AT THE TOBACCO BARN
"Farewell grief and welcome joy,
Ten thousand times therefore!"
"Got on your red waist ag'in this mornin', have you? Tuck to primpin' on
a week day fer old Lindsay, have you, and what does he keer fer you? And
ef he did, what is _he_ anyhow? I jest wisht you knowed somethin' I've
heard about him lately!"
Miss Lucy's eyes, circled and swollen, told on Monday morning of a
troubled and sleepless night. She turned wearily away from Miss Nancy,
making no attempt at excuse for the new waist which she had thrust on
hastily in the darkness when she arose, too dispirited to care what she
put on. Mr. Lindsay, coming in at this moment, met Miss Lucy's look of
consternation with one of settled determination.
Miss Nancy's last words (she never mumbled her speeches, but invariably
made them sharp and distinct) had reached him, and given his resolution
to speak to Miss Lucy at the earliest opportunity, a sudden impetus,
like that given a door that bursts open behind a fierce blast of wind.
The little dairy under the harness-room was out of range of the kitchen
windows, and quite out of earshot.
"Let me carry the milk down the milk-house steps fer you, Miss Lucy," he
suggested, as Miss Lucy attempted to lift one of the pails from the
table: "the wind's a blowin' turrible hard, and might blow you down with
them full buckets." But Miss Nancy forestalled him.
"Me and Lucy together can git them two buckets safe in the milk-house, I
reckon, Mr. Lindsay. Ain't no use you a doin' ever'thing," she said,
with the handle of each tin pail in a tenacious grasp.
"Open the milk-house door, Lucy."
Mr. Lindsay, rebuffed, withdrew to the woodpile, defeated for the time,
but with purpose undaunted. Under cover of the stone walls of the dairy,
Miss Nancy further browbeat her sister.
"Lucy, hain't you ashamed o' yourse'f a lettin' Lindsay foller you
around all the mornin'?"
"He ain't been a follerin' me around, Nancy," faltered Miss Lucy.
"He ain't?" Scorn gave Miss Nancy's voice a hoarse note. "I reckon
you're green enough to thenk, too, old Zeke's hind feet don't foller his
front ones when he's a walkin': but I ain't! See here, Lucy Ann, this
foolishness is got to be stopped. You don't want to have folks a talkin'
about you, do you?"
Nothing to the sisters was more dreaded than to be "talked about."
"Then you jest keep yourse'f out o' his way, 'tel he leaves here for
good, Wednesday. Termorrer is marketin' day, and the mud'll be dried
enough ef the wind keeps up fer you to go, and today you can jest git
ready and go up to Becky Willises, and stay all day."
"Hit's sorter muddy for walkin', Nancy," objected Miss Lucy.
"'Twon't hurt you: you can wear your gum shoes!" spouted Miss Nancy,
stamping up the rough stone steps.
"I won't go to Becky's a cryin'," thought Miss Lucy, as she neared the
yard of Jim Doggett, beyond which, a few hundred yards, lay the house of
her cousin: "Becky'd ask so many questions! I believe I'll jest stop
here, and see Henrietty and little Katie."
Henrietty greeted her with her hands in a bowl of bread-dough. Katie ran
to her with a little happy cry: "O Miss Lucy, I's dot somepin' show 'oo!
Tome wis me--I's dot somepin' show 'oo in the batter barn!"
"Why, Katie, let Miss Lucy have time to take off her thengs!"
expostulated her mother. "Hit's puppies she's a talkin' about," she
explained: "I'm sortie feerd fer her to go out to the barn by herse'f, a
thenkin' a tier pole might fall on her. I've been skeered o' barns ever
sence that time Gil Dutton broke his knee all to pieces on account of a
tier pole made out of a wind-shook piece of timber a breakin' and
lettin' him fall, and she's jest crazy when anybody steps in to git 'em
to go with her."
Miss Lucy, glad of an excuse to take her red eyes out of range of
Henrietty's keen ones, followed the eager child to the great barn on the
rise above the house. The heavy sliding doors at the north end refused
to move more than eight inches apart under Miss Lucy's nervous hand, but
little Katie pressed her fat body through the crevice, darted like a
sparrow half the length of the building, and squatted with a squeal of
rapture behind a high pile of sticks, heaped in careless fashion, after
the tobacco was lifted off them. Here, on the dirt floor, three brown
and white puppies crawled aimlessly over each other.
"You want to git inside?" Miss Lucy felt her fingers gently removed, and
the door pushed back. She looked up to meet Mr. Lindsay's eyes fixed in
stern earnestness upon her.
"You thought you'd run off from me, did you?" he queried abruptly: "I
'lowed when I saw you a startin' off in this wind that you'd had your
orders give you, and what I follered you wuz to find out ef you really
wanted to obey them orders and to git away from me."
Miss Lucy backed inside the door and looked furtively about her. The
tobacco had all been taken down, stripped, and bulked down in a half
dozen long, high ricks, from "long red," to "green,"--ready for the
buyers' inspection, and the dusk of the empty spaces, from the
cypress-shingled roof, to the floor, covered with its confusion of
broken leaves, was only relieved by the sunlight that filtered in
between the outer planks of the barn. The wind rumbled around the barn,
and above its roar sounded the far off call of a crow, and the chugging
of a freight on the nearest railway, told of a not far distant rain.
"You needn't be oneasy, Miss Lucy": Mr. Lindsay drew the doors together
softly. "There hain't nobody a watchin' us here, ner a listenin' as fur
as I know, and you are perfectly safe to talk. Ef you don't keer to have
me around no more, jest say so, and I'll go right back to the house, and
gether up my thengs, and leave now, instid of waitin' until the middle
o' the week." He paused, his tone of reckless indifference belied by his
grave face and appealing eyes. For once in her life, Miss Lucy was
forced out of her habitual indecision.
"I--I--" she stammered, clasping and unclasping her hands, her eyes
following a dry tobacco leaf that a sudden gust whirled rattling by her
feet, "Mr. Lindsay, I hope I haven't never done anything to make you
thenk I don't want you around!"
The tense cords at his temples relaxed slightly: he took a step nearer
her. "Then you don't believe nothin' ag'in me, and don't keer nothin'
fer old Brock?"
"Mr. Brock--why, Mr. Brock--he hasn't never said nothin' about me bein'
anything to him!" cried Miss Lucy in wonderment.
"I know he hain't yit," he broke out tumultuously, "fer very shame, but
he wants to, and the way you treated him yisterday made me thenk maybe
you'd listen to what he's got to say--maybe you'd ruther have him around
than me!"
"I jest treated him like I would Mr. Castle or any other of the
neighbors when they come in," defended Miss Lucy.
Mr. Lindsay looked at her to assure himself there was no dissimulation
in her speech. "Yes, Miss Lucy," he went on, reassured, "but he hain't
one them kind o' men that'll take good treatment. Ef you jest treat him
with common politeness, he'll thenk you're a courtin' him! I could tell
you some thengs about old Brock that'd make you feel like leavin' the
room when he comes around, but considerin' you don't keer nothin' fer
him, hit's jest as well not to bother you with 'em. What I want to know
in particular is, do you keer anytheng fer _me_?"
Miss Lucy, blushing furiously, looked wildly about her for a means of
escape. The moment she had longed for, for weeks, had come, but the
habit of fleeing from his presence, lest Miss Nancy should charge her
with forwardness, was strong.
But Mr. Lindsay leaned against the fastening of the closed doors. "Jest
say 'No, I keer nothin' fer you,'" he prompted, "and Miss Lucy, I won't
keep you here a second longer!"
"I--I--that ain't what I want to say!" Miss Lucy managed to gasp.
What she did want to say must have been satisfactory, for thirty seconds
later her delicate cheek was reposing with no apparent discomfort on a
pocketful of nails on the front of a dingy yellow canvas working-coat,
her slender shoulders were encircled by a pair of canvas-covered arms,
and a brown, a very brown, head was bent down to hers.
"Mistu Linney, is 'oo lovin' Miss Luty?"
[Illustration: "Mistu Linney is oo lovin' Miss Luty?"]
Miss Lucy's agility, considering her years, was something remarkable,
when her ears were electrified by this remark from little Katie, who
with a pup in the bend of each fat arm, stood gazing in innocent wonder
at her friends. Miss Lucy gave a little cry of consternation, but Mr.
Lindsay laughed, and placing an overturned box against one of the great
center beams of the barn, drew Miss Lucy to this improvised chair, sat
down beside her, and took the child and her dogs in his lap.
"When we're married, Lucy," he said gaily, "we'll git Henrietty to let
Katie holp us keep house."
"Oh, what will Pa and Nancy say?" moaned Miss Lucy, remembering her
tormentors. The happy glow in her face fled, leaving her very pale. At
this moment, the loud rumble of an empty farm-wagon, driven rapidly on
the road that passed the south end of the barn, ceased abruptly.
"'Tain't what her and him says that matters to me," Mr. Lindsay soothed
her: "I reckon you and me are the next theng to old enough to know our
own business, ain't we?"
"I know hit," Miss Lucy mourned, "but they worry me so. Ef you don't
keer, Mr.--Mr.--"
"I'm _Nathan_ to you, Lucy," Mr. Lindsay corrected her tenderly.
"I jest wanted to say I'd love to keep hit a secret a while any way.
'Twon't be no harm, will hit?"
"Ef you want to, of course hit won't," Mr. Lindsay assured her
cheerfully. "I've been thenkin' about hit," he said after a moment, "and
I believe ef prices are anyways good this spreng, I'll go into tobacco
raisin' ag'in. Jest us two to live, a body might make a little somethin'
at hit. Next year I might fill a barn as big as this ef I had no bad
luck."
Neither of them had observed the fact that the rumble of the passing
wagon had ceased when it reached the barn, nor did they notice the
shadow that at this moment fell across the light that came in between
two beech planks at the corner of the barn nearest them, made by the
pressing of a coarse ear to the fissure. The owner of the ear had caught
the sound of voices, and thinking he heard Miss Lucy speak, wished to
assure himself of the fact before entering the barn.
"O Miss Luty," little Katie shrilled, "somebody's dot in de shunshine!"
There was a hasty removal of the coarse ear from the timbers, and a
lusty cough, and just as the astonished pair of sitters within the barn
sprang to their feet, Mr. Brock's stolid face appeared in the doorway.
"Mr. Castle asked me to keep a sharp lookout for night riders about the
barns, Miss Lucy," he said, breaking the embarrassed silence. "Mr.
Castle's mighty scarey, you know."
Miss Lucy turned white and red, by turns, in an agony of embarrassment,
and remained dumb. Mr. Lindsay found his voice.
"I ain't heard of no night riders a bein' out in the daytime, so far,"
he offered, then added, turning to the door, unmindful of the entreaty
in Miss Lucy's eyes, "I guess I'll be goin', Miss Lucy: my work's a
waitin' fer me."
"Little Katie--I come out here with her, Mr. Brock, to see the puppies,
and Mr. Lindsay he jest happened along, and opened the door fer us."
Ladies do not usually sit on boxes in tobacco barns with their admirers,
and Miss Lucy trembled so she could hardly stand, in her attempt to
explain her presence in the barn with Mr. Lindsay.
"You're a gittin' cold, Miss Lucy," Mr. Brock took pity on her confusion
and evident misery: "s'pose you take Katie on to the house. I'll be
gittin' along."
Following her sister's directions, Miss Lucy came home in the dusk. Mr.
Lindsay accosted her as she passed through the barn lot where he was
milking.
"I hope you didn't thenk hard of me fer leavin' you so sudden this
mornin', Miss Lucy": his voice was tenderly apologetic, "but I 'lowed
you could explain better what you was a doin' in the barn, ef--ef--I
wasn't there."
Miss Lucy smiled into his anxious eyes, a smile of trust and happiness.
"I knowed you was a tryin' to do the best you could fer me, and to keep
us from bein' talked about," she assured him sweetly, forgetting for
once her usual precautionary glance.
Mr. Lindsay set the milk bucket down and came close to her.
"There's somethin' of my mother's, I want you to have," he murmured,
looking down at her slender fingers: "I put hit in the little pink vase
on the mantel-piece, and when you go to the house, I wish you'd git
hit."
Before Miss Lucy could answer, he added abruptly: "I hate to tell you,
Lucy, but there's somebody a holdin' the settin'-room door open. Jest
tell 'em ef they ask you anytheng that I wuz a askin' you ef old
Blackie'd fell off any in her milk. Hit don't look like she has, does
hit?" He held the half-filled milk bucket toward her. Miss Lucy shook
her head, and walked quickly to the house.
"What on earth was you a talkin' to Mr. Lindsay about?" her sister asked
her as she came in.
"About old Blackie," murmured Miss Lucy, obeying her mentor: "Mr.
Lindsay asked me ef I thought she was a fallin' off in her milk, and I
told him I didn't see that she was."
"I think your tongue needs oilin', ef hit took you all that time to git
off them few words," Miss Nancy replied suspiciously.
Miss Lucy did not reply to this taunt, but slipping out into the
kitchen, she hastily emptied the grounds from the coffee-pot into the
ashbarrel, and pouring several tablespoonfuls of coffee berries in the
hopper of the little coffee-mill, she carried it stealthily down into
the dairy, where the sound would not reach her sister's ears, and ground
the coffee quickly.
"He loves his coffee strong," she whispered to herself, as she poured
the freshly ground coffee into the pot, with a look of determination
that sat oddly upon her: "and Nancy sha'n't give him weak stuff made out
of old grounds, tonight, nohow!"
Miss Nancy took care that Miss Lucy had no more words alone with Mr.
Lindsay that evening, but when he took his lamp to retire, he found a
little twisted slip of paper on the middle step of the stairway, that he
read with satisfaction, and laid carefully in his pocket-book, while
Miss Lucy went to sleep with her hand closed on a worn chased ring
suspended about her neck with a little silken cord.