THE UP-SITTING.
GRANNY YEARWOOD--the grandmother of Flenton Hands and his
sisters--was dead. The work-hardened old body had parted with
its flame of life reluctantly; for nearly a year she had been
declining toward the end; and during the last months the family
had cared for her almost day and night. They were worn out with
the toil of it before she herself wore out. But now it was all
over. The first outburst of noisy lamentation, which is fairly
conventional in the Southern mountains, was past. The corpse had
been decently composed on a rude plank scaffold, while Octavia
Gentry and Roxy Griever took charge of the household and began
to order things in that curious half-ecclesiastical fashion
which follows the footsteps of death.
It was near noon, and Octavia dished up the dinner, while Roxy
paid more attention to the impending funeral arrangements. Before
the meal was over, young people began to come in, though none
could quite say how they had received word. The girls made proffer
of assistance, and swiftly the table was cleared away, the dishes
washed, and the house and surroundings put in immaculate [20] order.
Work in the fields was stopped, that messengers might be sent, one
on horseback to notify distant-dwelling kin, another with a wagon
to buy the coffin down in Hepzibah, a third afoot to arrange with
the strong young men of the family connection about helping to dig
the grave. All the flowers in the dooryard were gathered and laid
round the corpse. The withered old face was covered with a damp
cloth, and then a borrowed sheet was drawn smoothly over the whole
mound. The Widow Griever was so deeply versed in the etiquette of
such occasions, and so satisfyingly exacting on all points, as to
make an undertaker even more highly superfluous than he would
usually have been among those simple folk. What with garments and
accessories she had brought from her own scant widow's wardrobe,
and articles hastily borrowed from the nearer neighbors, she
managed inside of two hours to have Little Liza and her two
sisters--the mother of the family was dead some years ago--clad
in black and seated in state inferior only to that of the dead.
More flowers were brought by girls and small boys from the
neighbors' yards--yellow and purple and red were the colors
mostly in bloom now, and those which would have been favored for
this occasion. Roxy gravely arranged them and set them in place.
She had veiled the looking-glass and stopped the clock as soon
as she came into the house. [21]
"A body cain't be too careful about all these here things," she
said with a solemn sniff. "Hit's easy at a time like this for
something to be did that crosses the luck."
Women came and went through the open doors, silent almost as
the little breeze that played between. Everybody wore the same
expression of mournful acquiescence in the natural order of things.
Greetings were exchanged in low tones. Callista, carrying a basket
of garden asters, came up the front walk, looking openly for her
mother, guarding a little warily against Flenton Hands's approach.
Some girls hurrying out to seek ferns in the low places of the wood
met her, and she turned back with them, joining her activities to
theirs and making a wreath of the flowers she had brought.
Flenton Hands was thirty years old. To have arrived at this age
unmarried is, in the mountains, in some measure a reproach.
True, he aligned himself sharply with the religious element of
the community, and this, when youthful masculinity is ever apt
to choose the broad way where there is more company, bespoke for
him a certain indulgence or toleration that would have been
denied a typical old bachelor.
He was cantankerous old Preacher Drumright's right hand at all
times, and Drumright was safe always to approve him. He was the
kind of man who seeks the acquaintance and company of those [22]
well-to-do and older than himself, paying a sober court to
respectability and money, and thus coming eventually to be rated
as one of the elders, while he yet held the dubious position of
an unmarried male who shilly-shallied in the matter of wedding.
No actual scandal ever attached to Flenton Hands. If there were
improprieties to be debited against him, he kept such matters
out of the sight of Turkey Track people, and only a vague rumor
of something discreditable associated itself with his Valley
connections to warrant young girls in pouting their lips and
referring to him as "that old Flenton Hands"; while their mothers
reproved and told them that he was one of the best young men, as
well as one of the best matches, in the neighborhood.
So far as personal appearance went, he was well enough, yet with
a curious suggestion of solidity as though his flesh might have
been of oak or iron. The countenance, too, with its round, high
cheek-bones, had an unpleasing immobility, resting always in a
somewhat slyish cast of expression which the odd slant of the
light gray eyes gave to it. For the rest, he was thin-lipped,
with thick, straight, dark hair, and an almost urban air of
gentlemanliness, an effort at gentility which, in a shorter and
more cheerful individual, would have been smug.
"Flenton's gone for the coffin," Sallie Blevins [23] said. "He
always tends to it when there's anything to do that calls for
money to be spent."
"I reckon he's got a plenty," supplied little Rilly Trigg; "but
someway I never could like his looks greatly. There, I oughtn't
to have said that--and his granny laying dead in the house
that-a-way."
Callista did not add her opinion to this discussion, but finding
that she was in no danger of meeting Flenton, hurried the others
promptly up to the house. As soon as she came in sight, Little
Liza, six feet tall, with a jimber-jaw and bass voice, came and
fell upon her neck and wept. Little Liza Hands got her
descriptive adjective from being the third of the name. To-day
she was especially prominent, because Granny Yearwood, the first
Eliza, ninety pounds of fiery energy and ambition, had at last
laid down the burden of her days. Her daughter, Eliza the
second, had lain beside her husband, Eliphalet Hands, in
churchyard mold these twenty years; and _her_ big daughter, with
the bovine profile, the great voice, and the timid, fluttered
soul of a small child, remained in the world, the only Eliza
Hands--yet still Little Liza to those about her. And for her
name's sake, Little Liza was chief mourner.
The Hands girls all had a sort of adoring attitude toward
Callista Gentry. Flenton wanted her, and they had been trying to
get Flenton everything he wanted since he was small enough to
[24] cry for the moon, and strike at the hand which failed to
pluck it down for him. Callista had not intended to stay. She
was to be over later in the day--or the same night, rather--with
the young people who sat up. But Little Liza managed to detain
her on one pretext or another until the coffin arrived and
Granny was finally placed therein.
"Just look at them thar shiny trimmin's on that thar coffin,"
admired Little Liza, jogging Callista's elbow. "That's Flent.
That's my brother Flent. They ain't a thing he grudges to them
he loves."
Callista uttered a soothing and satisfactory reply, and was
making her escape, when Hands himself overtook her at the door.
His features were drawn to an expression of great solemnity, one
which suited them ill, for he had the upslanting brow, the
pointed face and the narrow eye that, lightened by mirth, may be
antic, but without the touch of humor is forbidding and even
sinister.
"You're not going to leave us, air you?" he inquired in a
carefully muffled tone, as though indeed Granny was sleeping
lightly and might be easily wakened.
"Mother's going to stay now, and I'm coming back to-night,"
Callista hastened to say.
"I'm mighty glad you air," returned Flenton, with a heavy sigh.
"In these times of affliction, [25] hit's a powerful comfort to
me to have you in sight."
Callista edged closer to the others. She was not unwilling to be
seen standing whispering with Flenton. He was a good match, a
creditable captive of any girl's bow and spear; yet she did not
enjoy his love-making, least of all now that it was mingled with
this ill-sorted solemnity.
"Flenton, have they sent word to your Uncle Billy's folks?"
asked Octavia Gentry, making her appearance in the doorway
behind the two.
"Yes'm," returned Flenton, not pleased to be interrupted, yet
necessarily civil to the woman whom he hoped to have for a
mother-in-law.
"And does the Bushareses and Adam Venable and his wife know hit?
Is Mary a-comin'?" she pursued the catalog. "What about the
Aspel Yearwoods out in Big Buck Gap--has anyone went out there?
And Faithful Yearwood, that married Preacher Crowley--ain't they
livin' down in the Tatum neighborhood?"
"Yes'm, they air," confirmed Flenton. "Cousin Ladd 'lowed to
send one o' his chaps on a nag to Faithful Crowley's folks; and
Ab Straley was to let them at Big Buck Gap know." Though
impatient, he made a decent end. When he looked around, Callista
had quietly moved away.
The day's work was over; men and boys began to arrive at the
Hands place, some carrying lanterns. [26] From early candle
lighting till near the turn of the night the house would be
full; then the elders, men and women on whose day labor a family
must depend, would begin to slip away, except a few old widowers
and bachelors who might remain smoking on the steps outside; and
a circle of young folks who would be left sitting in the lamplight
and fireshine of the main room. Flenton knew of old experience just
how the night would go. He longed inexpressibly to be one of those
up-sitting young people that he might push his chair close to
Callista Gentry's and whisper to her in the privilege of the hour.
Yet he was held back by a consideration for his dignity as one of
the bereaved.
"Miz. Gentry," said Roxy Griever, "will you stay and he'p with
the supper--they aim to have a reg'lar meal put on the table at
about midnight--settin' up with the dead is mighty wearin'."
"I 'low the gals would rather tend to that theirselves,"
deprecated Octavia, mildly. "I mind how it was when I was a gal.
I never did want some old women pesterin' around at sech a
time."
She cast a swift glance to where Callista sat, her fair head
bent, the lamplight upon its bright burden of corn-colored
braids, Lance Cleaverage, his hands in his pockets, standing
before the girl regarding her, and evidently about to say
something. [27]
The Widow Griever's look followed Octavia's to the front room in
which half-a-dozen couples had paired off, whispering, giggling
a bit if the truth must be told, with an occasional undernote of
hysteria in the giggles.
"That's jest the reason," she announced, straightening up from
the hearth where she had been stirring a vast boiler full of
very strong coffee. "The gals that lets tham men have their way
is foolish. They'll rue the day they done so. Men persons would
always have the old folks leave, and the young folks run things
to suit theirselves; but I don't believe in sech."
On the mental horizon of the Widow Griever there hovered ever a
vast, dun, evil-promising cloud known as "tham men." She never
alluded to the opposite sex in any way other than collectively,
and named them in this manner, which held in it all of reproach.
Her father--gentle soul--presented himself to her under the name
of Poppy, as somewhat set apart from the raging mass of predatory
males addressed more or less openly and directly to destruction.
Poppy and a young brother, Sylvanus, though belonging to the
vicious sex and thereby under suspicion, were possible; but Lance,
the lawless and debonair, was not only one of the enemy--he was
Roxy Griever's horrible example. The church-house where "tham
men" were kept on the one side so that the gentler half of creation
might sit peacefully [28] on the other, was to her thinking the
only safe and proper place of public gathering.
"I tell you, Miz. Gentry," she now pursued, her reprehending eye
going past the person she answered to fasten itself on Lance's
lounging figure and note the careless, upward fling of his head,
"I tell you that I ain't never been back to the Settlement sence
I left it a widder. What would I be doin' down thar amongst all
tham men? But Lance, he goes down, and every time he goes, I
think he gits more of the Old Boy in him, 'caze evil is a-walkin'
around at noonday down in tham settlements, and you cain't be
safe anywhars."
"Might just as well quit being scared then," drawled Lance's
soft voice. He had stepped noiselessly to the door, at Callista's
suggestion to see if the coffee were ready.
"You Lance Cleaverage!" returned his sister in a carefully
suppressed tone that was sufficiently acid to make up for its
lack of volume, "I ain't a-goin' to quit bein' scared for yo'
say-so. You ought to be ashamed to name such--in the house with
the dead this a-way. No, the coffee'll not be ready for
somewhile yet. When hit is, you'ns can fetch cheers and he'p
yourselves to it. I'm a-goin' to show Miz. Gentry my gospel
quilt that I brung with me to lay over Granny."
Roxanna Cleaverage had married rather late in life. Girlhood had
been but an unsatisfactory season to her; young women in a primitive
society [29] are not given much prominence, and Roxy had neither
beauty nor charm to command what was to be had. Lacking these,
she made a great point of religion, which led incidentally to her
marriage with John Griever, an itinerant preacher, and brought her
two blissful years and Mary Ann Martha. As the wife of a preacher
she had been able to assume some dignity, to instruct, to lay down
the law, to keep herself measurably in the public eye.
When she was widowed, it was bitter to her to go back to Kimbro
Cleaverage's poor home and drop once more into obscurity. She
yearned desperately to wear some mark of distinction, to have at
least some semblance of social power. And in direct response to
this longing, there came a vision in the night, and Roxy rose up
and took her bits of quilt pieces and began to fashion a new
thing. Other women might have the Rising Sun, the Log Cabin, the
Piney-blow, the Basket of Posies; she had conceived and would
execute a master work in the way of quilts, quite outside the
line of these. Roxy lacked entirely that crude art sense which
finds its expression in the mountain woman's beautifully pieced
quilt; she only burned to startle admiration, to command respectful
attention by some means. The big square of muslin was bought at
the expense of considerable pinching and saving, and she began to
set upon it those figures which had occupied her [30] mind, her
time and her fingers through the years since. Clumsily done, with
no feeling whatever for form, proportion, or color, she poured into
it a passion of desirous energy which yet produced its effect. The
quilt was always at hand for such occasions as this, or when the
Presiding Elder came on one of his rare visits. And it was useful
to bring out if there were trouble, if someone needed to be overawed
or to be threeped down. But that member of the Cleaverage Clan who
in her eyes most needed threeping was proof against the gospel
quilt. She had never put it forth for Lance's confusion since the
day he took such an expressive interest in the undertaking, and
advised--in the presence of Preacher Drumright--the adding of a
sightly little border of devils around the semi-sacred square.
"A fine row o' davils would help the looks of it mightily, Sis'
Roxy," he had argued. "They're named frequent in the Bible, and
I'd cut 'em out for you. I would sure enough," he laughed, as
she looked heavy reproach at him. "You give me a sharp pair o'
shears and I can cut out as fine a lookin' davil as you or
anybody need wish for!"
After that she let him alone, aware that his more gifted eye
criticized her failures, even when he did not seek the circle
about the exhibited quilt and wilfully mistake her angels for
turkey buzzards.
The two older women now passed into that [31] cool, shaded little
chamber where lay the dead. The windows were open, and the white
curtains blew gustily in the night breeze, making the candle Roxy
carried flicker. She set it on a high shelf, and got out a thick
roll of stuff, unwrapping and spreading forth her contribution to
the solemnity of the occasion.
"Hit's jest the top on it," she communicated in a hoarse
whisper. "I hain't got the heart to put it in frames and quilt
it, 'caze I keep thinkin' of something else that ort to go on
it, time I say I'm done. Cur'us that I ain't never showed it to
you before." (This was a common formula with the widow, and
nobody ever disputed it). "See, that's Adam and Eve, to begin
on," and she indicated a pair of small, archaic figures cut from
blue checked gingham, their edges turned neatly in and whipped
to the white domestic background--when one thinks of it, a
domestic background is fairly proper for Adam and Eve. "That
ginghams they' cut out'n was a piece o' John's shirt--the last
one I made him."
"Tut, tut," responded Octavia, making that little clicking sound
with the tongue which does duty variously to express sympathy,
reprehension, surprise, or deprecation. She regarded the artistic
achievement before her with attention and respect. One could
readily distinguish Eve from Adam, because Eve was endowed with
petticoats, while Adam rejoiced in legs. Of course Eve had [32]
feet; but it would have taken someone less well acquainted with
the moral character of the Widow Griever than was Octavia Gentry
to deduce legs from those feet.
"What's that thar?" she made the customary inquiry, putting her
finger on a twisty bit of polka-dotted calico. "That must be the
sarpent."
"Hit air." Roxy returned the expected answer solemnly.
The Ancient Evil was represented as standing sociably on his
tail, facing the tempted pair.
"My! Don't he look feisty?" commented Octavia, with courteous
admiration. "Watch him jest a-lickin' out his tongue in Eve's
face. Lord," she sighed conventionally, "how prone women air to
sin!"
"Women? Huh!" snorted Mrs. Griever. "Not nigh so prone as tham
men. Look-a-here," turning the quilt to get at the Tree of Good
and Evil; "look at them thar apples. Now I made some of 'em out
of red calico, and some out of yellow. Do you think I ort to
have a few green, Miz. Gentry? Look like green apples is mighty
sinful and trouble makin'."
"I don't know," Octavia debated, as she ran her fingers over a
brave attempt at one of the Beasts of Revelation. "You might add
a few green ones. Hit does stand to reason that the Old Boy is
in green apples more than in ripe ones; but ef them that Eve
tempted Adam [33] with had been green--do you reckon he'd 'a' bit?"
The scandal was such an old one, that Roxy was evidently a little
irritated at its revival.
"Well, o' course," she said with some asperity, "a body cain't
gainsay what's in the Bible; but I have my doubts about that
thar apple fuss. Hit's men that prints the Good Book, and does
about with it--not women; an' I've always had a feelin' that mo'
likely hit was Adam got into that apple business first."
"Well, I don't know," repeated Octavia doubtfully. "I always
'lowed the Bible was the Bible. But what's a-goin' to be here?"
pointing to a sizable blank space.
"Why, that's a part that I ain't got to finish yet," explained
Roxy. "Miz. Abner Dowst given me the prettiest piece o' goods
last time I was at her house, and I been studyin' whether to use
hit a-depicturin' the Queen of Sheba or Phar'oh's daughter; and
then I thought I'd do better to show up Joseph a-dreamin', and
the sun and the moon and eleven stars jist over his head--see,
they'd set around sorter biassin' this-a-way, betwixt Adam-an'-Eve
and this golden harp. Hit's a piece of that dress her gals all
had on a-Sunday--you know Dows the always gits a bolt, and time
her and the gals all has a dress out of hit, and him a shirt and
the boys a shirt apiece, why the bolt's about gone. Well, this
time that [34] The'dory May, she axed for something bright, and
he was bent on pleasin' her, so he picked for the brightest thing
in the store. Hit looked sort o' gay a-comin' into church, one
behind another; but now hit'll do fine for Joseph's coat. Ah, law,
Miz. Gentry, hit'll be right here in my quilt long after their
dresses is wore out and forgot about."
"Yes, indeed, hit will that, Sister Griever," her listener
assented, a good deal impressed. "Is these sorter round things---"
"Them's the loaves an' fishes," Roxy hastened to elucidate.
"They ain't so very well done, ye see. I was a-workin' on them
when I hearn that Granny Yearwood was about to go, an' I hurried
'em up, 'caze I'd promised her that I'd spread the quilt over
her when she was laid out. You he'p me with it now, Miz. Gentry,
and we'll fold it back this-a-way so as not to show the part
that ain't done."
"Laws, Miz. Griever," said Octavia, as the great square, with
its many small, gaily colored figures, whipped laboriously into
place, was spread out between their hands, "I don't see how you
ever did think of all them things."
"I reckon it comes from havin' a preacher for a mate," returned
Roxy. "Mr. Griever, he was always a cotin' scriptur' round the
house, and now he's gone I remember his words--and put 'em down
on the quilt, as a body may say. I love to have it by me to work
on in time of trouble, [35] an' I love to put it on the bed if a
preacher sleeps the night at our house. Looks like a body ought
to have good dreams un'neath the gospel that-a-way. Thar, ain't
that fixed all right now? Cain't we leave here? I 'low them
young folks out in the other room might need attention."
Octavia glanced through the slightly open door and saw that
Lance and Callista had gone into the kitchen alone to look after
the supper. They were talking together, and the mother noted
hopefully that neither of them was laughing, and that the girl's
color had risen, while her eyes looked troubled.
"Law honey," she said smiling, "sho'ly they can manage for
theirselves one while. I'm plumb tired, an' I know good an' well
you air. Le's sit here a spell whar it's cool an' quiet, an'
have a little visit."
This was a sort of invitation which Roxy Griever could not
refuse, and the courting couples were spared her surveillance
for a little longer.
"Callista," Lance began abruptly, when they were out of earshot
of those in the front room, "I raised the roof-beams of my cabin
to-day--two big rooms and a porch between, with a cooking place
for summer. Ain't that about right?"
Callista looked toward the other room uneasily. She had no audience
now--how should she act, how demean herself so as to seem
indifferent? Lance's undecipherable, clear hazel eyes were on [36]
her; they rested carelessly in what seemed a passing glance;
yet at the back of that regard looked out a demand which she
could scarcely comprehend.
"I--I don't know," she faltered. "Lance, won't you please lift
that there coffee off o' the fire? It's boiled enough."
Lance bent lithely to the hearth and did her bidding.
"I've got me two horses now," he said in the same even undertone.
"I matched Satan with a little black filly that Derf brought over
from the Far Cove neighborhood. They're jest of a size, and they
step together like a couple of gals with their arms around each
other's waists. Derf said the filly was named Cindy; but I call
her Sin--how do you like that?--Satan and Sin?"
"Well, I think it sounds right wicked, if you ask me," Callista
plucked up courage to say. "But I don't reckon you care whether
I like it or not."
Lance shook his head and smiled.
"Nope," he agreed easily. Then he added, "Havin' two horses helps
out a good deal. I've been doing haulin' on Derf's contract. I'll
have a right smart of money left, even after my house is all done.
There'll be a-plenty laid up by next spring; and I'm goin' to put
in the winter clearing land. I reckon we'll be good ready by April."
By April! A sweet perturbation took possession [37] of Callista's
breast. She dared not raise her eyes lest he should read in them
what she yet jealously sought to conceal. He was not like the
other boys; with all the raillery and badinage that went on between
them--famous in their circle; with all the unusual parade, in the
open play of courtship, he had never really approached her as a
lover, never laid his hand on her in tenderness, nor offered her
a caress, save as a public, saucy threat. Nor had he asked for
her, as the mountain phrase goes; but surely now he meant her to
understand that he expected to be married in the spring. If only
he would ask her--if only! She had always meant--if she dared--to
refuse him--at least the first time; to reluctantly give in under
repeated importunities--but that was past. With her heart beating
in her throat, she made shift to say,
"I hope you'll be better to your horses than most of the men
that hauls. I do love a good horse."
"You goin' to ride with me to the buryin' tomorrow?" Lance
inquired casually. "If you want to, we could leave the buryin'
ground after the funeral's over and go up Lance's Laurel, to my
place, and on round to your home the long way. I could show you
whether I was good to my horses or not."
The color glowed softly in Callista's cheeks and her veiled eyes
were bright. But before she could say yes or no, the Widow Griever
came in. [38]
"Good land, Lance Cleaverage!" she began on her usual formula.
"Why hain't you bidden out all them folks in thar? This here
coffee's done, an' a-gittin' cold. The biscuits ain't no better.
They got to eat now, 'caze I want 'em to sing a good wake of
hymns--I promised Granny I'd tend to pickin' 'em out."
With a grimace of good-natured acquiescence, Lance went to
execute his sister's orders. Out on the porch a half-dozen young
boys had succumbed to drowsiness, one by one, stretched on the
boards, taking elbow or saddle for a pillow. The crickets and
katydids were loud in the grove. Lance passed through the front
rooms, speaking to the couples there, and called in those outside.
The supper of good warm food, and hot, strong coffee was eaten
gratefully. Then all went into the front room and the hymns were
sung. Finally the up-sitting was over, and Callista had made no
opportunity for further speech with Lance. He had not sought one,
and chance had not offered it. She regretted a little that she
really wanted so much to ride at his side to-morrow. If she did
not, she would quite enjoy treating that cavalier invitation as
though she had never heard it. But the very thought brought a
quick apprehension of failure, and she resolved to be ready and
waiting, so that she might seem to be carelessly picked up at
the last moment, lest Lance himself anticipate her in this game
of indifference. [39]