seemed to realize that he had failed to attract the attention of the
three absorbed Quimbeys who sat about the fire. He blithely addressed
himself to another effort. He suddenly whisked himself over on
all-fours, and with a certain ursine aspect went nimbly across the
hearth, still holding up his downy yellow head, his pink face agrin, and
alluringly displaying his two facetious teeth. He caught the rung of
Tim's chair, and lifted himself tremulously to an upright posture. And
then it became evident that he was about to give an exhibition of the
thrilling feat of walking around a chair. With a truly Kittredge
perversity he had selected the one that had the savage Timothy seated in
it. For an instant the dark-browed face scowled down into his
unaffrighted eyes: it seemed as if Tim might kick him into the fire.
The next moment he had set out to circumnavigate, as it were. What a
prodigious force he expended upon it! How he gurgled and grinned and
twisted his head to observe the effect upon the men, all sedulously
gazing into the fire! how he bounced, and anon how he sank with sudden
genuflections! how limber his feet seemed, and what free agents! Surely
he never intended to put them down at that extravagant angle. More than
once one foot was placed on top of the other--an attitude that impeded
locomotion and resulted in his sitting down in an involuntary manner and
with some emphasis. With an appalling temerity he clutched Tim's great
miry boots to help him up and on his way round. Occasionally he swayed
to and fro, with his teeth on exhibition, laughing and babbling and
shrilly exclaiming, inarticulately bragging of his agile prowess, as if
he were able to defy all the Quimbeys, who would not notice him. And
when it was all over he went in his wriggling ursine gait back to the
hearth-stone, and there he was sitting, demurely enough, and as if he
had never moved, when his mother returned and found him.
There was no indication that he had attracted a moment's attention. She
looked gravely down at him; then took her chair. A pair of blue yarn
socks was in her hand. "I never see sech darnin' ez Aunt Sairy Ann do
fur ye, dad; I hev jes tuk my shears an' cut this heel smang out, an' I
be goin' ter do it over."
She slipped a tiny gourd into the heel, and began to draw the slow
threads to and fro across it.
The blaze, red and yellow, and with elusive purple gleams, leaped up the
chimney. The sap was still in the wood; it sang a summer-tide song. But
an autumn wind was blowing shrilly down the chimney; one could hear the
sibilant rush of the dead leaves on the blast. The window and the door
shook, and were still, and once more rattled as if a hand were on the
latch.
Suddenly--"Ever weigh him?" her father asked.
She sat upright with a nervous start. It was a moment before she
understood that it was of the Kittredge scion he spoke.
With his high cracked laugh the old man leaned over, his outspread hand
hovering about the plump baby, uncertain where, in so much soft fatness,
it might be practicable to clutch him. There were some large horn
buttons on the back of his frock, a half-dozen of which, gathered
together, afforded a grasp. He lifted the child by them, laughing in
undisguised pleasure to feel the substantial strain upon the garment.
"Toler'ble survigrus," he declared, with his high chirp.
His daughter suddenly sprang up with a pallid face and a pointing hand.
"The winder!" she huskily cried--"suthin's at the winder!"
But when they looked they saw only the dark square of tiny panes, with
the fireside scene genially reflected on it. And then she fell to
declaring that she had been dreaming, and besought them not to take down
their guns nor to search, and would not be still until they had all
seemed to concede the point; it was she who fastened the doors and
shutters, and she did not lie down to rest till they were all asleep and
hours had passed. None of them doubted that it was Absalom's face that
she had seen at the window, where the light had once lured him before,
and she knew that she had dreamed no dream like this.
* * * * *
It soon became evident that whenever Joe Boyd was intrusted with a
message he would find means to deliver it. For upon him presently
devolved the difficult duties of ambassador. The first time that his
honest square face appeared at the rail fence, and the sound of his
voice roused Evelina as she stood feeding the poultry close by, she
returned his question with a counter-question hard to answer.
"I hev been up the mounting," he said, smiling, as he hooked his arms
over the rail fence. "Abs'lom he say he wanter know when ye'll git yer
visit out an' kem home."
She leaned her elbow against the ash-hopper, balancing the wooden bowl
of corn-meal batter on its edge and trembling a little; the geese and
chickens and turkeys crowded, a noisy rout, about her feet.
"Joe," she said, irrelevantly, "ye air one o' the few men on this yearth
ez ain't a liar."
He stared at her gravely for a moment, then burst into a forced laugh.
"Ho! ho! I tell a bushel o' 'em a day, Eveliny!" He wagged his head in
an anxious affectation of mirth.
"Why'n't ye gin dad them messages ez Abs'lom gin ye from me?"
Joe received this in blank amaze; then, with sudden comprehension, his
lower jaw dropped. He looked at her with a plea for pity in his eyes.
And yet his ready tact strove to reassert itself.
"I mus' hev furgot 'em," he faltered.
"Did Abs'lom ever gin 'em ter ye?" she persisted.
"_Ef he did_, I mus' hev furgot 'em," he repeated, crestfallen and
hopeless.
She laughed and turned jauntily away, once more throwing the corn-meal
batter to the greedily jostling poultry. "Tell Abs'lom I hev f'und him
out," she said. "He can't sot me agin dad no sech way. This be my home,
an' hyar I be goin' ter 'bide."
And so she left the good Joe Boyd hooked on by the elbows to the fence.
The Quimbeys, who had heard this conversation from within, derived from
it no small elation. "She hev gin 'em the go-by fur good," Timothy said,
confidently, to his father, who laughed in triumph, and pulled calmly at
his pipe, and looked ten years younger.
But Steve was surlily anxious. "I'd place heap mo' dependence in Eveliny
ef she didn't hev this hyar way o' cryin' all the time. She 'lows she's
glad she kem--_so glad_ she hev lef' Abs'lom fur good an' all--an' then
she busts out a-cryin' agin. I ain't able ter argufy on sech."
"Shucks! wimmen air always a-cryin', an' they don't mean _nuthin_' by
it," exclaimed the old man, in the plenitude of his wisdom. "It air jes'
one o' thar most contrarious ways. I hev seen 'em set down an' cry fur
joy an' pleasure."
[Illustration: "'WHY'N'T YE GIN DAD THEM MESSAGES?'"]
But Steve was doubtful. "It be a powerful low-sperited gift fur them ez
hev ter 'bide along of 'em. Eveliny never useter be tearful in nowise.
Now she cries a heap mo' 'n that thar shoat"--his lips curled in
contempt as he glanced toward the door, through which was visible a
small rotund figure in pink calico, seated upon the lowest log of the
wood-pile--"ez she fotched down hyar with her. _He_ never hev hed a
reg'lar blate but two or three times sence he hev been hyar, an' them
war when that thar old tur-rkey gobbler teetered up ter him an' tuk his
corn-dodger that he war a-eatin' on plumb out'n his hand. _He_ hed
suthin' to holler fur--hed los' his breakfus."
"Don't he 'pear ter you-uns to be powerful peegeon-toed?" asked Tim,
anxiously, turning to his father.
"The gawbbler?" faltered the amazed old man.
"Naw; him, _him_--_Kittredge_," said Tim, jerking his big thumb in the
direction of the small boy.
"Law-dy Gawd A'mighty! _naw! naw!_" The grandfather indignantly
repudiated the imputation of the infirmity. One would have imagined that
he would deem it meet that a Kittredge should be pigeon-toed. "It's jes
the way _all_ babies hev got a-walkin'; he ain't right handy yit with
his feet--jes a-beginnin' ter walk, an' sech. Peegeon-toed! I say it, ye
fool!" He cast a glance of contempt on his eldest-born, and arrogantly
puffed his pipe.
Again Joe Boyd came, and yet again. He brought messages contrite and
promissory from Absalom; he brought commands stern and insistent. He
came into the house at last, and sat and talked at the fireside in the
presence of the men of the family, who bore themselves in a manner
calculated to impress the Kittredge emissary with their triumph and
contempt for his mission, although they studiously kept silence, leaving
it to Evelina to answer.
At last the old man, leaning forward, tapped Joe on the knee. "See hyar,
Joe. Ye hev always been a good frien' o' mine. This hyar man he stole my
darter from me, an' whenst she wanted ter be frien's, an' not let her
old dad die unforgivin', he wouldn't let her send the word ter me. An'
then he sot himself ter spite an' hector me, an' fairly run me out'n the
town, an' harried me out'n my office, an' when she f'und out--she
wouldn't take my word fur it--the deceivin' natur' o' the Kittredge
tribe, she hed hed enough o' 'em. I hev let ye argufy 'bout'n it; ye hev
hed yer fill of words. An' now I be tired out. Ye ain't 'lowin' she'll
ever go back ter her husband, air ye?"
Joe dolorously shook his head.
"Waal, ef ever ye kem hyar talkin' 'bout'n it agin, I'll be 'bleeged ter
take down my rifle ter ye."
Joe gazed, unmoved, into the fire.
"An' that would be mighty hard on me, Joe, 'kase ye be so pop'lar
'mongst all, I dunno _what_ the kentry-side would do ter me ef I war ter
put a bullet inter ye. Ye air a young man, Joe. Ye oughter spare a old
man sech a danger ez that."
And so it happened that Joe Boyd's offices as mediator ceased.
A week went by in silence and without result. Evelina's tears seemed to
keep count of the minutes. The brothers indignantly noted it, and even
the old man was roused from the placid securities of his theories
concerning lachrymose womankind, and remonstrated sometimes, and
sometimes grew angry and exhorted her to go back. What did it matter to
her how her father was treated? He was a cumberer of the ground, and
many people besides her husband had thought he had no right to sit in a
justice's chair. And then she would burst into tears once more, and
declare again that she would never go back.
The only thoroughly cheerful soul about the place was the intruding
Kittredge. He sat continuously--for the weather was fine--on the lowest
log of the wood-pile, and swung his bare pink feet among the chips and
bark, and seemed to have given up all ambition to walk. Occasionally red
and yellow leaves whisked past his astonished eyes, although these were
few now, for November was on the wane. He babbled to the chickens, who
pecked about him with as much indifference as if he were made of wood.
His two teeth came glittering out whenever the rooster crowed, and his
gleeful laugh--he rejoiced so in this handsomely endowed bird--could be
heard to the barn. The dogs seemed never to have known that he was a
Kittredge, and wagged their tails at the very sound of his voice, and
seized surreptitious opportunities to lick his face. Of all his
underfoot world only the gobbler awed him into gravity and silence; he
would gaze in dismay as the marauding fowl irresolutely approached from
around the wood-pile, with long neck out-stretched and undulating gait,
applying first one eye and then the other to the pink hands, for the
gobbler seemed to consider them a perpetual repository of corn-dodgers,
which indeed they were. Then the head and the wabbling red wattles would
dart forth with a sudden peck, and the shriek that ensued proved that
nothing could be much amiss with the Kittredge lungs.
One fine day he sat thus in the red November sunset. The sky, seen
through the interlacing black boughs above his head, was all amber and
crimson, save for a wide space of pure and pallid green, against which
the purplish-garnet wintry mountains darkly gloomed. Beyond the rail
fence the avenues of the bare woods were carpeted with the sere
yellowish leaves that gave back the sunlight with a responsive
illuminating effect, and thus the sylvan vistas glowed. The long
slanting beams elongated his squatty little shadow till it was hardly a
caricature. He heard the cow lowing as she came to be milked, fording
the river where the clouds were so splendidly reflected. The chickens
were going to roost. The odor of the wood, the newly-hewn chips,
imparted a fresh and fragrant aroma to the air. He had found among them
a sweet-gum ball and a pine cone, and was applying them to the
invariable test of taste. Suddenly he dropped them with a nervous start,
his lips trembled, his lower jaw fell, he was aware of a stealthy
approach. Something was creeping behind the wood-pile. He hardly had
time to bethink himself of his enemy the gobbler when he was clutched
under the arm, swung through the air with a swiftness that caused the
scream to evaporate in his throat, and the next moment he looked
quakingly up into his father's face with unrecognizing eyes; for he had
forgotten Absalom in these few weeks. He squirmed and wriggled as he was
held on the pommel of the saddle, winking and catching his breath and
spluttering, as preliminary proceedings to an outcry. There was a sudden
sound of heavily shod feet running across the puncheon floor within, a
wild, incoherent exclamation smote the air, an interval of significant
silence ensued.
"Get up!" cried Absalom, not waiting for Tim's rifle, but spurring the
young horse, and putting him at the fence. The animal rose with the
elasticity and lightness of an uprearing ocean wave. The baby once more
twisted his soft neck, and looked anxiously into the rider's face. This
was not the gobbler. The gobbler did not ride horseback. Then the
affinity of the male infant for the noble equine animal suddenly
overbore all else. In elation he smote with his soft pink hand the
glossy arched neck before him. "Dul-lup!" he arrogantly echoed Absalom's
words. And thus father and son at a single bound disappeared into woods,
and so out of sight.
* * * * *
The savage Tim was leaning upon his rifle in the doorway, his eyes
dilated, his breath short, his whole frame trembling with excitement, as
the other men, alarmed by Evelina's screams, rushed down from the barn.
"What ails ye, Tim? Why'n't ye fire?" demanded his father.
Tim turned an agitated, baffled look upon him. "I--I mought hev hit the
baby," he faltered.
"Hain't ye got no aim, ye durned sinner?" asked Stephen, furiously.
"Bullet mought hev gone through him and struck inter the baby,"
expostulated Tim.
"An' then agin it moughtn't!" cried Stephen. "Lawd, ef _I_ hed hed the
chance!"
"Ye wouldn't hev done no differ," declared Tim.
"Hyar!" Steve caught his brother's gun and presented it to Tim's lips.
"Suck the bar'l. It's 'bout all ye air good fur."
The horses had been turned out. By the time they were caught and saddled
pursuit was evidently hopeless. The men strode in one by one, dashing
the saddles and bridles on the floor, and finding in angry expletives a
vent for their grief. And indeed it might have seemed that the Quimbeys
must have long sought a choice Kittredge infant for adoption, so far did
their bewailings discount Rachel's mourning.
"Don't cry, Eveliny," they said, ever and anon. "We-uns'll git him back
fur ye."
But she had not shed a tear. She sat speechless, motionless, as if
turned to stone.
"Laws-a-massy, child, ef ye would jes hev b'lieved _me_ 'bout'n them
Kittredges--Abs'lom in partic'lar--ye'd be happy an' free now," said the
old man, his imagination somewhat extending his experience, for he had
had no knowledge of his son-in-law until their relationship began.
The evening wore drearily on. Now and then the men roused themselves,
and with lowering faces discussed the opportunities of reprisal, and
the best means of rescuing the child. And whether they schemed to burn
the Kittredge cabin, or to arm themselves, burst in upon their enemies,
shooting and killing all who resisted, Evelina said nothing, but stared
into the fire with unnaturally dilated eyes, her white lined face all
drawn and somehow unrecognizable.
"Never mind," her father said at intervals, taking her cold hand,
"we-uns 'll git him back, Eveliny. The Lord hed a mother wunst, an' I'll
be bound He keeps a special pity for a woman an' her child."
"Oh, great gosh! who'd hev dreamt we'd hev missed him so!" cried Tim,
shifting his position, and slipping his left arm over the back of his
chair. "Jes ter think o' the leetle size o' him, an' the great big gap
he hev lef' roun' this hyar ha'th-stone!"
"An' yit he jes sot underfoot, 'mongst the cat an' the dogs, jes ez
humble!" said Stephen.
"I'd git him back even ef he warn't no kin ter me, Eveliny," declared
Tim, and he spoke advisedly, remembering that the youth was a Kittredge.
Still Evelina said not a word. All that night she silently walked the
puncheon floor, while the rest of the household slept. The dogs, in
vague disturbance, because of the unprecedented vigil and stir in the
midnight, wheezed uneasily from time to time, and crept restlessly about
under the cabin, now and again thumping their backs or heads against the
floor; but at last they betook themselves to slumber. The hickory logs
broke in twain as they burned, and fell on either side, and presently
there was only the dull red glow of the embers on her pale face, and the
room was full of brown shadows, motionless, now that the flames flared
no more. Once when the red glow, growing ever dimmer, seemed almost
submerged beneath the gray ashes, she paused and stirred the coals. The
renewed glimmer showed a fixed expression in her eyes, becoming momently
more resolute. At intervals she knelt at the window and placed her hands
about her face to shut out the light from the hearth, and looked out
upon the night. How the chill stars loitered! How the dawn delayed! The
great mountain gloomed darkling above the Cove. The waning moon, all
melancholy and mystic, swung in the purple sky. The bare, stark boughs
of the trees gave out here and there a glimmer of hoar-frost. There was
no wind; when she heard the dry leaves whisk she caught a sudden glimpse
of a fox that, with his crafty shadow pursuing him, leaped upon the
wood-pile, nimbly ran along its length, and so, noiselessly, away--while
the dogs snored beneath the house. A cock crew from the chicken-roost;
the mountain echoed the resonant strain. She saw a mist come stealing
softly along a precipitous gorge; the gauzy web hung shimmering in the
moon; presently the trees were invisible; anon they showed rigid among
the soft enmeshment of the vapor, and again were lost to view.
She rose; there was a new energy in her step; she walked quickly across
the floor and unbarred the door.
The little cabin on the mountain was lost among the clouds. It was not
yet day, but the old woman, with that proclivity to early rising
characteristic of advancing years, was already astir. It was in the
principal room of the cabin that she slept, and it contained another
bed, in which, placed crosswise, were five billet-shaped objects under
the quilts, which when awake identified themselves as Peter Kittredge's
children. She had dressed and uncovered the embers, and put on a few of
the chips which had been spread out on the hearth to dry, and had sat
down in the chimney corner. A timid blaze began to steal up, and again
was quenched, and only the smoke ascended in its form; then the light
flickered out once more, casting a gigantic shadow of her
sun-bonnet--for she had donned it thus early--half upon the brown and
yellow daubed wall, and half upon the dark ceiling, making a specious
stir amidst the peltry and strings of pop-corn hanging motionless
thence.
She sighed heavily once or twice, and with an aged manner, and leaned
her elbows on her knees and gazed contemplatively at the fire. All at
once the ashes were whisked about the hearth as in a sudden draught, and
then were still. In momentary surprise she pushed her chair back,
hesitated, then replaced it, and calmly settled again her elbows on her
knees. Suddenly once more a whisking of the ashes; a cold shiver ran
through her, and she turned to see a hand fumbling at the batten shutter
close by. She stared for a moment as if paralyzed; her spectacles fell
to the floor from her nerveless hand, shattering the lenses on the
hearth. She rose trembling to her feet, and her lips parted as if to
cry out. They emitted no sound, and she turned with a terrified
fascination and looked back. The shutter had opened, there was no glass,
the small square of the window showed the nebulous gray mist without,
and defined upon it was Evelina's head, her dark hair streaming over the
red shawl held about it, her fair oval face pallid and pensive, and with
a great wistfulness upon it; her lustrous dark eyes glittered.
"Mother," her red lips quivered out.
The old crone recognized no treachery in her heart. She laid a warning
finger upon her lips. All the men were asleep.
Evelina stretched out her yearning arms. "Gin him ter me!"
"Naw, naw, Eveliny," huskily whispered Absalom's mother. "Ye oughter kem
hyar an' 'bide with yer husband--ye know ye ought."
Evelina still held out her insistent arms. "Gin him ter me!" she
pleaded.
The old woman shook her head sternly. "Ye kem in, an' 'bide whar ye
b'long."
Evelina took a step nearer the window. She laid her hand on the sill.
"Spos'n 'twar Abs'lom whenst he war a baby," she said, her eyes softly
brightening, "an' another woman hed him an' kep' him, 'kase ye an' his
dad fell out--would ye hev 'lowed she war right ter treat ye like ye
treat me--whenst Abs'lom war a baby?"
Once more she held out her arms.
There was a step in the inner shed-room; then silence.
"Ye hain't got no excuse," the soft voice urged; "ye know jes how I
feel, how ye'd hev felt, whenst Abs'lom war a baby."
The shawl had fallen back from her tender face; her eyes glowed, her
cheek was softly flushed. A sudden terror thrilled through her as she
again heard the heavy step approaching in the shed-room. "Whenst Abs'lom
war a baby," she reiterated, her whole pleading heart in the tones.
A sudden radiance seemed to illumine the sad, dun-colored folds of the
encompassing cloud; her face shone with a transfiguring happiness, for
the hustling old crone had handed out to her a warm, somnolent bundle,
and the shutter closed upon the mists with a bang.
"The wind's riz powerful suddint," Peter said, noticing the noise as he
came stumbling in, rubbing his eyes. He went and fastened the shutter,
while his mother tremulously mended the fire.
The absence of the baby was not noticed for some time, and when the
father's hasty and angry questions elicited the reluctant facts, the
outcry for his loss was hardly less bitter among the Kittredges than
among the Quimbeys. The fugitives were shielded from capture by the
enveloping mist, and when Absalom returned from the search he could do
naught but indignantly upbraid his mother.
She was terrified by her own deed, and cowered under Absalom's wrath. It
was in a moral collapse, she felt, that she could have done this thing.
She flung her apron over her head, and sat still and silent--a
monumental figure--among them. Once, roused by Absalom's reproaches, she
made some effort to defend and exculpate herself, speaking from behind
the enveloping apron.
"I ain't born no Kittredge nohow," she irrelevantly asseverated, "an' I
never war. An' when Eveliny axed me how I'd hev liked ter hev another
'oman take Abs'lom whenst he war a baby, I couldn't hold out no longer."
"Shucks!" cried Absalom, unfilially; "ye'd a heap better be a-studyin'
'bout'n my good now 'n whenst I war a baby--a-givin' away _my_ child ter
them Quimbeys; a-h'istin' him out'n the winder!"
She was glad to retort that he was "impident," and to take refuge in an
aggrieved silence, as many another mother has done when outmatched by
logic.
After this there was more cheerfulness in her hidden face than might
have been argued from her port of important sorrow. "Bes' ter hev no
jawin', though," she said to herself, as she sat thus inscrutably
veiled. And deep in her repentant heart she was contradictorily glad
that Evelina and the baby were safe together down in the Cove.
* * * * *