but grieve ter hear how my nevy Lee-yander hev 'prospered,' ez ye call
it, an' I be s'prised ye should gin it such a name. Oh-h-h, Sister
Sudley!" in prolonged and dreary vocative, "I 'lowed ye war a godly
woman. I knowed yer name 'mongst the church-goers an' the
church-members." A faint flush sprang into her delicate faded cheek; a
halo encircled this repute of sanctity, she felt with quivering
premonition that it was about to be urged as a testimony against her.
"Elsewise I wouldn't hev gin my cornsent ter hev lef' the leetle lam',
Lee-yander, in yer fold. Precious, precious leetle lam'!"
Poor Laurelia! Were it not that she had a sense of fault under the
scathing arraignment of her motives, her work, and its result, although
she scarcely saw how she was to blame, that she had equally with him
esteemed Leander's standpoint iniquitous, she might have made a better
fight in her own interest. Why she did not renounce the true culprit as
one on whom all godly teachings were wasted, and, adopting the
indisputable vantage-ground of heredity, carry the war into the enemy's
country, ascribing Leander's shortcomings to his Yerby blood, and with
stern and superior joy proclaiming that he was neither kith nor kin of
hers, she wondered afterward, for this valid ground of defence did not
occur to her then. In these long mourning years she had grown dull; her
mental processes were either a sad introspection or reminiscence. Now
she could only take into account her sacrifices of feeling, of time, of
care; the illnesses she had nursed, the garments that she had made and
mended--ah, how many! laid votive on the altar of Leander's vigor and
his agility, for as he scrambled about the crags he seemed, she was wont
to say, to climb straight out of them. The recollection of all this--the
lesser and unspiritual maternal values, perchance, but essential--surged
over her with bitterness; she lost her poise, and fell a-bickering.
"'Precious leetle lam','" she repeated, scornfully. "Precious he mus'
hev been! Fur when ye lef' him he hedn't a whole gyarmint ter his back,
an' none but them that kivered him."
Nehemiah Yerby changed color slightly as the taunt struck home, but he
was skilled in the more aesthetic methods of argument.
"We war pore--mighty pore indeed, Sister Sudley."
Now, consciously in the wrong, Sister Sudley, with true feminine
inconsistency, felt better. She retorted with bravado.
"Needle an' thread ain't 'spensive nowhar ez I knows on, an' the
gov'mint hev sot no tax on saaft home-made soap, so far ez hearn from."
She briskly placed her chair, a rude rocker, the seat formed of a
taut-stretched piece of ox-hide, beside the fire, and took up her
knitting. A sock for Leander it was--one of many of all sizes. She
remembered the first that she had measured for the bare pink toes which
he had brought there, forlorn candidates for the comfortable integuments
in which they were presently encased, and how she had morbidly felt that
every stitch she took was a renunciation of her own children, since a
stranger was honored in their place. The tears came into her eyes. It
was only this afternoon that she had experienced a pang of self-reproach
to realize how near happiness she was--as near as her temperament could
approach. But somehow the air was so soft; she could see from where she
sat how the white velvet buds of the aspen-trees in the dooryard had
lengthened into long, cream-tinted, furry tassels; the maples on the
mountain-side lifted their red flowering boughs against the delicate
blue sky; the grass was so green; the golden candlesticks bunched along
the margin of the path to the rickety gate were all a-blossoming. The
sweet appeal of spring had never been more insistent, more coercive.
Somehow peace, and a placid content, seemed as essential incidents in
the inner life as the growth of the grass anew, the bursting of the bud,
or the soft awakening of the zephyr. Even within the house, the languors
of the fire drowsing on the hearth, the broad bar of sunshine across the
puncheon floor, so slowly creeping away, the sense of the vernal
lengthening of the pensive afternoon, the ever-flitting shadow of the
wren building under the eaves, and its iterative gladsome song breaking
the fireside stillness, partook of the serene beatitude of the season
and the hour. The visitor's drawling voice rose again, and she was not
now constrained to reproach herself that she was too happy.
"Yes'm, pore though we war then--an' we couldn't look forward ter the
Lord's prosperin' us some sence--we never would hev lef' the precious
leetle lam'"--his voice dwelt with unvanquished emphasis upon the
obnoxious words--"'mongst enny but them persumed ter be godly folks.
Tyler war a toler'ble good soldier in the war, an' hed a good name in
the church, but _ye_ war persumed to be a plumb special Christian with
no pledjure in this worl'."
Laurelia winced anew. This repute of special sanctity was the pride of
her ascetic soul. Few of the graces of life or of the spirit had she
coveted, but her pre-eminence as a religionist she had fostered and
cherished, and now through her own deeds of charity it seemed about to
be wrested from her.
"Lee-yander Yerby hev larnt nuthin' but good in this house, an' all my
neighbors will tell you the same word. The Cove 'lows I hev been _too_
strict."
Nehemiah was glancing composedly about the room. "That thar 'pears ter
be a fiddle on the wall, ain't it, Mis' Sudley?" he said, with an
incidental air and the manner of changing the subject.
Alack, for the aesthetic perversion! Since the playing of those
melancholy minor strains in that red sunset so long ago, which had
touched so responsive a chord in Laurelia's grief-worn heart, the crazy
old fiddle had been naturalized, as it were, and had exchanged its
domicile under the porch for a position on the wall. It was boldly
visible, and apparently no more ashamed of itself than was the big
earthen jar half full of cream, which was placed close to the fireplace
on the hearth in the hope that its contents might become sour enough by
to-morrow to be churned.
Laurelia looked up with a start at the instrument, red and lustrous
against the brown log wall, its bow poised jauntily above it, and some
glistening yellow reflection from the sun on the floor playing among the
strings, elusive, soundless fantasies.
Her lower jaw dropped. She was driven to her last defences, and sore
beset. "It air a fiddle," she said, slowly, at last, and with an air of
conscientious admission, as if she had had half a mind to deny it. "A
fiddle the thing air." Then, as she collected her thoughts, "Brother
Pete Vickers 'lows ez he sees no special sin in playin' the fiddle. He
'lows ez in some kentries--I disremember whar--they plays on 'em in
church, quirin' an' hymn chunes an' sech."
Her voice faltered a little; she had never thought to quote this
fantasy in her own defence, for she secretly believed that old man
Vickers must have been humbugged by some worldly brother skilled in
drawing the long bow himself.
Nehemiah Yerby seemed specially endowed with a conscience for the
guidance of other people, so quick was he to descry and pounce upon
their shortcomings. If one's sins are sure to find one out, there is
little doubt but that Brother Nehemiah would be on the ground first.
"Air you-uns a-settin' under the preachin' o' Brother Peter Vickers?" he
demanded in a sepulchral voice.
"Naw, naw," she was glad to reply. "'Twar onderstood ez Brother Vickers
wanted a call ter the church in the Cove, bein' ez his relations live
hyar-abouts, an' he kem up an' preached a time or two. But he didn't git
no call. The brethren 'lowed Brother Vickers war too slack in his idees
o' religion. Some said his hell warn't half hot enough. Thar air some
powerful sinners in the Cove, an' nuthin' but good live coals an' a
liquid blazin' fire air a-goin' ter deter them from the evil o' thar
ways. So Brother Vickers went back the road he kem."
She knit off her needle while, with his head still bent forward,
Nehemiah Yerby sourly eyed her, feeling himself a loser with Brother
Vickers, in that he did not have the reverend man's incumbency as a
grievance.
"He 'pears ter me ter see mo' pleasure in religion 'n penance, ennyhow,"
he observed, bitterly. "An' the Lord knows the bes' of us air sinners."
"An' he laughs loud an' frequent--mightily like a sinner," she agreed.
"An' whenst he prays, he prays loud an' hearty, like he jes expected ter
git what he axed fur sure's shootin'. Some o' the bretherin' sorter
taxed him with his sperits, an' he 'lowed he couldn't holp but be
cheerful whenst he hed the Lord's word fur it ez all things work
tergether fur good. An' he laffed same ez ef they hedn't spoke ter him
serious."
"Look at that, now!" exclaimed Nehemiah. "An' that thar man ez good ez
dead with the heart-disease."
Laurelia's eyes were suddenly arrested by his keen, pinched, lined face.
What there was in it to admonish her she could hardly have said, nor how
it served to tutor her innocent craft.
"I ain't so sure 'bout Brother Vickers bein' so wrong," she said,
slowly. "He 'lowed ter me ez I hed spent too much o' my life
a-sorrowin', 'stiddier a-praisin' the Lord for his mercies." Her face
twitched suddenly; she could not yet look upon her bereavements as
mercies. "He 'lowed I would hev been a happier an' a better 'oman ef I
hed took the evil ez good from the Lord's hand, fur in his sendin' it's
the same. An' I know that air a true word. An' that's what makes me 'low
what he said war true 'bout'n that fiddle; that I ought never ter hev
pervented the boy from playin' 'round home an' sech, an' 'twarn't no sin
but powerful comfortable an' pleasurable ter set roun' of a cold winter
night an' hear him play them slow, sweet, dyin'-away chunes--" She
dropped her hands, and gazed with the rapt eyes of remembrance through
the window at the sunset clouds which, gathering red and purple and
gold on the mountain's brow, were reflected roseate and amethyst and
amber at the mountain's base on the steely surface of the river.
"Brother Vickers 'lowed he never hearn sech in all his life. It brung
the tears ter his eyes--it surely did."
"He'd a heap better be weepin' fur them black sheep o' his congregation
an' fur Lee-yander's shortcomin's, fur ez fur ez I kin hear he air about
ez black a sheep ez most pastors want ter wrestle with fur the turnin'
away from thar sins. Yes'm, Sister Sudley, that's jes what p'inted out
my jewty plain afore my eyes, an' I riz up an' kem ter be instant in
a-doin' of it. 'I'll not leave my own nevy in the tents o' sin,' I sez.
'I hev chil'n o' my own, hearty feeders an' hard on shoe-leather, ter
support, but I'll not grudge my brother's son a home.' Yes, Laurely
Sudley, I hev kem ter kerry him back with me. Yer jewty ain't been done
by him, an' I'll leave him a dweller in the tents o' sin no longer."
His enthusiasm had carried him too far. Laurelia's face, which at first
seemed turning to stone as she gradually apprehended his meaning and his
mission, changed from motionless white to a tremulous scarlet while he
spoke, and when he ceased she retorted herself as one of the ungodly.
"Ye mus' be mighty ambitious ter kerry away a skin full o' broken bones!
Jes let Tyler Sudley hear ez ye called his house the tents o' the
ungodly, an' that ye kem hyar a-faultin' me, an' tellin' me ez I 'ain't
done my jewty ennywhar or ennyhow!" she exclaimed, with a pride which,
as a pious saint, she had never expected to feel in her husband's
reputation as a high-tempered man and a "mighty handy fighter," and
with implicit reliance upon both endowments in her quarrel.
"Only in a speritchual sense, Sister Sudley," Nehemiah gasped, as he
made haste to qualify his asseveration. "I only charge you with havin'
sp'iled the boy; ye hev sp'iled him through kindness ter him, an' not
_ye_ so much ez Ty. Ty never hed so much ez a dog that would mind him!
His dog wouldn't answer call nor whistle 'thout he war so disposed. _I_
never faulted ye, Sister Sudley; 'twar jes Ty I faulted. I know Ty."
He knew, too, that it was safer to call Ty and his doings in question,
big and formidable and belligerent though he was, than his
meek-mannered, melancholy, forlorn, and diminutive wife. Nehemiah rose
up and walked back and forth for a moment with an excited face and a
bent back, and a sort of rabbit-like action. "Now, I put it to you,
Sister Sudley, air Ty a-makin' that thar boy plough ter-day--jes
_be-you-ti-ful_ field weather!"
Sister Sudley, victorious, having regained her normal position by one
single natural impulse of self-assertion, not as a religionist, but as
Tyler Sudley's wife, and hence entitled to all the show of respect which
that fact unaided could command, sat looking at him with a changed
face--a face that seemed twenty years younger; it had the expression it
wore before it had grown pinched and ascetic and insistently sorrowful;
one might guess how she had looked when Tyler Sudley first went up the
mountain "a-courtin'." She sought to assume no other stand-point. Here
she was intrenched. She shook her head in negation. The affair was none
of hers. Ty Sudley could take ample care of it.
Nehemiah gave a little skip that might suggest a degree of triumph.
"Aha, not ploughin'! But _Ty_ is ploughin'. I seen him in the field. An'
Lee-yander ain't ploughin'! An' how did I know? Ez I war a-ridin' along
through the woods this mornin' I kem acrost a striplin' lad a-walkin'
through the undergrowth ez onconsarned ez a killdee an' ez nimble. An'
under his chin war a fiddle, an' his head war craned down ter it." He
mimicked the attitude as he stood on the hearth. "He never looked up
wunst. Away he walked, light ez a plover, an' _a-ping_, _pang_, _ping_,
_pang_," in a high falsetto, "went that fiddle! I war plumb 'shamed fur
the critters in the woods ter view sech idle sinfulness, a ole ow_el_,
a-blinkin' down out'n a hollow tree, kem ter see what _ping_, _pang_,
_ping_, _pang_ meant, an' thar war a rabbit settin' up on two legs in
the bresh, an' a few stray razor-back hawgs; I tell ye I war mortified
'fore even sech citizens ez them, an' a lazy, impident-lookin' dog ez
followed him."
"How did ye know 'twar Lee-yander?" demanded Mrs. Sudley, recognizing
the description perfectly, but after judicial methods requiring strict
proof.
"Oh-h! by the fambly favor," protested the gaunt and hard-featured
Nehemiah, capably. "I knowed the Yerby eye."
"He hev got his mother's eyes." Mrs. Sudley had certainly changed her
stand-point with a vengeance. "He hev got his mother's _be-you-ti-ful_
_blue_ eyes and her curling, silken brown hair--sorter red; little Yerby
in _that_, mebbe; but sech eyes, an' sech lashes, an' sech fine curling
hair ez none o' yer fambly ever hed, or ever will."
"Mebbe so. I never seen him more'n a minit. But he might ez well hev a
_be-you-ti-ful_ curlin' nose, like the elephint in the show, for all the
use he air, or I be afeard air ever likely ter be."
* * * * *
Tyler Sudley's face turned gray, despite his belligerent efficiencies,
when his wife, hearing the clank of the ox-yoke as it was flung down in
the shed outside, divined the home-coming of the ploughman and his team,
and slipped out to the barn with her news. She realized, with a strange
enlightenment as to her own mental processes, what angry jealousy the
look on his face would have roused in her only so short a time
ago--jealousy for the sake of her own children, that any loss, any
grief, should be poignant and pierce his heart save for them. Now she
was sorry for him; she felt with him.
But as he continued silent, and only stared at her dumfounded and
piteous, she grew frightened--she knew not of what.
"Shucks, Ty!" she exclaimed, catching him by the sleeve with the impulse
to rouse him, to awaken him, as it were, to his own old familiar
identity; "ye ain't 'feared o' that thar snaggle-toothed skeer-crow in
yander; he would be plumb comical ef he didn't look so mean-natured an'
sech a hypercrite."
He gazed at her, his eyes eloquent with pain.
"Laurely!" he gasped, "this hyar thing plumb knocks me down; it jes
takes the breath o' life out'n me!"
She hesitated for a moment. Any anxiety, any trouble, seemed so
incongruous with the sweet spring-tide peace in the air, that one did
not readily take it home to heart. Hope was in the atmosphere like an
essential element; one might call it oxygen or caloric or vitality,
according to the tendency of mind and the habit of speech. But the heart
knew it, and the pulses beat strongly responsive to it. Faith ruled the
world. Some tiny bulbous thing at her feet that had impeded her step
caught her attention. It was coming up from the black earth, and the
buried darkness, and the chill winter's torpor, with all the impulses of
confidence in the light without, and the warmth of the sun, and the
fresh showers that were aggregating in the clouds somewhere for its
nurture--a blind inanimate thing like that! But Tyler Sudley felt none
of it; the blow had fallen upon him, stunning him. He stood silent,
looking gropingly into the purple dusk, veined with silver glintings of
the moon, as if he sought to view in the future some event which he
dreaded, and yet shrank to see.
She had rarely played the consoler, so heavily had she and all her
griefs leaned on his supporting arm. It was powerless now. She perceived
this, all dismayed at the responsibility that had fallen upon her. She
made an effort to rally his courage. She had more faith in it than in
her own.
"'Feard o' _him_!" she exclaimed, with a sharp tonic note of satire.
"Kem in an' view him."
"Laurely," he quavered, "I oughter hev got it down in writin' from him;
I oughter made him sign papers agreein' fur me ter keep the boy till he
growed ter be his own man."
She, too, grew pale. "Ye ain't meanin' ter let him take the boy sure
enough!" she gasped.
"I moughtn't be able ter holp it; I dun'no' how the law stands. He air
kin ter Lee-yander, an' mebbe hev got the bes' right ter him."
She shivered slightly; the dew was falling, and all the budding herbage
was glossed with a silver glister. The shadows were sparse. The white
branches of the aspens cast only the symmetrical outline of the tree
form on the illumined grass, and seemed scarcely less bare than in
winter, but on one swaying bough the mocking-bird sang all the joyous
prophecies of the spring to the great silver moon that made his gladsome
day so long.
She was quick to notice the sudden cessation of his song, the alert,
downward poise of his beautiful head, his tense critical attitude. A
mimicking whistle rose on the air, now soft, now keen, with swift
changes and intricate successions of tones, ending in a brilliant
borrowed roulade, delivered with a wonderful velocity and _elan_. The
long tail feathers, all standing stiffly upward, once more drooped; the
mocking-bird turned his head from side to side, then lifting his full
throat he poured forth again his incomparable, superb, infinitely
versatile melody, fixing his glittering eye on the moon, and heeding the
futilely ambitious worldling no more.
The mimicking sound heralded the approach of Leander. Laurelia's heart,
full of bitterness for his sake, throbbed tenderly for him. Ah, what
was to be his fate! What unkind lot did the future hold for him in the
clutches of a man like this! Suddenly she was pitying his mother--her
own children, how safe!
She winced to tell him what had happened, but she it was who, bracing
her nerves, made the disclosure, for Sudley remained silent, the end of
the ox-yoke in his trembling hands, his head bare to the moon and the
dew, his face grown lined and old.
Leander stood staring at her out of his moonlit blue eyes, his hat far
back on the brown curls she had so vaunted, damp and crisp and clinging,
the low limp collar of his unbleached shirt showing his round full
throat, one hand resting on the high curb of the well, the other holding
a great brown gourd full of the clear water which he had busied himself
in securing while she sought to prepare him to hear the worst. His lips,
like a bent bow as she thought, were red and still moist as he now and
then took the gourd from them, and held it motionless in the interest of
her narration, that indeed touched him so nearly. Then, as she made
point after point clear to his comprehension, he would once more lift
the gourd and drink deeply, for he had had an active day, inducing a
keen thirst.
She had been preparing herself for the piteous spectacle of his frantic
fright, his futile reliance on them who had always befriended him, his
callow forlorn helplessness, his tears, his reproaches; she dreaded
them.
He was silent for a reflective moment when she had paused. "But what's
he want with me, Cap'n?" he suddenly demanded. "Mought know I warn't
industrious in the field, ez he seen me off a-fiddlin' in the woods
whilst Neighbor war a-ploughin'."
[Illustration: "HE HAD HAD AN ACTIVE DAY, INDUCING A KEEN THIRST"]
"Mebbe he 'lows he mought _make_ ye industrious an' git cornsider'ble
work out'n ye," she faltered, flinching for him.
After another refreshing gulp from the gourd he canvassed this
dispassionately. "Say his own chil'n air 'hearty feeders an' hard on
shoe-leather?' Takes a good deal o' goadin' ter git ploughin' enough fur
the wuth o' feed out'n a toler'ble beastis like old Blaze-face thar,
don't it, Neighbor?--an' how is it a-goin' ter be with a human ez mebbe
will hold back an' air sot agin ploughin' ennyhow, an' air sorter idle
by profession? 'Twould gin him a heap o' trouble--more'n the ploughin'
an' sech would be wuth--a heap o' trouble." Once more he bowed his head
to the gourd.
"He 'lowed ye shouldn't dwell no mo' in the tents o' sin. He seen the
fiddle, Lee; it's all complicated with the fiddle," she quavered, very
near tears of vexation.
He lifted a smiling moonlit face; his half-suppressed laugh echoed
gurglingly in the gourd. "Cap'n," he said, reassuringly, "jes let's hear
Uncle Nehemiah talk some mo', an' ef I can't see no mo' likely work fur
me 'n ploughin', I'll think myself mighty safe."
They felt like three conspirators as after supper they drew their chairs
around the fire with the unsuspicious Uncle Nehemiah. However, Nehemiah
Yerby could hardly be esteemed unsuspicious in any point of view, so
full of vigilant craft was his intention in every anticipation, so
slyly sanctimonious was his long countenance.
There could hardly have been a greater contrast than Tyler Sudley's
aspect presented. His candid face seemed a mirror for his thought; he
had had scant experience in deception, and he proved a most unlikely
novice in the art. His features were heavy and set; his manner was
brooding and depressed; he did not alertly follow the conversation; on
the contrary, he seemed oblivious of it as his full dark eyes rested
absently on the fire. More than once he passed his hand across them with
a troubled, harassed manner, and he sighed heavily. For which his
co-conspirators could have fallen upon him. How could he be so dull, so
forgetful of all save the fear of separation from the boy whom he had
reared, whom he loved as his own son; how could he fail to know that a
jaunty, assured mien might best serve his interests until at any rate
the blow had fallen; why should he wear the insignia of defeat before
the strength of his claim was tested? Assuredly his manner was
calculated to greatly reinforce Nehemiah Yerby's confidence, and to
assist in eliminating difficulties in the urging of his superior rights
and the carrying out of his scheme. Mrs. Sudley's heart sank as she
caught a significant gleam from the boy's eyes; he too appreciated this
disastrous policy, this virtual surrender before a blow was struck.
"An' Ty ain't afeard o' bars," she silently commented, "nor wolves, nor
wind, nor lightning, nor man in enny kind o' a free fight; but bekase he
dun'no' how the _law_ stands, an' air afeard the law _mought_ be able
ter take Lee-yander, he jes sets thar ez pitiful ez a lost kid, fairly
ready ter blate aloud."
She descried the covert triumph twinkling among the sparse light lashes
and "crow-feet" about Nehemiah's eyes as he droned on an
ever-lengthening account of his experiences since leaving the county.
"It's a mighty satisfyin' thing ter be well off in yearthly goods an'
chattels," said Laurelia, with sudden inspiration. "Ty, thar, is in
debt."