flaunting, and gone to seed. The clouds were creeping up and up the
slope, and others were journeying hither from over the mountains. A
sense of moisture was in the air, although a great column of dust sprang
up from the dry corn-field, with panic-stricken suggestions, and went
whirling away, carrying off withered blades in the rush. The first drops
of rain were pattering, with a resonant timbre in the midst, when Pete
came home with a newly killed deer on his horse, and the women, with
fluttering skirts and sun-bonnets, ran swiftly across from the barn to
the back door of the shed-room. Then the heavy downpour made the cabin
rock.
"Why, Eveliny an' the baby oughtn't ter be out in this hyar
rain--they'll be drenched," said the old woman, when they were all
safely housed except the two. "Whar be she?"
"A-foolin' in the gyarden spot a-getherin' seed an' sech, like she
always be," said the sister-in-law, tartly.
Absalom ran out into the rain without his hat, his heart in the clutch
of a prescient terror. No; the summer was over for the garden as well as
for him; all forlorn and rifled, its few swaying shrubs tossed wildly
about, a mockery of the grace and bloom that had once embellished it.
His wet hair streaming backward in the wind caught on the laurel boughs
as he went down and down the tangled path that her homesick feet had
worn to the crag which overlooked the Cove. Not there! He stood, himself
enveloped in the mist, and gazed blankly into the folds of the
dun-colored clouds that with tumultuous involutions surged above the
valley and baffled his vision. He realized it with a sinking heart. She
was gone.
* * * * *
That afternoon--it was close upon nightfall--Stephen Quimbey, letting
down the bars for the cows, noticed through the slanting lines of rain,
serried against the masses of sober-hued vapors which hid the great
mountain towering above the Cove, a woman crossing the foot-bridge. He
turned and lifted down another bar, and then looked again. Something was
familiar in her aspect, certainly. He stood gravely staring. Her
sun-bonnet had fallen back upon her shoulders, and was hanging loosely
there by the strings tied beneath her chin; her brown hair, dishevelled
by the storm, tossed back and forth in heavy wave-less locks, wet
through and through. When the wind freshened they lashed, thong-like,
her pallid oval face; more than once she put up her hand and tried to
gather them together, or to press them back--only one hand, for she
clasped a heavy bundle in her arms, and as she toiled along slowly up
the rocky slope, Stephen suddenly held his palm above his eyes. The
recognition was becoming definite, and yet he could scarcely believe
his senses: was it indeed Evelina, wind-tossed, tempest-beaten, and with
as many tears as rain-drops on her pale cheek? Evelina, forlorn and
sorry, and with swollen sad dark eyes, and listless exhausted step--here
again at the bars, where she had not stood since she dragged her wounded
lover thence on that eventful night two years and more ago.
Resentment for the domestic treachery was uppermost in his mind, and he
demanded surlily, when she had advanced within the sound of his words,
"What hev ye kem hyar fur?"
"Ter stay," she responded, briefly.
His hand in an uncertain gesture laid hold upon his tuft of beard.
"Fur good?" he faltered, amazed.
She nodded silently.
He stooped to lift down the lowest bar that she might pass. Suddenly the
bundle she clasped gave a dexterous twist; a small head, with yellow
downy hair, was thrust forth; a pair of fawn-like eyes fixed an
inquiring stare upon him; the pink face distended with a grin, to which
the two small teeth in the red mouth, otherwise empty, lent a singularly
merry expression; and with a manner that was a challenge to pursuit, the
head disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared, tucked with affected
shyness under Evelina's arm.
She left Stephen standing with the bar in his hand, staring blankly
after her, and ran into the cabin.
Her father had no questions to ask--nor she.
As he caught her in his arms he gave a great cry of joy that rang
through the house, and brought Timothy from the barn, in astonishment,
to the scene.
"Eveliny's _home_!" he cried out to Tim, who, with the ox-yoke in his
hand, paused in the doorway. "Kem ter stay! Eveliny's _home_! I knowed
she'd kem back to her old daddy. Eveliny's kem ter stay fur good."
"They tole me they'd hectored ye plumb out'n the town an' out'n yer
office. They hed the insurance ter tell _me_ that word!" she cried,
sobbing on his breast.
"What d'ye reckon I keer fur enny jestice's cheer when I hev got ye agin
ter set alongside o' me by the fire?" he exclaimed, his cracked old
voice shrill with triumphant gladness.
He pushed her into her rocking-chair in the chimney-corner, and laughed
again with the supreme pleasure of the moment, although she had leaned
her head against the logs of the wall, and was sobbing aloud with the
contending emotions that tore her heart.
"Didn't ye ever want ter kem afore, Eveliny?" he demanded. "I hev been
a-pinin' fur a glimge o' ye." He was in his own place now, his hands
trembling as they lay on the arms of his chair, a pathetic reproach was
in his voice. "Though old folks oughtn't ter expec' too much o' young
ones, ez be all tuk up naterally with tharse'fs," he added, bravely. He
would not let his past lonely griefs mar the bright present. "Old folks
air mos'ly cumberers--mos'ly cumberers o' the yearth, ennyhow."
Her weeping had ceased; she was looking at him with dismayed surprise
in her eyes, still lustrous with unshed tears. "Why, dad I sent ye a
hundred messages ef I mought kem. I tole Abs'lom ter tell Joe
Boyd--bein' as ye liked Joe--I wanted ter see ye." She leaned forward
and looked up at him with frowning intensity. "They never gin ye that
word?"
He laughed aloud in sorry scorn. "We can't teach our chil'n nuthin'," he
philosophized. "They hev got ter hurt tharse'fs with all the thorns an'
the stings o' the yearth. Our sperience with the sharp things an' bitter
ones don't do them no sarvice. Naw, leetle darter--naw! Ye mought ez
well gin a message o' kindness ter a wolf, an' expec' him ter kerry it
ter some lonesome, helpless thing a-wounded by the way-side, ez gin it
ter a Kittredge."
"I never will speak ter one o' 'em agin ez long ez I live," she cried,
with a fresh gust of tears.
"Waal," exclaimed the old man, reassuringly, and chirping high, "hyar we
all be agin, jes' the same ez we war afore. Don't cry, Eveliny; it's
jes' the same."
A sudden babbling intruded upon the conversation. The youthful
Kittredge, as he sat upon the wide flat stones of the hearth, was as
unwelcome here in the Cove as a Quimbey had been in the cabin on the
mountain. The great hickory fire called for his unmixed approval, coming
in, as he had done, from the gray wet day. He shuffled his bare pink
feet--exceedingly elastic and agile members they seemed to be, and he
had a remarkable "purchase" upon their use--and brought them smartly
down upon their heels as if this were one of the accepted gestures of
applause. Then he looked up at the dark frowning faces of his mother's
brothers, and gurgled with laughter, showing the fascinating spectacle
of his two front teeth. Perhaps it was the only Kittredge eye that they
were not willing to meet. They solemnly gazed beyond him and into the
fire, ignoring his very existence. He sustained the slight with an
admirable cheerfulness, and babbled and sputtered and flounced about
with his hands. He grew pinker in the generous firelight, and he looked
very fat as he sat in a heap on the floor. He seemed to have threads
tightly tied about his bolster-shaped limbs in places where elder people
prefer joints--in his ankles and wrists and elbows--for his arms were
bare, and although his frock of pink calico hung decorously high on one
shoulder, it drooped quite off from the other, showing a sturdy chest.
His mother took slight notice of him; she was beginning to look about
the room with a certain critical disfavor at the different arrangement
of the household furniture adopted by her father's deaf and widowed old
sister who presided here now, and who, it chanced, had been called away
by the illness of a relative. Evelina got up presently, and shifted the
position of the spinning-wheels, placing the flax-wheel where the large
wheel had been. She then pushed out the table from the corner. "What
ailed her ter sot it hyar?" she grumbled, in a disaffected undertone,
and shoved it to the centre of the floor, where it had always stood
during her own sway. She cast a discerning glance up among the strings
of herbs and peppers hanging from above, and examined the shelves where
the simple stores for table use were arranged in earthen-ware bowls or
gourds--all with an air of vague dissatisfaction. She presently stepped
into the shed-room, and there looked over the piles of quilts. They were
in order, certainly, but placed in a different method from her own;
another woman's hand had been at work, and she was jealous of its very
touch among these familiar old things to which she seemed positively
akin. "I wonder how I made out ter bide so long on the mounting," she
said; and with the recollection of the long-haired Absalom there was
another gush of tears and sobs, which she stifled as she could in one of
the old quilts that held many of her own stitches and was soothing to
touch.