THE WEDDING.
WEDNESDAY came, a glamorous day in early September. A breath of
autumn had blown upon the mountains in the night, leaving the air
inspiring--tingling cool in the shade, tingling hot in the sun. The
white clouds were vagabonds of May time, though the birds were
already getting together in flocks, chattering, restless for
migration. Now at night instead of the bright come-and-go of
fireflies there was a mild and steady lamping of glowworms in the
evening grass. The katydids' chorus had dwindled, giving place to
the soft chirr of ground and tree-crickets. There was a pleasant,
high-pitched rustle in the stiffening leaves; the dew was heavy in
the hollows, gray under the moon.
All day the woods were silent, except for the mocking whirr of
grasshoppers rising into the sunshine, and an occasional
squabble of crows in pursuit of a hawk.
Wild grapes were ripe--delicious, tart, keen-flavored things. In
the pasture hollow a fleece of goldenrod, painted on the purple
distance along with the scarlet globes of orchard fruit, was
stripped by laughing girls for Callista's wedding [89] decorations.
Yes, summer was definitely departed; a new presence was here, an
autumn wind in the treetops, an autumn light on the meadow, an
autumn haze on the hills--a fine luminous purple, flecked with
lights of rose and gold.
The Gentry place, with its central house of some pretensions and its
numerous outlying cabins, presented on Wednesday afternoon something
the appearance of a village undergoing sack. Open doors and windows,
heaps of stuff, or bundles of household gear, or sheaves of garments
being carried from place to place, suggested this impression, which
seemed further warranted by the female figures emerging suddenly
now and again from one cabin or another and fleeing with disheveled
hair, wild gestures and incoherent babblings as of terror, to some
other refuge. The girls had not come in yet from the pasture with
their armloads of goldenrod and wild aster; but all three of the
Hands sisters--good, faithful souls, neighborhood dependences for
extra help at weddings and funerals--were hard at work in the very
heart of the turmoil.
"Liza, have you seed Callista anywhar's?" panted Octavia Gentry,
appearing in the main house, laden with a promiscuous assortment
of clothing.
"Yes, I did," rumbled Little Liza from the chair on which she
stood adjusting the top of a window curtain. [90]
"I thought I heared Lance's banjo awhile ago," added the widow
as she folded and disposed of the garments she had brought in,
"and then I didn't hear it any more. I have obliged to get hold
of Callista to tell me whar she wants these things put at."
"Yes, and you did hear Lance Cleaverage's banjo," confirmed
Little Liza sadly. "Callisty heared it, too. She come a-steppin'
down from her room like as if he'd called her, and she's walked
herself out of the front door and up the road alongside o' him,
and that's why you don't hear the banjo no more."
"Good land!" cried the mother-in-law that was to be. "I don't
know what young folks is thinkin' of--no, I don't. It ain't
respectable for a bride and groom to walk side by side on their
weddin' day. Everybody knows that much. And I've got to have
Callista here. Roxy Griever's sent word that she cain't come to
the weddin' because its been given out to each and every that
they'd be dancin'. I want Callista to see Lance and have that
stopped. Hit's jest some o' Lance's foolishness. You know in
reason its got to be stopped. Oh, Sylvane!" as a boyish figure
appeared in the doorway. "Won't you go hunt up Callista and tell
her I want her? And you tell yo' sister Roxy when you go home
that there ain't goin' to be any dancin' here tonight. And just
carry these here pans out to the springhouse [91] whilst you're
about it, Sylvane. And if you find Ellen Hands there tell her to
come on in to me, please. I vow, nobody's been for the cows!
Sylvane, whilst you're out you go up to the milk gap and see are
they waitin' thar. Let down the draw-bars for 'em if they are."
Fifteen-year-old Sylvalnus Cleaverage laughed and turned
quickly, lest further directions be given him.
"All right," he called back. "I'll 'tend to most of those
things--as many of 'em as I can remember."
A privileged character, especially among the women, Sylvane made
willing haste to do Octavia's errands. The boy was like his
brother Lance with the wild tang left out, and feminine eyes
followed his young figure as he hurried from spring-house to
pasture lot. When he found Lance and Callista walking hand in
hand at the meadow's edge he gave them warning, so that the girl
might slip in through the back door, innocently unconscious of
any offence against the etiquette of the occasion, and the
bridegroom pass on down the big road, undiscovered.
"I reckon it's jest as well as 'tis," commented old Ajax from
the security of the front door-yard, to which he had been swept
out and cleaned out in the course of the preparations. "Ef
Octavy had been give a year's warnin', she would have [92] been
jest about tearin' up Jack this-a-way for the whole time."
As evening fell, teams began to arrive, and the nearer neighbors
came in on foot, with a bustle of talk and a settling of the
children. Old Kimbro Cleaverage brought his daughter, Roxy
Griever, with little Polly Griever, a relative of Roxy's
deceased husband, and Mary Ann Martha.
"I knowed in reason you wouldn't have dancin' on yo' place," the
widow shrilled, as she approached. Then as she climbed out over
the wheel, she added in a lower tone to Little Liza Hands, who
had come out to help her down, "But that thar sinful Lance is so
pestered by the davil that you never know whar he'll come up
next, and I sont Miz. Gentry the word I did as a warnin'. Tham
men has to be watched."
Callista was ready, dressed in a certain white lawn frock--not
for worlds would she have admitted that she had made it with
secret hopes of this occasion. The helpers were still rushing to
and fro, getting the wedding supper on the long tables,
contrived by boards over trestles, on the porch and in the big
kitchen, when Preacher Drumright rode sourly up.
It was Octavia Gentry who had been instrumental in bespeaking
Drumright's services for the marriage, and indeed he was the only
preacher in the Turkey Track neighborhoods at the moment or
anywhere nearer than the Settlement itself. [93] The church-going
element of the region stood before this somewhat cantankerous
old man in the attitude of confessed offenders. He was famous for
raking the young people over the coals, and he arrogated to himself
always the patriarch's privilege of scolding, admonishing, or
denouncing, whenever the occasion might seem to him fit. For ten
years Drumright had longed to get a fair chance at Lance Cleaverage.
Ever since the boy--and he was the youngest in the crowd--joined
with a half dozen others to break up a brush meeting which Drumright
was holding, the preacher's grudge had grown. And it did not thrive
without food; Lance was active in the matter of providing sustenance
for the ill opinion of the church party, and he had capped his
iniquities by taking his banjo as near the church as the big spring
on that Sunday in mid-July. Drumright had prepared the castigating
he meant to administer to Lance almost as carefully as he would
have gotten ready a sermon.
With the advent of the preacher the last frantic preparations
were dropped, and it was suddenly discovered that they were not
absolutely necessary for the occasion. The guests gathered into
the big front room, where the marriage was to be. Drumright took
his stand behind a small table at its further end; Callista came
down the stairs, joined Lance in the entry, and the two stepped
into the room hand in hand. [94]
That was a daunting front to address with reproof. People said
that they were the handsomest couple that ever stood up together
in the two Turkey Tracks. But after all, it was something more
than physical beauty that arrested the eye in that countenance.
Lance's face was lifted, and his eyes apparently saw not the
room, the preacher, nor even the girl whose hand he held. He
moved a thing apart, his light, swift step timed to unheard
rhythms, a creature swayed by springs which those about him knew
not of, addressed to some end which they could not understand.
And Callista seemed to look only to him, to live only in him.
Her fair face reflected the strange radiance that was on his
dark, intense young visage.
It was Drumright's custom to make a little talk when about to
perform the marriage ceremony, so there was neither surprise nor
apprehension as he began to speak.
"Befo' I can say the words that shall make this here man and
this here woman one flesh, I've got a matter to bring up that I
think needs namin'."
The old voice rasped aggressively, and a little flutter of
concern passed over Drumright's hearers.
"The Gentry family air religious, church-goin' people. Why
Callista Gentry ain't a perfessin' member in the church this day
is more than I can tell you-all here and now. Like enough some
will say hit is the influence of the man a-standin' [95] beside her;
and supposin' this to be so, hit cain't be too soon named out to
'em."
If Lance heard any word of Drumright's harangue, he gave no
sign; but Callista stirred uneasily, her nostrils flickered, and
she glanced from the preacher to her bridegroom.
"I wonder in my soul," Drumright went on, "that any God-fearin'
family would give they' child to a man that has been from his
cradle up, as a body may say, the scoffer that you air, Lance
Cleaverage."
Thus pointedly addressed, a slight start passed through the
bridegroom's taut body, and Cleaverage turned a half-awakened
eye upon the preacher.
"Are you aimin' to get 'em to stop the marriage?" he inquired
bluntly. As he spoke, he dropped Callista's hand, caught it once
more in the grasp of his other, and put his freed arm strongly
about her waist. Thus holding her, he turned a little to face
her mother and grandfather as well as the preacher.
A shock went through, the crowded room; pious horror and amaze
on the part of the older people; among the younger folk a
twittering tremor not unmixed with delight at the spirit of the
bridegroom. You might wince beneath the preacher's castigations;
you might privately grumble about them, and even refuse to pay
anything toward his up-keep, thereby helping to starve [96] his
wife and children; but that you should presume to answer a preacher
in the pulpit or elsewhere in the performance of his special
office, was a thing inconceivable.
The bridegroom's family drew together at one side of the room,
Kimbro Cleaverage, in his decent best, looking half affrightedly
at the man who was miscalling his son; Roxy Griever, divided
between her allegiance to the caste of preachers, all and
singular, and tribal pride; Sylvane clutching his hands into
fists, and hoping that Buddy would get the better of the
argument; while Mary Ann Martha, in the grasp of Polly Griever,
glowered and wondered.
"Lance Cleaverage," returned Drumright ponderously, "I respect
yo' father, for he's a good man. I respect yo' sister--she's one
too; for their sake I come here to perform this marriage,
greatly agin my grain."
He was taking a long breath, having barely got under way, when
Lance stopped him with a curt,
"Well,--are you goin' to do it--or are you not?"
People gazed with open mouths and protruding eyes. Where were
the lightnings of Heaven, set apart for the destruction of the
impious? Drumright himself was momentarily staggered.
"Er, yes--I am," he said finally, wagging his head in an
obstinate, bovine shake. "After I've said my say, I aim to marry
ye." [97]
The little points of light that always danced deep down in Lance
Cleaverage's eyes, flamed up like clear lamps at this statement.
"No, you'll not," he said promptly. "You'll marry us now--or not
at all. If I wanted any of your talk, I'd come to your church
and get it. I don't want any."
All this time his arm had been round Callista, the hand closed
on her slim waist gently, but with a grip of steel. Had she
wished to stir from his side, she could scarcely have done so.
Now he turned toward the door and moved quietly away from the
astonished preacher, taking her with him.
"Whar--whar you goin'?" faltered Drumright, dumbfounded.
"Down to Sourwood Gap to be wedded," the bridegroom flung back
in his face. "Squire Ashe is up there from Hepzibah--he'll marry
us without haulin' us over the coals first." And he made his way
through the roomful of mute, dazed, unprotesting people. At the
door he paused, and, with the air of a man alone with his
beloved in desert spaces, bent and murmured something in the ear
of his bride, then ran lightly down the steps and out into the
dark to where the horses were tethered. He returned quickly,
leading his two black ponies.
He found that in the few moments of his absence the company had
awakened to the enormity [98] of what was going on. There were a
half-dozen people round Callista, most of them talking. Little
Liza, who evidently believed that the finger of the Lord was in
it, and that her brother Flenton was at last going to get the
girl of his choice, clung to Callista's hand and wept. Flenton
himself stood squarely in the bride's path, speaking low and
eagerly. At the upper end of the room Octavia Gentry was almost
in hysterics as she labored with the preacher, trying to get him
to say that he would marry the pair at once if they would come
back. Old Ajax had retired to his corner by the big fireplace,
where he stood smiling furtively, and slowly rubbing a lean,
shaven jaw, as he glanced from his daughter-in-law to his
granddaughter in leisurely enjoyment. After all, there was much
he liked well in Callista's chosen.
Roxana Griever had flown to supplement Octavia's entreaties with
the preacher. Kimbro made his way toward the door, evidently
with some half-hearted intention of remonstrating with his son.
Sylvane had slipped out to help Lance with the horses--he
guessed that his brother never meant to ride away from the
Gentry place alone.
"He ain't fitten for you, Callisty," Hands was whispering over and
over. "He ain't fitten for you. A man that will do you this-a-way
on yo' wedding day, what sort o' husband is he goin' to make? Here's
me, honey, that's loved you all your life, an' been a member o' the
church in [99] good standin' sence I was twelve years old. Callisty,
I'd be plumb proud to lay down for you to walk over. You take me,
and we'll have a weddin' here sure enough."
[Illustration: "You'll marry us now--or not at all."]
The words were breathed low into the bride's ear; yet attitude
and air were eloquent, and Hands's position and intentions were
so notorious, that the proposition might as well have been
shouted aloud.
"Lance--you Lance! Callista, honey!" implored the mother's voice
distressfully above the moving heads of the crowd. "You chillen
wait till I can get thar. Preacher says he'll wed you now. Come
on back in here."
"Yes, and when you git that feller back in here a-standin'
before Preacher Drumright to be wedded, you'll toll a wild buck
up to a tainted spring," chuckled old Ajax Gentry.
Lance only smiled. The lover, all aglow, rejected with contempt
this maimed thing they would thrust upon him for a marriage. He
was leading Callista's horse to the porch edge that she might
mount, when he glanced up and found how strongly the pressure
was being put upon his girl. The sight arrested his hurrying
steps, and turned him instantly into the semblance of an
indifferent bystander.
"Honey, they say a good brother makes a good husband," Little
Liza was booming on in what she fondly believed was a tone
audible only to Callista. [100] "I tell you Flenton is the best
brother any gals ever had."
Cleaverage stood gazing at them with eyes indecipherable,
then--turned his back.
"And look at Lance Cleaverage," exhorted Little Liza, "a
drinkin', coon-huntin', banjo playin' feller that don't darken
the doors of a church--his own sister cain't never name him
without tellin' how wicked he is. Let him go, honey--you let him
go, an' take Flent."
Lance, standing with his back to them, holding his horses, had
begun to whistle. At first the sound was scarcely to be heard
above the babel of voices in the lighted room--but it came clearly
to Callista's ears. Flenton's hand reached hers; Ellen joined her
entreaties to those of Little Liza. Callista, while not a church
member, had always aligned herself with the ultra-religious
element; she had been the companion and peer of those eminently
fitted and ever ready to sit in judgment on the unworthy. Now she
heard all these joining to condemn Lance.
The tune outside went seeking softly among the turns and
roulades with which Lance always embellished a melody. It was
the song he had sung under her window. Her heart remembered the
words.
"How many years, how many miles,
Far from the door where my darling smiles?
How many miles, how many years . . . ?"
His musing, eyes were on the far line of mountains, velvety
black against the luminous blackness of the sky; his gaze rested
thoughtfully on a great star that hung shining in the dusk over
the horizon's edge. He seemed deaf to the clatter and squabble,
blind to the movement in the room behind him. Softly he
whistled, like a man wandering pensive beside a lonely sea, or
in some remote, solitary forest, a man untouched by the more
immediate and human things of life. The two horses after
snorting and pulling back at first sight of the unaccustomed
lights and the noisy voices, put down their noses toward the
long, lush dooryard grass.
"He ain't lookin' at you. He ain't a-carin'," Flenton whispered
to her.
For the first time Callista glanced directly to where her
bridegroom stood. His back was to her--yes, his back was to her.
And though the little whistle went questing on with its "How
many miles--how many years?" even as her eye rested on him he
made a leisurely movement toward one of the horses, like a man
who might be about to mount. Swift as a shadow she slipped
through the hands of those around her and down the steps.
"Lance," she breathed. "Lance." Then she was in his arms. He had
lifted her to the saddle.
"Good land!" wailed Octavia Gentry, "if you've [102] got to go, Sis,
they's no use ruinin' yo' frock. Here's your ridin' skirt," and
she flourished the long calico garment and struggled to get down
to the mounted pair.
Lance was on the other horse now. He paid no attention to any of
them, but let his smiling gaze rove for the last time over the
lighted windows, the noisy people, the long tables.
"What time will you-all be back?" called the still secretly
chuckling old Ajax from the doorway, as he saw them depart.
"Never," answered Lance's clear hail.
"Oh, Lance--ain't you a-goin' to come back and have the
weddin'?" began Octavia.
At this the bridegroom turned in his saddle, reining in
thoughtfully. He would not accept this mutilated ceremony, yet
the wedding of Lance Cleaverage should not be shorn in the eyes
of his neighbors. Slowly he wheeled his horse and faced them all
once more.
"Callista and me ain't coming back here," he assured them,
without heat, yet with decision. "But I bid you-all to an infare
at my house tomorrow night."
Then once more he wheeled his pony, caught at Callista's bridle,
and sweeping into the big road, started the two forward at a
gallop. His arm was round Callista's waist. Her head drooped in
the relief of a decision arrived at, and a final abandonment to her
real feeling that was almost [103] swoon-like, on the conqueror's
shoulder. The horses sprang forward as one.
"Callista--sweetheart," he whispered with his lips against her
hair, "we don't want nothin' of them folks back there, do we? We
don't want nothin' of anybody in the world. Just you and me--you
and me." [104]