ROXY GRIEVER'S GUEST.
IT was a strange day whose gray dawn brought Callista to her
father-in-law's door. Where she had wandered, questioning,
debating, agonizing, since she dismissed Flenton Hands at the
corner of old Kimbro's lean home pasture, only Callista knew.
The Judas tree down by the spring branch might have told a tale
of clutching fingers that reached up to its low boughs, while
somebody stood shaking and listening to the sound of the creek
that came down the gorge past that home Callista was leaving.
The mosses between there and the big road could have whispered
of swift-passing feet that went restlessly as though driven to
and fro over their sodden carpet for hours. The bluff where a
trail precariously rounds old Flat Top kept its secret of a
crouching figure that looked out over the Gulf, black in the now
moonless night, of a sobbing voice that prayed, and accused and
questioned incoherently.
The household at Kimbro Cleaverage's rose by candle-light.
Sylvane, strolling out to the water bucket, barely well awake,
caught sight of his sister-in-law at the gate, gave one swift
glance at her face as it showed gray through the dim light, [212]
wheeled silently and hurried ahead of her into the kitchen to
warn his sister not to betray surprise. So she was received with
that marvelous, fine courtesy of the mountaineer, which proffers
only an unquestioning welcome, demanding no explanations of the
strangest coming or of the most unexpected comer. She answered
their greeting in a curious, lifeless tone, said only that she
was tired, not sick at all, and would like to lie down; and when
Roxy hastened with her to the bed in the far room and saw her
safely bestowed there, the girl sank into almost instant slumber
so soon as she had stretched herself out.
"She's went to sleep already," whispered Roxy to Sylvane,
stepping back into the kitchen, and, while she quietly carried
forward the breakfast preparations, the boy crept up to the loft
where Mary Ann Martha and Polly slept and whence the little
one's boisterous tones began to be heard. Later he came down
with the two, holding the five-year-old by the hand, imposing
quiet upon them both by look and word; maintaining it by
constant watchfulness.
They ate their breakfast, speaking in subdued voices, mostly of
indifferent matters. Roxy, who, woman fashion, would have made
some comment, inquiry or suggestion, was checked whenever she
looked at the faces of her men folk. The meal over, Sylvane and
her father went out to the day's work. Roxy cleared away the dishes
and [213] set the house in order, returning every little while
to hover doubtfully above that slim form lying so silent and
motionless in the bed. She was frightened at the way the girl
slept, unaware that Callista had not closed her eyes the night
before, and that she was worn out, mind and body, with weeks of
fretting emotions.
The morning came on still, warm and cloudy. There was silence in
the forest, the softened loam making no sound under any foot,
last year's old leaves too damp to rustle on the oak boughs. It
was a day so soundless, stirless, colorless, as to seem unreal,
with a haunting sadness in the air like an undefined memory of
past existences, a drowsiness of forgotten lands. Even the
hearth fire faded faint in that toneless day, which had neither
sun nor moon nor wind, neither heat nor cold indoors or out.
Again and again, as the hours wore on, the Widow Griever stole
in and looked upon her sleeping guest with a sort of terror. She
sent Polly away with Mary Ann Martha to look for posies in the
far woods that the house might be quiet. Quiet--it was as if the
vast emptiness which surrounds the universe had penetrated into
the heart of that day, making all objects transparent,
weightless, meaningless, without power of motion. She would
stand beside the bed, noting the even breathing of the sleeper,
then go softly to the door and look out. The trees rose into the
stillness and emptiness and [214] spread their branches there,
themselves thin shadows of a one-time growth and life. The water
of the pond below lay wan and glassy, unstirred by any ripple.
The very rocks on its edges appeared devoid of substance. From
ten o'clock on seemed one standstill afternoon, lacking sign of
life or the passage of time, until the imperceptible approach of
dusk and the slow deepening of a night which might to all
appearances be the shadow of eternal sleep.
Kimbro and his son had taken their bit of dinner with them to
their work of clearing and brush-burning in a distant field. At
dusk they came quietly in to find the supper ready, Polly still
herding Mary Ann Martha to keep her quiet, Roxy Griever putting
the meal on the table, worried, but saying nothing. On their
part, they asked no questions, but each stole an anxious glance
at the shut door behind which was the spare bed. As they sat
down to eat, Roxy said to her father:
"I don't hardly know, Poppy--She's a-sleepin' yit--been a-sleepin'
like that ever sence she laid down thar. Do you reckon I ort--"
"I'd jest let her sleep, daughter," put in the old man gently.
"I reckon hit's the best medicine she can get. The pore child
must be sort of wore out."
After supper, while Roxy, with Polly's help, was washing the
dishes, Kimbro and his younger son held a brief consultation out
by the gate, [215] following which the boy moved swiftly off,
going up Lance's Laurel.
A little later Callista waked briefly. She sat listlessly upon
the side of the bed, declining Roxy's eager proffer of good warm
supper at the table, and took--almost perforce--from the elder
woman's hand the cup of coffee and bit of food which Roxy
brought her.
"No, no, nothing more, thank you, Sister Roxy!" she said hastily,
almost recoiling. "That's a-plenty. I ain't hungry--just sort o'
tired." And she turned round, stretched herself on the bed once
more, and sank back into sleep.
The next morning, when the breakfast was ready, although Roxy
had listened in vain for sounds from the small far room,
Callista came unexpectedly out, fully dressed. She sat with them
at the table, pale, downcast, staring at her plate and crumbling
a bit of corn pone, unable to do more than drink a few swallows
of coffee. She did not note that Sylvane was missing. Later the
boy came back from Lance's Laurel, to tell his father and sister
that he had spent the night with his brother, that the cabin in
the Gap was now closed and empty, and Lance gone to work at
Thatcher Daggett's sawmill, some twelve miles through the woods,
out on North Caney Creek, where several men of the neighborhood
were employed.
"That's the reason Callista come over here," [216] old Kimbro said
mildly. "She and Lance have had a difference of opinion, hit's
likely, about whether or no he should go there. Well, I'm sure
glad to have her with us. She'd 'a' been right lonesome all to
herself."
"Would you name it to her?" asked the widow anxiously.
Kimbro shook his head. "Don't you name nothin' to the girl,
except that she's welcome in this house as long as she cares to
stay--and don't say too much about that--she knows it."
"Lance has fixed it up with old man Daggett so that Callista can
get what she wants from the store--Derf's place," put in
Sylvane.
An expression of relief dawned upon Roxy's thin, anxious face.
The Kimbro Cleaverages were very poor. Truly, Callista, the
admired, was welcome, yet the seams of their narrow resources
would fairly gape with the strain to cover the entertainment of
such a guest. If she could get what she wanted from Derf's, it
would simplify matters greatly.
"Well, you'll tell her that, won't ye, Buddy?" his sister
prompted Sylvane.
He nodded.
"I've got some other things to tell her from Lance," he said,
boyishly secretive. "I'm goin' over to see him at the mill come,
Sunday, and she can send word by me. I'll be passin' back and
forth all the time whilst he's workin' there." [217]
But when this easy method of communication was brought to the
notice of Callista, she made no offer toward using it.
It was mid-afternoon of the day following her arrival. The rain was
intermitted, not definitely ceased; there would be more of it; but
just now the air was warm and the sun brilliant. Mountain fashion,
the door of the cabin stood wide. Mary Ann Martha had a corn pone,
and she took occasional bites from it as she circled the visitor,
staring at her with avid, hazel eyes, that troubled Callista's calm
whenever she caught the fire of them, so like Lance's. Marauding
chickens came across the door-stone and ventured far on the child's
trail of crumbs; the light cackle of their whispered duckings,
the scratch of their claws on the puncheons, alone broke the
stillness. Callista sat by the doorway, a dead weight at her heart.
The pallor, the weariness of it, were plain in her face.
"Good land, Polly--cain't you take this chap over yon in the
woods and lose her?" demanded the widow in final exasperation,
as Mary Ann Martha turned suddenly on the chicken that was
stalking her, and shooed it, squalling, from the door. "I want
to get out my quilt and work on it."
All unconscious that these things were done on her behalf,
Callista saw the unwilling Mary Ann Martha marched away. She
beheld the gospel quilt brought out and spread on the widow's
knees [218] quite as some chatelaine of old might have produced
her tapestry for the diversion of the guest. Over the gulf of pain
and regret and apprehension--this well of struggling, seething
emotion--lightly rippled the surface sounds of life, material
talk, bits of gossip, that Callista roused herself to harken to
and answer.
Roxy spoke in a solemn, muffled tone, something the voice she
would have used if her father or Sylvane were dead in the house.
She would have been more than human, and less than woman, had
she not to some degree relished the situation. She remembered
with deep satisfaction that, though she was his own sister, she
had always reprehended Lance publicly and privately, holding him
unfit to mate with this paragon. Callista had the sensation of
being at her own funeral. She drooped, colorless and inert, in
her chair, and stared past everything the room contained, out
through the open door and across the far blue rim of hills.
"I believe in my soul these here needles Sylvane got me is too
fine for my cotton," Roxy murmured, by way of attracting
attention. "I wonder could you thread one for me, Callisty? Your
eyes is younger than mine."
Callista took the needle and threaded it, handing it back with a
sigh. As she did so, her glance encountered Roxy's solicitous
gaze, then fell to the quilt.
"You--you've done a sight of work on that, haven't you, Sis'
Roxy?" she asked gently. [219]
The widow nodded. "An' there's a sight more to do," she added.
"This is a pretty figure," Callista said, pointing at random,
but producing a kindly show of interest.
Roxy brightened.
"Can you make out what it's meant for?" she inquired eagerly.
Then, for fear Callista should attempt and fail, "I aimed it for
a Tree of Life, with a angel sorter peerched on it, an' one
standin' un'neath. But," deprecatingly, "hit looks mo' like a
jimpson weed to me. An' pears like I 'don't never have no luck
with angels."
Callista's absent gaze rested upon the unsatisfactory sprigged
calico and striped seersucker version of members of the heavenly
host.
"Them Jacob's-ladder angels--you hain't never seen them,
Callisty, sence I sorter tinkered they' wings. Look! 'Pears to
me like it's he'ped 'em powerful. But these--I vow, I don't know
what is the matter of 'em, without it's the goods. That thar
stuff, is 'most too coarse for angels, I reckon. Or it might be
the color. 'Warshed whiter'n snow--without spot or, stain--'
that's what the Good Book says, whilst all these is spotted and
figured. But ye see white on white wouldn't never show. I might
'a' used blue-and-white stripe. And then again, the sayin' is,
'Chastised with many stripes'--that'd never be angels, no how."
[220]
Once more Callista made an effort to bring her mind to the
problem in hand.
"The sky is blue," Roxy adduced somewhat lamely. "Do you reckon
blue angels would be more better?"
"Maybe purple," hesitated the visitor. "The Bible names purple a
heap in regards to Heaven--purple and gold. I've got a piece of
purple calico at--at home." Her voice trailed and faltered
huskily over the words. Then she set her lips hard, crested her
head in the old fashion, and went on evenly. "I've got a piece
of mighty pretty purple, and one as near gold as ever goods was,
that you're welcome to, Sis' Roxy, if--if you or Polly would go
over and get 'em."
Again thought of where those treasured rolls of calico were to
be found lowered the clear, calm, defiant voice. Roxy noted it;
but the magnum opus, brought out to cheer and divert Callista,
had laid its unfailing spell upon the widow; the lust for quilt
pieces, rampant in all mountain women, wakened in her,
aggravated in her case by the peculiar needs, the more exacting
demands of her own superior artistry.
"Yes--shore, honey; I'll be glad to go any time," she said, "ef
you'll jest tell me where to look."
So life went on at the Kimbro Cleaverage place, a curious
interlude, and still no word was said to [221] Callista of the
strangeness of her advent, and no explanation vouchsafed, till
on the evening of the third day the girl herself sought her
father-in-law and opened the matter haltingly, timidly. They
were out at the chip-pile where Kimbro was cutting the next
day's wood for Roxy's use. He dropped his axe to the chopping
log and stood leaning on it, peering at her with mild, faded,
near-sighted eyes.
"Well now, Callisty," he began gently, "I'm glad you named this
to me, becaze I've got a message for you from Lance, and I
didn't want to speak of it for fear it would seem like hurrying
you away, or criticising any of your actions. I want you to
know, daughter, that I don't do that. Lance is a wild boy, and
he's got wild ways. But he has a true heart, honey, and one of
these days you'll find it. Now, I reckon, you might be having
some trouble with him."
"A message," repeated Callista in a low tone. "Is he gone away?"
"Well, he's out on North Caney," old Kimbro told her, "a-workin'
at Thatch Daggett's sawmill. Lance can make good money whenever
he'll work at his own trade, and I doubt not he'll do right well
at this sawmill business, too. He hain't got the land cleared
over where you-all was livin' that he ought to have, an' I think
it's better for you to stay on with us a while--we're sure proud
to have you."
Callista's eyes filled with a sudden rush of tears. [222] Kimbro
did not explain to her that Sylvane had gone to see his brother.
He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a little roll of money.
"Lance sent you this," he said. "He never had time to write any
letter. My son Lance is a mighty poor correspondent at the best;
but he sent you this, and he bade Sylvane to tell you that you
was to buy what you needed at Derf's store, an' that he'd hope
to send you money from time to time as you should have use for
it."
Callista looked on the ground and said nothing. And so it was
settled. The comfortable, new, well-fitted home at the head of
Lance's Laurel was closed, and Callista lived in the shabby,
ruinous dwelling of her father-in-law. The help that she could
offer in the way of provisions was welcome. To Roxy Griever, she
had always been an ideal, a pattern of perfection, and now they
made a sort of queen of her. The widow begrudged her nothing and
waited on her hand and foot. Polly followed her around and
served her eagerly, admiringly; but most astonishing of all,
Mary Ann Martha would be good for her, and was ready to do
anything to attract her notice. Sometimes Callista seemed to
want the child with her; and sometimes when the little girl
looked at her with Lance's eyes, and spoke out suddenly in his
defiant fashion, Callista would wince as though she had been
struck at, and send Mary Ann Martha away almost harshly. [223]