THE COASTS OF THE ISLAND.
LANCE Cleaverage remained at his father's house for a week,
saying little, assisting deftly and adequately in the care of
Callista, wondering always at the marvelous newcomer, and so
rulable, so helpful and void of offense, that Roxy had her rod
broken in her hand, and was forced to an unwilling admiration of
him.
"Looks like Sis' Callie is about to be the makin' o' Lance," she
told her father. "I believe in my soul if she was a church
member she'd have him convicted of sin at the next quarterly."
Conviction of sin was always sadly lacking in Lance; he was
aware that the cards sometimes went against him in the game of
life, but to hint that he could himself be blamed with it was to
instantly rouse the defiant devil that counseled his soul ill.
At the end of the week, there was a little family conference,
very sweet and harmonious, with Callista lying propped in her
bed, the baby beside her, and old Kimbro sitting by the fire,
while Octavia and Roxy worked at a little garment which the
former had made and brought over, and which did not quite fit
the boy. Mary Ann Martha, absolutely good because absolutely [248]
happy, lolled luxuriously in her Uncle Lance's lap, and took the
warmth of the fire on her fat legs, while she occasionally
rolled a blissful eye toward the face above her, or suddenly
shot up a chubby hand to flap against his cheek or chin in a
random caress. Uncle Lance had in her eyes no flaw. Others might
criticise him, to Mary Ann Martha it was given to see only his
perfections.
"Yes, son," old Kimbro concluded what he had been saying, "I
surely would go back to Daggett's and work out my time. Derf
can't hold to what he said. I had Sylvane bring me every one of
those orders before he carried them to the store, and I copied
them off in a book. Garrett Derf will have obliged to back down
from that talk he had the day you was there--likely he'll say he
was jest a-funnin'. As for Thatch Daggett, the Company is behind
him now, and he'll have obliged to pay, come Spring. You need
the money. You can't do nothin' on your place now. I'd go back
and work it out at Daggett's."
Like many another man with the reputation of being impractical, old
Kimbro's advice on financial matters was always particularly sound.
From his warm place by the fire. Lance flashed a swift glance
across at his wife and child. Callista was so absorbed in the baby
that she had paid small attention to what her father-in-law was
saying. Well--and the color deepened on Lance's brown cheek--if it
was a matter of indifference to her, he [249] would not urge it
upon her attention. But Sylvane, watching, came to the rescue.
"What do you think about it, Sis' Callie?" he suggested gently.
"About what?" inquired Callista; and then when she was
enlightened, "Oh, I reckon Father Cleaverage knows best. I
shouldn't want to move the baby in cold weather. If you're a
mind to go over and finish out, Lance, I'll be in the house and
ready for you, come Spring," and she looked kindly at her
husband.
And so it was settled. Lance went back to the gross hardships of
the sawmill camp, the ill-cooked food, the overworked little
woman in the dingy cabin with the fretting children under foot,
the uncongenial companionship of the quarreling men.
In early spring he came home, still thin and worn, and even more
silent than was his wont. Callista had kept her word; she was
domiciled in the cabin on Lance's Laurel, and she had Sylvane
get her truck patch almost ready. In the well nigh feverish
activity of first motherhood, she had learned in these few
months to be a really superior housewife, and a master hand at
all that a mountain housekeeper should know. Roxy Griever was
but too willing to teach, and Callista had needed only to have
her energies and attention enlisted. She had a sound, noble
physique; maternity had but developed her; and she was very
obviously mistress of herself as well as of the [250] house when
Lance came over from the sawmill cabin to find her there with his
son, awaiting him.
He stopped a moment on the threshold. His appreciative glance
traveled over the neat interior, and he sniffed the odors of a
supper preparing. This was a homecoming indeed. Here, surely,
were the coasts of his island; and Callista, bending over his
child, drawing the cover around the baby before she turned to
greet Lance, a figure to comfort a man's heart.
"You look fine here," he told her, entering, hanging up his hat,
and disposing of the bundles he had been carrying.
Callista advanced smiling to him and lifted her face to be kissed.
Self-absorbed, wholly pleased with her house and her baby, and her
newly discovered gift for work, and for administration, she never
noted the quick, wild question of his eyes, which was as swiftly
veiled.
"The baby's asleep already," she announced softly. "We got to be
right quiet."
Nodding silently. Lance picked up some of the things he had
brought, and carried them out to the shed, whence Callista,
later, summoned him to supper.
Old Kimbro proved to be right. Lance, having held by his
contract till Spring, was able to collect the poor little
balance of his wages, and on this they proposed to live while he
got the place in the Gap in some shape to support them. Satan [251]
was well now, but it fretted Lance unreasonably that he could
not buy Cindy back from Flenton Hands.
With characteristic insouciance and unusual energy, he set to
work on the gigantic task of subduing his large tract of steep,
wild, mountain land. No doubt he worked too hard that summer;
people of Lance's temperament are always working too hard--or
not working at all. As for Callista, the first eagerness of her
mere passion for Lance was satisfied. She was no more the warm,
tender, young girl, almost pathetically in love,--even though
proud and wilful and somewhat spoiled--but the composed,
dignified mother of a son and mistress of a home. She had once
been too little of a house-mother for her man, and now she was
rather too much.
Yet Lance went no more abroad for consolation. After his settlement
with Derf, he had refused to put foot on their place again. This
was not the season for hunting. He comforted himself with his
banjo, and enjoyed too, in its own measure, the well-kept home,
the excellently prepared food, the placid, calm, good-will of
his mate.
And the child was Callista over again; big blue eyes, a fuzz of
pale gold down, and an air of great wisdom and dignity. As he
grew able to sit up alone on the floor and manage his own
playthings, one saw laughably enough his mother's slant glance
of scorn, that which had been considered her affectation of
indifference, reproduced in the [252] baby's manner. Between mother
and son, Lance sometimes felt himself reduced to his lowest terms.
Yet they thrived, for the welfare of a primitive; household
still depends more upon the woman than on the man. If Lance's
restless fancy--that questioning, eager heart of his--lacked
something of full satisfaction, his body was well fed, his
household comfort was complete, and his material work laid out
plainly before him. And Lance could work so well and to such
good purpose that at midsummer his clearing had assumed very
respectable size, and the small crop he had made was laid by.
Even Callista agreed that they might now make the trip Lance had
proposed more than a year ago, over to the East Fork of Caney.
That camping trip was well thought of. It instantly reversed the
family balance, and sent Lance's end swinging higher. If
Callista dominated the house, and her spirit was coming to
pervade the farm as well. Lance was supreme in this matter of
the gipsying excursion.
"You needn't bother your head about what to pack," he told her.
"I reckon I'll know better than you do what we'll need,
exceptin' the things for that young man you make so much of."
So Callista concerned herself with the baby's outfit and her
own, with assurance that her jars were in order, and that she
had enough sugar to put up jam. The other berries could be [253]
canned without sugar, and sweetened when they came to use them.
A joyous bustle of preparation pervaded the place; that play
spirit which was necessary to Lance Cleaverage, and which
Callista would quite innocently and unconsciously have crushed
out of him if she could, was all alert and dancing at the
prospect. He came into his wife's kitchen and packed flour and
meal, frying pan and Dutch oven, with various other small
matters necessary, observing as the bacon went in,
"We won't need much of that, excepting to fry fish and help out
with wild meat. The law's off of pa'tridges in the Valley next
month, and it's sure off of 'em up here now."
Callista, sitting on the table, swinging a foot to keep the baby
trotted on her knee, looked on smilingly.
"When Blev Straley and his wife camped out and canned
blackberries, they hadn't any nag," she commented. "He had to
take the things in a wheelbarrow, and it looked like some places
he couldn't hardly get acrost; but Miranda said she had the best
time she ever had in her life."
Kimbro Cleaverage was teaching school over in the Far Cove. For
fifteen years he had taught this little summer school; his
pupils now were the children of the first boys and girls who
came under his rule. His neighbors held toward the gentle soul a
patronizing, almost tolerant attitude. True, he managed the
winter school nearer home, having [254] little trouble with the
big boys, the bullies, the incorrigibles; while it was well
understood that the peaceful, who wanted to learn, could get on
powerful fast under his tuition. Yet there were those who
deprecated the mildness of his sway, and allowed that he was
really better suited to the small children, the anxious-faced
little boys, too young yet to follow the plow, the small girls
who had just finished dropping corn or "suckering the crop."
That these dearly loved the master was held to be an unimportant
detail, and his aversion to plying the hickory was always cited
in regard to Lance's misdoings.
When his father was away teaching, the management, and all the
labor of the wornout little farm fell on Sylvane's young
shoulders. Lance had promised his brother the use of Satan for
the week when they should be in camp. The boy came over to help
them pack.
It was a July morning without flaw, blue and green and golden,
and brooded upon by the full-hearted peace of ripe summer.
Bedding and kitchen supplies were put in two big bundles
arranged pannier fashion on the black horse, and firmly lashed
in place by a pair of plow lines.
"Why don't you put it up on his back?" Callista asked them,
coming out with her eight month's old baby, all in order for the
journey.
"That's to leave place for you to ride part of the time," Lance
told her. "It's a right smart ways [255] we're going, and that son
of yours is tol'able heavy, and half the time you won't let me tote
him."
So they set off, Sylvane walking ahead at Satan's bridle,
whistling and singing by turns, Lance with his banjo on his
back, Callista at first carrying the boy because he wanted her
to, and afterward relinquishing him to Lance or Sylvane. The
route lay over springy leaf-mold, under great trees for the most
part, leaving the main road, and taking merely an occasional
cattle-path, while always it wound upward. After a time, the
timber became more scattered, and from going forward under a
leafage that shut out the rising sun, there were patches of
open, meadow-like grasses, called by the mountain dweller,
balds, interspersed with groups of cedars and oaks. The last
mile was up the dry bed of Caney, and it consisted of a scramble
over great boulders, where only a mountain-bred horse might keep
his footing. Turning suddenly and scaling a bank that was like a
precipice, one came on Lance's find, a cup-like hollow between
the cleft portions of a mountain peak, where the great gray
rocks lay strewn thick, the ferns grew waist high, and the
trickling spring-branch was so blue-cold that it made your teeth
ache to drink of it even on a summer's day.
The three stood for a moment silent, on the edge of the miniature
valley, studying its perfections with loving eyes; the mountaineer
leads all others [256] in passionate admiration for the beauty of
his native highlands.
"Oh, Lance!" Callista said at length, very softly. "You never
told me it was as sightly as all this."
"Couldn't," murmured Lance, pleased to the soul. "I ain't got
the words by me."
Sylvane helped them unpack, waited for a hasty dinner for
himself and Satan; then having agreed to return for them at the
end of a week, he went back, leading his black horse, looking
with boyish envy over his shoulder at the happy little group in
the hidden pocket of the hills. When he was out of sight of
them, he could still see the blue smoke of their camp fire
rising clear and high, and stopping to mount Satan, when the
trail became fit for it, he hearkened a moment, and thought he
heard the sound of the banjo.
It was Lance who made the camp, deftly, swiftly; Callista looked
after her baby and explored their new domain, moving about,
girlish, light-footed, singing to herself, so that the eyes of
the man bending over his task followed her eagerly. Two great
boulders leaning together made them a rock house. Lance soon
had a chimney up, of loose stones to be sure, but drawing
sufficiently to keep the smoke out of your eyes unless the wind
was more perverse than a summer breeze is apt to be. That
evening they ate a supper of the cooked food they had brought and
rested as the first pair [257] might have done in Eden, sleeping
soundly on their light, springy couch of tender hemlock tips.
But next day Lance fished in the little stream and came up with
a wonderful catch of tiny silver-sided, rainbow trout, cleaned
and laid in a great leaf-cup ready for the frying pan.
"Lance, oh Lance!--ain't it too bad?" Callista greeted him from
the fire where she had her cornbread nearly ready to accompany
his fish. "I believe in my soul we've come clean over here and
forgot the salt--the salt! I put some in my meal, or the bread
wouldn't be fit to eat. Do you reckon the meat fryings will make
your fish taste all right? No--of course it won't. I'm mighty
sorry. Looks like that is certainly the prettiest fish I ever
saw in my life, and they're so good right fresh from the water."
"It is too bad," agreed Lance, with a very sober countenance,
going ahead however with his preparations. "'Pears as if
somebody in this crowd is a pore manager."
"It's me. Lance," Callista hastened to avow, kneeling by their
primitive hearthstone to tend her bread. "It was my business to
see that the salt was in; but I got so took up with the baby
that I left everything to you; and a body can't expect a man--"
She broke off; Lance, kneeling beside her, engaged in his own
enterprise of fish-frying had suddenly turned and kissed her
flushed [258] cheek. There was always a sort of embarrassment in
this unusual demonstrativeness of her husband's; and yet it subdued
her heart as nothing else could, as nothing had ever done. That
heart beat swiftly and the long fair lashes lay almost on the
glowing cheek above where Lance had kissed.
A few moments later, when the primitive meal was spread under
the open sky, Callista tasted her fish.
"Lance!" she looked at him reproachfully. "You rogue! You had
salt along with you all the time! Why didn't you tell me, and
put my mind at rest?"
"I'm not so terrible sure that a restful mind is what's needed
in your case," Lance teased her. "I thought you looked mighty
sweet and sounded mighty sweet, too, when you was a blamin'
yourse'f."
Lance had spoken truly when he praised the huckleberries that
grew in the little valley where nobody came to pick them. They
stood thick all over its steep, shelving sides, taller bushes
than those of the lowland, with great blue berries, tender of
skin, sun sweetened, bursting with juice. Callista was almost
wearisome in her triumph over the fruit. Forest fires and
drought had made the berry crop nearer home a failure this year;
she would be the only woman in the neighborhood with such canned
huckleberries to boast of. She picked them tirelessly, making
work of her play, Callista [259] fashion, spreading her apron under
the bush and raking down green ones, leaves and all, into it,
then afterward harrying Lance into helping her look them over
while the baby played near by or slept. This gipsying was not
her plan; she had come along in mere complaisance; yet in the
simple outdoor life she throve beautifully; her cheeks rounded
out, and her temples lost their bleached look; she was the old
delicious Callista, with an added glow and bloom and softness.
It was in the early days of their stay, that Lance, with the air
of a boy disclosing to some chosen companion a long-cherished
treasure, took her by a circuitous way up the steep wall of
their little valley, and helping her around a big boulder and
through a thicket of laurel, showed her the opening of a cave.
Man-high the entrance was, with a tiny cup of a spring in its
lap; but six or eight feet in there was an abrupt turning so
that the cave's extent was entirely hidden. He stood smilingly
by, enjoying her astonishment.
"Why, Lance!" she cried. "Well, I vow! Why, no one in the world
would ever suspicion there was a cave here!"
The two turned to look back at their camp, only to find
themselves wholly screened by the oblique side of the great
boulder and the laurel bushes, cut off from sight and sound of
all that went on in the little valley.
"They sure never would," Lance assented. [260] "And I've never
told a soul--_but_ Sylvane--about the place. I was even kind o'
duberous about showing you," and he laughed teasingly. "Might
need a hide-out some time, that nobody didn't know where to find."
There was a Phoebe-bird's nest just at the opening of the cave.
Lance drew Callista back, both of them standing half crouched,
while the mother, returning home, flitted past them and fed her
babies.
"Mighty late for that business," whispered Lance.
"Second brood, I reckon," Callista murmured back.
"Or maybe got broke up with the first brood," Lance added.
The little dell was so remote that the birds were less shy than
where they have been intruded upon by man and civilization, and
the mother betrayed little uneasiness when the two visitors
crept closer.
"My, ain't it scairy!" Callista said, peering beyond into the
cave. Then, as they descended the bank once more, "Hit looked
like there might be wildcats in it."
"I aimed to explore it this time and get to the end if I could,"
Lance replied. "I was fifteen year old when I found that place,
and I used to scheme it out, like a boy will, that if I'd ever go
with the Jesse James gang, or kill a man, or anything [261] to get
the law out after me, I'd hide there; and then, oncet Caney was
up, all the world couldn't find me."
"What'd you eat?" objected practical Callista.
Lance smiled. "I could take care of myself in the woods about as
well as any of the critters," he told her.
"I reckon I'd have to come and bring you a pone," bantered
Callista. And they turned and smiled happily into each other's
eyes, all in the blue, unclouded summer, with the baby asleep
back in the rock house, and the two of them climbing down to him
and their gipsy home hand in hand.
And now perfect day followed perfect day. The work of the camp
was frolic to Lance; he did it laughing, as he would have gone
through a game, and then tolerantly helped Callista with the
play of which she made work. The high noon of summer brooded
over the mountains, with a wonderful blue haze and a silence
that was almost palpable. In their little cup of the hills,
there was a hoarded wine of coolness. The drowsy tinkle of the
tiny branch that ran from their spring backgrounded the rare
sound of their voices. And Lance would lie full length on the
earth as he loved to do, strumming sometimes on his banjo,
drowsing a little, amusing and being amused by the baby.
Callista, her head bent, her face intent above the work, would
be picking over her [262] berries. The boy was intensely, solemnly
interested in the banjo; but when its music ceased, he would
roll away from his father's arm and creep to his mother's
skirts, there to cuddle down and sleep, a dimpled picture of
infantile perfection.
Lance would regard them both from under his lashes. Beauty-worshipper
that he was, they satisfied every whim and caprice of longing, so
far as the eyes spoke. And they were his. Callista was his own,
she had come with him to the place he found for her; she was an
amiable, complying companion. And yet--and yet--
The birds were all silent now, except for an occasional chirp or
twitter in among the leafage. The little breeze that seemed to
live only in their high eyrie went by softly, making its own
music. "How many miles, how many years?" But there were no
longer miles and years between him and his beloved. No, she was
within hand-reach. He could stretch forth his fingers and touch
the hem of her skirts. With an impatient sigh he would turn over
and take up his banjo.
"Don't play now, Lance--you'll wake the baby," Callista would
murmur half mechanically, in that hushed tone mothers learn so
soon.
One day Lance snared a couple of partridges, and, cleaning and
salting them, roasted them with the feathers on, by daubing each
with the stiff, tough blue clay of the region, and burying the
balls in the embers. They came out delicious. When [263] the clay
coating was broken off, feathers and skin went with it, leaving
all the delicate juices of the meat steaming, His helpmate
praised his skill generously.
"Ola Derf showed me that trick," Lance said, in fairness,
clearing a dainty little drumstick with his teeth. "We was
fishing over on Laurel one day, and we didn't get no fish. So
she caught a couple of chickens, and cooked them that-a-way.
Good, ain't they?"
Callista nodded.
"Whose chickens were they--them you and Ola Derf caught?" she
asked, after a moment's silence.
Lance laughed long and uproariously.
"Whose chickens?" he repeated. "Our'n, I reckon, oncet we'd
cooked 'em and et 'em. I never axed 'em their names. They tasted
all right. I ain't got no objections to strangers--in chickens
that-a-way."
"I don't think that was right," Callista-told him with great
finality. "It's likely some poor old woman had her mouth all
fixed for chicken dinner, or was going to have the preacher at
her house, and then you and Ola stole her chickens and she never
knew what became of them. I think it was right mean."
"So do I," agreed Lance lightly. "That's the reason I enjoyed
it. I get mighty tired of bein' good." [264]
"You do?" inquired his wife with gay scorn. "I didn't know you'd
ever had the chance."
Yet of this conversation remained the knowledge that such
gipsying meals as this had been eaten with Ola Derf before she
and Lance cooked for each other. Had he found Ola an entirely
satisfactory companion? Evidently not, for he could have had
her for the asking. Did she, Callista, compare in any way
unfavorably with the Derf girl? Such questionings were new to
Callista, and they were decidedly uncomfortable. She resented
them; yet she could not quite put them by.
Lance was used to sleeping the deep and dreamless slumber of
those who labor much in the open air; but on the last night of
their stay in the little hollow by the spring, he lay long
awake.
"Callista, air you asleep?" he inquired with caution.
"N--no," murmured Callista drowsily.
"Well, somehow I cain't git to sleep," said Lance. "I feel like
this rock house was goin' to fall down on me. I believe I'd like
to take my blanket out there on the grass if you won't be scared
to be alone. You could call to me."
Callista assented, only half awake. Once sprawled at ease under
the stars, sleep seemed definitely to have forsaken him. He lay
and stared up into the velvety blue-black spaces above him. His
mind went dreamily over the past few days. How good it had been.
And yet--he [265] broke off and ruminated for awhile on whether or
no a body should ever cherish a plan for years as he had cherished
this plan of camping out some time in the rock house with
Callista. It seemed to him that if a man had planned a thing for
so long, it was better not to bring it to pass, for the reality
could never compare favorably with the dream. He sighed
impatiently, and turned his face resolutely down against the
grass, dew-wet and cool. But there was no sleep for him in the
earth, as there had been none in the heavens. Before his eyes,
quite as real as daylight seeing, came the vision of Callista
and his boy. There was not such a woman nor such a child in all
his knowledge. He had chosen well. Idle dreams of Callista as a
girl among her mates; of Callista lying spent and white in her
bed with his child, new born, on her arm; of Callista kneeling
flushed and housewifely by this outdoor hearth to prepare his
meal--these strung themselves into an endless, tantalizing line,
a shadowy gallery of pictures, a visioned processional, each
face in some sort a stranger's. What was it he had thought to
compass by coming here with her? Why was the realization not
enough?
Through dreams and waking this question followed him, giving him
no deep rest; and dawn found him already afoot and busy with the
preparations for their return home. [266]