The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage
By
Alice MacGowan
Author of
"Judith of the Cumberlands," "The Last Word," "Huldah,"
"Return," etc.
With Illustrations in Colour by Robert Edwards
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1909
Copyright, 1909
ALICE MacGOWAN
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
To
Emma Bell Miles
WHO COULD WITHOUT DOUBT HAVE WRITTEN
MUCH BETTER THIS STORY OF HER OWN HOME COUNTRY
THE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
BY
The Author
CONTENTS
I. A Pair of Haggards 1
II. The Up-Sitting 19
III. The Burying 39
IV. A Dance and a Serenade 50
V. The Asking 70
VI. The Wedding 88
VII. Lance's Laurel 104
VIII. The Infare 124
IX. The Interloper 140
X. Poverty Pride 154
XI. "Long Sweetenin'" 168
XII. "What Shall He Have Who Killed the Deer?" 182
XIII. Broken Chords 193
XIV. Roxy Griever's Guest 211
XV. A Stubborn Heart 223
XVI. Lance Cleaverage's Son 237
XVII. The Coasts of the Island 247
XVIII. The Hegira 266
XIX. Callista Cleaverage Goes Home 277
XX. Drawn Blank 293
XXI. Flenton Hands 300
XXII. The Speech of People 309
XXIII. Buck Fuson's Idea 321
XXIV. Silenced 330
XXV. The Flight 340
XXVI. Roxy Griever 345
XXVII. In Hiding 357
XXVIII. The Sheriff Scores 371
XXIX. The Island at Last 377
Illustrations
"I was just a-studyin' on the matter." Frontispiece
"A Face, Passion-Pale, was Raised to him, and Eager, Tremulous
Lips Met his." 66
"You'll Marry us now--or not at all." 98
"He Placed the Instrument in Ola's Grasp." 202
"He Gazed long at Callista's Face on the Pillow." 246
"He Broke off, Staring with Open Mouth." 336
The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage
CHAPTER I.
A PAIR OF HAGGARDS.
NOON of summer in the highlands of Tennessee; the Cumberlands,
robed in the mid-season's green, flashed here and there with
banding and gemming of waters. The two Turkey Track Mountains,
Big and Little, lying side by side and one running so evenly
from the other that only the dweller upon them knew where to
differentiate, basked in the full glow of a Sabbath morning
radiance.
A young fellow of twenty-three, crossing the crown of a higher
hill, tonsured years ago by the axe of some settler, but offering
half way up its side resistance of undergrowth and saplings,
paused a moment in the open to look down. Below him the first
church bell had just rung in the little gray structure across
the creek. Shining above the ocean of woods and the cabin homes
that, like islets, dotted the forest at wide intervals, the Sabbath
sun caught and lightened upon something [2] bright, swung upon the
newcomer's back. Himself as yet unseen, he gazed down upon this
his world, spread map-like below him. He could pick out everybody's
home. Each one of those cabins wore to-day, from porch floors
hollowed with much scouring to inner cupboard niche, an air of
Sunday expectancy that lacked little of being sanctimonious. Only
the house-mother remained in charge of each, preparing the Sunday
company dinner with even more outlay of energy than the preceding
six had required. The men had, by common consent, adjourned to
spring, barn, the shelter of big trees in the yard; he caught
glimpses of the young folks below him on the woods-paths, attired
in their brightest frocks and shirts, and whatever finery they
could command, sauntering by twos and threes toward preaching.
His smiling, impersonal gaze was aware of Callista Gentry sitting
on a rock above the spring, holding a sort of woodland state like
a rustic queen. The time of roses was past in this southern land,
but every dooryard in the Turkey Tracks was painted gay with
hollyhocks, while in ravine and thicket flamed the late azaleas,
ranging from clear pale yellow, through buff and orange, to crimson.
These lay piled in a sheaf beside the big gray rock, and the girl
who sat there was showing her mates how to trim their hats with
them, while several boys looked on and presumably admired. [3]
The curious feature of Callista Gentry's following was, that it
included as many young women as young men, and the chariot
wheels of her mates looked robbed always, because, inferentially,
the man who courted any other would rather have Callista Gentry
if he might.
Coached and forwarded, exploited and made the most of ever since
she could remember; a bright, pretty child, and a dutiful student,
during her brief days of country schooling; her mother had from
infancy enforced all the rural arts of beauty culture to make
her what she was. Long home-knitted yarn gloves were worn to
protect the shapely hands and whiten them. The grand big mane of
ashen-blond hair was washed in fresh-caught rainwater, clipped
in the dark of the moon, combed and tended and kept as no one
else's hair was. Her sunbonnets were never the long-caped ungainly
affairs commonly seen; they took on, whether by accident or design
one could hardly say, the coquetry of a wood violet half-blown;
and when these were not in use, a broad hat shaded the exquisite
fairness of the oval cheek. Callista had grown up a delicate court
lady, smooth and fine to look upon, pink and white and golden, like
one of those rare orchids, marvelously veined and featured, known
only to the bees of the wood, whose loveliness is always ashiver
with peculiar vitality. This Sunday morning the lepidopteral
flutter of gay calicoes, and the bee-like murmur [4] of young male
voices in her court of youths and maidens, carried out well the
figure of the rare, moth-bewitching blossom.
"I wish't Lance Cleaverage'd come--then we'd see fun!" cried
Buck Fuson, rising to his knees and gazing across the slope.
"I'd ruther hear him and Callista fuss as to eat my dinner.
Them two has the masterest arguments I ever heared outside
of a law-court."
Brown little Ola Derf, sitting slightly apart from the others
braiding pine needles into a ring, looked up suddenly. A woman
at the spring below scooping a drink for a fat child, lifted a long
drab face and sighted in the same direction. This was the Widow
Griever, elder sister of Lance Cleaverage. Sour censor of public
morals that she was, Roxy Griever considered eighteen-year-old
Callista the young woman perfect, and found her own brother quite
unworthy of the paragon. Only the central figure of the group
appeared to take no notice, while the girls about her, at the
mere mention of Lance, all fluttered and resettled themselves
with a certain vague air of expectancy.
"You boys ought to be ashamed of yo'se'fs," Roxy Griever
reproved. Then apart to young Fuson, "Callista's got more sense
than to pay any attention to such a light-headed somebody as
that fool brother o' mine. Let me tell you, Callista Gentry has
more sense than any of you [5] men persons give her credit for.
She's a serious-minded gal. You Mary Ann Marthy, you quit
treadin' over yo' Sunday shoes." And she raised her small daughter
a bit from the pathway and set her down sharply, as though to
indicate the correct manner of walking in Sunday foot-gear.
The infant of the triple name--her Uncle Lance said she sounded
like twins if she didn't look it--put up a mutinous red mouth
and lowered from under flaxen brows.
"Me wants to hear 'em fuss," she muttered as she progressed
reluctantly toward the little church on the hill-side.
"Well, you ain't goin' to hear 'em fuss, and they ain't goin' to
fuss, and you couldn't hear 'em if they did," admonished her
mother lucidly, accelerating the infant's pace from the rear.
"The big spring ain't no place for chillen like you, and old
women like me. Let the light-minded and the ungodly do about in
such ef they will. You and me is goin' into the church house and
set thar till preachin'."
Fathers and mothers were herding their broods of lesser children
in, but boys and girls of older growth, young men and women of
an age to be thinking of mating, strolled by twos or sat on the
bank above the big spring that supplied the baptismal pool of
Brush Arbor church. Callista Gentry was wearing a new print
frock--and looking quite unconscious of the fact. [6]
"That ain't no five cent lawn," whispered Ola Derf enviously,
as she eyed it from afar. The Derf girl was an outsider at most
gatherings, and particularly so at church affairs. Everybody
knew she came to Brush Arbor only on a chance of seeing Lance
Cleaverage.
"Thar comes Lance now!" announced Fuson, and then winked at his
companions.
Callista never raised her glance, nor did the even tenor of her
speech falter, though something told the onlooker that she was
aware. A swift slight contraction of plumage like that of a hawk
suddenly on the alert, a richer glow on the softly oval cheek, a
light in the down-dropped eyes which she jealously hid, a
rearrangement, subtle and minute, of her attitude toward the
world, showed that she needed no sight nor hearing to advise her
of the coming of the lithe young fellow who approached from the
ragged second growth of the abandoned hillside clearing. He came
straight through, paying no attention to paths--that was Lance
Cleaverage. His step was light and sure, yet it rent and crushed
what was in his way. On his back swung the banjo; his soft felt
hat was off in his hand; as he moved, the sleeves of his blue
hickory shirt fluttered in the breeze that stirred his hair, and
he sang to himself as he came. What he sang was not a hymn. His
hazel eyes were almost as golden as the tan of his cheek, and
there was a spark [7] in the depths of them that matched the
audacious carriage of his head. At his advent the Widow Griever
turned and let the fat child find her way alone.
"You Lance," she began in a scandalized tone, "don't you bring
that sinful and ungodly thing into the house of the Lord. You
know mighty well and good the preacher is about to name you out
in meetin'; and here you go on seekin' the ways of the Evil One.
Pack that banjo straight back home this minute."
She evidently had as little expectation of Lance obeying her as
he had of doing so. Her words were plainly intended merely to
set forth her own position--to clear her skirts of reproach. The
young folks about her giggled and looked with open admiration at
the youth who dared to bring such a worldly object to Sunday
preaching.
"Banjo'll let the preacher alone, if the preacher'll let it
alone," smiled Lance, unconcernedly pulling the instrument
around to get at the strings, and touching them lightly. "You go
'long into the church and get your soul saved for Heaven, Sis'
Roxy. I reckon they need representatives of the Cleaverage
family in both places."
"Well, that's whar you're a-goin'--er more so," asserted the
widow with dignity, as she turned her back once more on the
young folks and moved away. [8]
Lance took the ribbon of his banjo from his neck and flung it
over a blossoming azalea bush.
"I'll hang my harp on a willer tree,
And away to the wars again,"
he hummed softly just above his breath.
"I don't aim to hurt the preacher's feelings. I won't take my
banjo into his church--sech doctrine as Drumright's is apt to be
mighty hard on banjo strings. Don't you-all want to have a
little dance after the meeting's out--on the Threshin'-floor
Rock up the branch?"
The girls looked duly horrified, all but Ola Derf, who spoke up
promptly,
"Yes--or come a-past our house. Pap don't mind a Sunday dance.
You will come, won't you, Lance?" pleadingly.
Callista Gentry did not dance. She had always, in the nature of
things, belonged to the class of young people in the mountains
who might be expected at any time to "profess" and join the
church. The musician laughed teasingly.
"I reckon we'd better not," he said finally. "Callista's scared.
She begged me into bringing my banjo to-day (you don't any of
you know the gal like I do), and now she's scared to listen to
it."
Callista barely raised her eyes at this speech, and spared to
make any denial.
"You-all that wants to dance on a Sunday [9] better go 'long
there," she said indifferently. "It's mighty near time for
preaching to begin, and you've got a right smart walk over to
the Derf place." Dismissing them thus coolly from her world, she
addressed herself once more to pinning a bunch of ochre and
crimson azaleas into the trimming of her broad hat.
"Lance," drawled Buck Fuson, "I hear you' cuttin' timber on yo'
land. Aimin' to put up a cabin--fixin' to wed?"
The newcomer shrugged his shoulders, but made no reply.
"When I heared it, I 'lowed Callista had named the day,"
persisted Fuson.
"Have ye, Callista?" Rilly Trigg put in daringly, as neither of
the principals seemed disposed to speak.
"The names that the days have already got suits me well enough,"
Callista observed drily. "I don't know why I should go namin'
ary one of 'em over again."
There was a great laugh at this, of which Cleaverage appeared
entirely oblivious.
"Yes," he began quietly, when it had subsided, "I'm about to put
me up a house--I like to be a-buildin'--a man might as well
improve his property. There's one gal that wants me mighty bad,
and has wanted me for a long while; sometimes I'm scared she'll
get me. Reckon I might as well be ready." [10]
"Ye hear that, Callisty?" crowed little Rilly Trigg. "Ye hear
that! Have ye told him adzackly the kind of house ye want? I
'low ye ort."
"Put a little yellow side o' that red," advised Callista
composedly, busying herself wholly with the hat Rilly was
trimming. "There--don't you think that looks better?"
Rilly made a face at Fuson and Cleaverage, and laughed.
"No need to ask her which nor whether," said Lance nonchalantly.
"Any place I am is bound to suit Callista. I intend that my
house shall be the best in the Turkey Tracks; but if it wasn't
she'd never find it out, long as _I_ was there."
Again there was a chorus of appreciative laughter.
"How's that, Callista--is it so for a fact?" inquired Fuson,
eager to see the game go on.
Callista opened her beautiful eyes wide, and smiled with lazy
scorn.
"Truly, I'm suited with whatever Lance Cleaverage builds, and
wherever and whenever he builds. Let it be what it may, it's
nothing to me."
"You Rilly!" called a shrill feminine voice from the direction
of the church. "Bring the basket."
"Help me with it, Buck," said Aurilla, and the two started down
the slope together.
"Now," suggested Lance, with an affectation of reluctance, "if
the rest of you-all don't mind giving us the place here, I
reckon Callista's got [11] a heap that she wants to say to me,
and she's ashamed to speak out before folks."
The mad project of a Sunday dance, which nobody but Ola Derf had
entertained for a moment, was thus tacitly dropped. There was a
general snickering at Lance's impudent assumption. Again
Callista seemed too placidly contemptuous to care to make
denial. Boys got up from their lounging positions on the grass,
girls shook out their skirts, and two and two the young folks
began to straggle toward the gray little church.
"You're a mighty accommodatin' somebody," observed Lance,
dropping lightly on the grass at Callista's feet. "I have been
told by some that you'd make a contentious wife; but looks to me
like you're settin' out to be powerful easy goin'. Ain't got a
word to say about how many rooms in the house, nor whar the
shelves is to be, nor nothin'--eh?"
Reckless of time or place he reached up, put a finger under her
chin, and turned her face toward him, puckering his lips
meditatively as though he meant to kiss her--or to whistle. He
got a swift, stinging slap for his pains, and Callista faced
around on the rock where she sat to put herself as far from him
as might be.
"Who said anything about wives and husbands?" she demanded. "I
was talking about you building on yo' land. Hit's nothin' to me.
I never expect to live in the houses you build, [12] nor so much
as set foot in 'em. When you named that girl that was tryin' to
wed you, I shorely thought you must have been meanin' Ola Derf.
As for me, if you heard me talkin' of the house I expected to
_live_ in, you'd hear a plenty--because I'm particular. I ain't
a-going to put up with no puncheon floor in my best room. Hit's
got to be boards, and planed at that. I ain't a-goin' to break
my back scouring puncheons for no man."
Lance nodded, with half closed eyes. It was plain he got her
message. One guessed that the house would be made to please her,
and, too, that he liked her the better for being fastidious.
The two were apparently alone together; but neither Ola Derf nor
Flenton Hands was among the young people moving away down the
further slope. Lance gazed after their retreating friends and
heaved a lugubrious sigh.
"Well, looks like they've all started off and left me for you
and you for me," he commented sadly.
"Have they?" inquired Callista without interest. "They show
mighty poor judgment."
"Same sort of judgment I'm showing, settin' here talking to you,
when I might as well spend my time with a good-lookin' gal,"
retorted Lance promptly.
"The Lord knows you waste yo' time talking to me," Callista sent
back to him with a musing, [13] unruffled smile on her finely
cut lips. "Your settin' up to me would sure be foolishness."
"Settin' up to you?"--Lance took his knees into an embrace and
looked quizzically at her as she reclined above him, milk-white
and pink, blue-eyed and flaxen-haired, a creature to cuddle and
kiss one would have said, yet with a gall-bag under her tongue
for him always. "Me settin' up to you?" He repeated the words
with a bubble of apparently unsubduable amusement in his tone.
"I reckon you're a-doin' the settin' up; everybody seems to
understand it so. I just mentioned that the rest of the folks
had left you and me alone together, and I was goin' on to say
that I began to suffer in the prospect of offerin' you my
company up to the church-house. Lord, some gals will make
courtin' out of anything!"
A subdued snicker sounded from the screen of leafage behind the
spring. Several young people lingered there for the fun of
hearing Lance Cleaverage and Callista Gentry fuss. The red began
to show itself in the girl's smooth, fair cheeks. She caught her
wide hat by its strings and got suddenly to her feet.
"Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Lance Cleaverage," she said
coldly, "I never took enough notice of you to see was you
courtin' me or some other girl; and I'll thank you now to step
yourself out of my way and let me get on to the church-house.
I've got to lead the tribble, come service time. I [14] can't
stand fooling here with you, nor werry my-self to notice are
you courting me or somebody else."
She held her graceful head very high. If she swung the hat by
its strings a thought too rapidly, it was the only sign she gave
of any excitement as she gained the path.
Cleaverage ranged himself beside her, leaving the banjo in the
bushes. "All right--all right," he remarked in a pacifying tone.
"I'm willin' to walk up to the door with you, if that's what's
troublin' you so greatly; but I don't want to go in and sit
alongside of you on the middle seats. You take your place on the
women's side, like a good gal, and let me have some peace,
settin' over with the men."
For a moment she was dumb. Half a dozen had pushed into view,
and were listening to them now. They all understood that Lance
knew well enough she must sit with the singers, yet his open
refusal to accompany her to the middle seats, where the courting
couples generally found place, was not the less galling.
"Tell him you won't never step yo' foot in church beside him,
Callista," prompted a man's voice, and Flenton Hands stepped out
on the path, twisting a bit of sassafras in his fingers and
looking from one to the other with quick shiftings of his gray
eyes.
Lance laughed radiantly but soundlessly, his [15] face and eyes
shining with mirthful defiance. The girl looked down and trifled
with her hat ribbons.
"Why don't you say it?" inquired Cleaverage at length. Hands
leaned forward and stared eagerly at her, his mouth a little
open and his breath coming quick. He had always been the most
pertinacious of Callista's followers; an older man than any of
the others, he brought to bear on his wooing the persistence and
determination of his years.
Callista just glanced at the younger man, and let her gaze rest
on Hands.
"What's the use of telling him what he already knows mighty well
and good?" she said finally.
"Give me the pleasure of walking up with you this morning,
then," Hands encroached eagerly.
With negligent composure Callista looked about her. She was not
willing to walk with Lance--she doubted if he would ask her
again. She was not willing to discredit him and go with Hands.
She was determined that Cleaverage should not walk with another
girl.
"Come on, Ola," she coolly addressed the figure plainly to be
seen behind Hands. "Let's you and me hurry over and see what
hymns Brother Drumright is going to use. You sing mighty good
counter, and I'd like to have you next to me."
Ola Derf could not refuse. It was almost equal to social
rehabilitation to be allowed to walk with Callista Gentry from
the spring to the church, to [16] sit beside her in the singing
seats; yet the brown girl cast uneasy glances backward till she
saw Lance, whistling melodiously, turn to the blooming azalea
bush and catch up his banjo from it. She stopped in her tracks,
holding Callista back.
"Whar--whar ye gwine, Lance?" she inquired anxiously. If
Cleaverage was not coming to church it would scarcely be worth
while for her to torture herself with an hour of old Preacher
Drumright's holding forth. "Whar ye gwine?" she reiterated, as
the other girl pulled her sleeve and attempted to hurry on.
"Whar you and Callista ca'n't come," returned Lance, speaking
over his shoulder unceremoniously.
"Ain't ye gwine to stay to preachin'?" persisted the brown girl.
"I--I thought ye was, or I--ain't ye gwine to stay?"
"No," drawled Cleaverage. "I just brought the banjo to please
Callista--because I promised her I would, when she begged me to.
I had no notion of staying to listen to Drumright."
"Come on--if you're a-coming," Callista admonished the Derf
girl with a little flash of temper which Lance did not fail to
observe, any more than she missed the chuckle with which he
received it.
"Well, I'm a-goin' with ye," announced Ola. She let go
Callista's arm, and turned back to where Lance was taking a
shadowy path into the forest.
"I told you, gals couldn't come," Cleaverage bantered her. But
Ola persisted. [17]
"I can go wherever you can go. Lance--wait! Wait for me--I'm
a-comin'."
"Callista'll be mad," objected Cleaverage. "She begged and
begged me, and I wouldn't leave her come along of me; now if I
take you, she'll be mad."
"Like I cared where you went or who went with you!" Callista
retorted, eyes shining blue fire, head crested. "Come on, Mr.
Hands, it's time we were stepping, if we want to get in to go
through the hymns."
"And you will sit alongside of me?" Hands's voice pleaded close
to her ear.
Ola and Lance were of the same age; the blond girl, lingering
half indignant, could remember how hardy, free little Ola Derf
used to play with the boys, always singling Lance Cleaverage out
as the companion for her truant expeditions. Now in mute denial
of Hands's petition, Callista shook her head, and in doing so
managed to glance round and get a tormenting glimpse of Ola and
Lance disappearing together between the trees. Under the green
domes of oak and liriodendron, the latter starred all over now
with orange-tawny tulips, she saw them pass. Wine of summer was
in the veins of the forest. Even the sober oaks, wreathed like
bacchanals, overflowed with sweetness from their wrappings of
wild grape. The two with the banjo took their way down a steep
path toward a jade-green pool, a still reach [18] of water arched
over by fantastic tangles of laurel and rhododendron, black
as the tents of Kedar, lighted only by the flash of a water-fall
that caught the sun. This was the baptismal place.
The daughter of the house of Gentry turned her face resolutely
toward respectability and the church, albeit there was no joy in
the countenance. Strung out over a quarter of a mile were
courting couples bent toward the same destination. To these
young hearts it seemed well worth while to have lain under the
heel of winter to attain this marvelous summer morning with its
green-clothed forest, its wreathing of blossoms where they
passed. Clean and cool as a bell's note, the song of a thrush
deep in the wood spilled jeweled drops of sound through the
trembling branches overhead. A catbird's sonata rippled boldly
out upon the very path. A canopy of bloom was woven and flung
over the spring by the black, knotty fingers of the laurel. Bees
tumbled happily in the bosom of the fairest drooping clusters,
their hum nearly drowned by the heavy gurgle of the creek water.
Callista drew in her breath sharply. Summer and sun and light
and love everywhere--and she was walking up to the church-house
with Flenton Hands, while back on some forest by-path, with
music at his finger ends and Ola Derf beside him, Lance
Cleaverage forgot her with a laugh.