THE ISLAND AT LAST.
After his father left him, Lance slept, the sleep of a condemned
and shriven man, long and deep and dreamless, the first sound
rest his tortured nerves and flagging powers had known since the
night in Hepzibah.
Kimbro Cleaverage--following Sylvane's directions--had come
without difficulty to his son's cave hide-out, arriving at about
eleven o'clock. He found Lance sitting wakeful by the fire, the gay
folds of the gospel quilt over his knees, played upon by the shimmer
and shine of the leaping blaze. The young man's fever-bright gaze
was directed with absorbed attention toward his work. He was
delicately snipping loose ends with the shears, while a threaded
needle was stuck in the lapel of his coat. He had taken the scarlet
calico and cut from it a series of tiny Greek crosses, beautifully
exact and deftly grouped and related so as to form a border around
the entire square. With that sense of decorative effect which was
denied his sister, he had set these so that the interplay of red and
white pleased the eye, and almost redeemed the archaic absurdities
of the quilt itself. Skilled with the needle as a woman, he had
[378] basted the last cross in place when his father entered.
The talk which followed, there in that subterranean atmosphere
that is neither out-nor in-door, neither dark nor light, was
long and earnest. Kimbro spoke freely, and there was always that
in his father which took Lance by the throat. Perhaps it was the
entire lack of accusation; perhaps something in the old man's
personality that appealed with its tale of struggle and failure,
its frank revelation of patiently borne defeat.
"I'll go right back with you, Pappy, if you say so," Lance
murmured huskily at the last, looking up into the gray old face
above him like the child he had used to be. "As well now as any
time."
"No, son," said Kimbro slowly. His heart ached with the cry,
"The Lord knows there ain't no such hurry--there'll be time
enough afterward!" But his habit of gentle stoicism prevailed,
and he only paused a little, then added, "I reckon we better not
do that--I reckon we couldn't very well. I rode the black nag
pretty hard coming up. The going's heavy. He couldn't carry us
both back, not in any sort of time; and nary one of us is fit to
make it afoot. No, I'll take the word to Beason, and him and his
men will likely stay at our house till in the morning--poor
Roxy! Sylvane'll ride the mule up here tol'able early, and lead
your horse. You go straight home. [379] Beason and his men can
come for you to your house. Will that suit?"
"Hit'll suit" Lance answered.
There was along silence between the two. Then the old man moved
to the cave's mouth. "Farewell," he said, and stood hesitating,
his back to his son.
Lance followed his father a few halting paces, carrying a chunk
of fire, lighting the old man down the bank.
"Farewell, Pappy," he echoed.
"All right, son," came back the faint hail, then after a
moment's silence Kimbro's voice added, "Thank you for sending
this word by me. Farewell," and there was the sound of his
footsteps moving on down the little valley.
Probably six hours later, Lance wakened and lay looking at the
embers; he reached out a languid hand to push a brand in place.
Presently he rose and built up the smoldering fire, and
thereafter sat beside it, head on hand, his hollow eyes studying
the coals. His father was gone back to notify the sheriff. Well,
that was right--a man must answer for the thing he did; and they
said that Flenton Hands was dead. He was not consciously glad of
this--nor regretful; he was only very weary, spent and at the
end of everything. How could he have done otherwise than he had
done? And yet--and yet--
His mind went back the long way to his wooing [380] of Callista.
What a flowery path it was to lead to such a bleak conclusion! Then
once more his thought veered, like the light shifting smoke above
the fire, to Hands. They'd hardly hang him for the killing. It was
not a murder. There were those who would testify as to what his
provocation had been. But it would mean his days shut away from
the sun; a disgraced name to hand down to his boy.
For no reason which he could have given, the sound of a banjo
whispered in his memory, "How many miles, how many years?" Ah,
the miles and the years then! Callista would be free--and that
would be right, too. He had no call to cling to her and claim
her. She had never been his, never--never--never! An inconsequent
vision of her face lying on his breast the night he had climbed
the wild grapevine to her window came mockingly back to tantalize
him. He stirred uneasily, and reached to lay another chunk in place,
mutely answering the recollection back again--she had never been his.
Then suddenly his head lifted with a start; there was the noise
of a rolling stone outside, a thrashing of the bushes, a rush of
hurrying feet, and even before he could spring up Callista was
in the cave.
But not any Callista Lance had ever known; not the scornful
beauty who throned herself among her mates and accepted the
homage of mankind as her due; not the flushed, tremulous Callista
of that [381] never-to-be-forgotten night at the window. This
was not the young wife of the earlier married days--least of all
the mother of his son, or the kindly friend, the stanch partner,
who had tended on and served him here in the cave. This was a
strange, fierce, half-distraught, shining-eyed Callista, a fit
adventurer, if she list, to put forth toward his island. A
little dark shawl was tied over her bright head; but from under
its confining edges the fair locks, usually so ordered and
placid, streamed loosely around the face which looked out white
and fearful. Her dress was soaked about the edges and all up one
side. It was stained with earth, there, too, ripped loose from
the waist, and torn till it hung in long, streaming shreads. A
deep scratch across her cheek bled unheeded, and a flying strand
of hair had glued fast in it. Her shaking hands were bleeding
too, and grimed with woods mold, her finger nails were packed
with it, where she had fallen again and again and scrambled up.
She walked staggeringly and breathed in gasps.
"They--" she panted, then took two or three laboring breaths
before she could go on. "They told me at Father Cleaverage's
that they was goin' to send here and fetch you in--is that so?"
"I reckon they are," the man beside the fire assented
nervelessly.
A wild look lightened over her face. She came stumblingly up to
him.
"Lance!" she choked. "Did you sure enough [382] _send_ that word by
your father to the sheriff?--Did you _say_ you'd give up and go
in--did you?"
"Yes," he returned somberly. "I did, Callista. That's all that
was left me."
"My God!" she breathed. "And I couldn't believe it--not a word
of it. But I just slipped out and come. I've got Gran'pappy's
horse Maje and the Mandy mule tied down in the bushes below
there, and--"
Cleaverage glanced about him and, rising, began to roll together
the blankets of his bed.
"Yes," he repeated, in a sort of automatic fashion. "Pappy left
me before midnight, and he was riding Satan. I reckon I ought to
be moving right soon now. It must be sun-up outside, ain't it?"
She looked at him with desperate doubt.
"Lance!" she demanded, clutching his arm with her trembling
hand. "What made you send Father Cleaverage with such word as
that?--and never let me know!--Oh, Lance, what did you do it
for? Bring them things and come on down quick. There may be time
yet."
He stared at her dumbly questioning for a moment. Long misery
had made his wits slow. He plainly hesitated between thinking
her the emissary sent from home for him and the understanding
that she wanted him to escape.
"Time?" he repeated. "Do you mean--?" [383]
Her lips shaped "yes," her eyes fastened upon his face.
He took it very quietly. Slowly he shook his head.
"I ain't got any right to do that," he said. "I've given my word
to Pappy. They'd hold him for it. And if I did go, I'd be
running and hiding the balance o' my days. You and the boy would
be lost to me--same as you will be as it is. And--and you
wouldn't be free. I done the thing. Let me take my punishment
like a man, Callista. Oh, for God's sake," he cried out with a
sudden sharp cry, "let me do something like a man! I've played
the fool boy long enough."
He dropped back into a sitting posture beside the fire. Callista
had never released his arm. It was plain that his attitude
frightened her more terribly than any violence of resistance
would have done. She bent over him now in the tremulous
intensity of her purpose, whispering, the low pleading of her
voice still interrupted with little gasps.
"You're broke down living this-a-way. Lance. You don't know your
own mind--you ain't fit to speak for yourself."
"Oh, Callista," said Lance's quiet tones, "I'm a sight fitter to
speak for myself now than I ever was before in my life. I've got
it to do."
Up to this time, the trouble between these two had continued to
be a lovers' quarrel. Leaving [384] Lance alone in the house he
had builded for her, throwing back into his face such help as he
would have followed her with, Callista had but triumphed as she
used to when they bickered before an audience of their mates.
Angry as she actually was when she broke with him, there could
not fail, also, to be a cruel satisfaction in the knowledge of
how she put him from his ordinary, how she changed the course of
his life, and knew him her pining lover, the man who could not
sleep o' nights for thought of her. Perhaps, when his pride was
broken, and he came suing to her, personally, she would go home
with him and patch the matter up with patronage and forgiveness.
From the first this expected consummation had been vaguely
shadowed in her mind back of all she did or refused to do. Here
and now was the matter sharply taken out of her hands. Lance
turned his back on her. He reckoned without her. He promised to
others that which would set him at once and permanently beyond
her recall. With an impassioned gesture, she flung herself down
on her knees before him where he sat. Her arms went around him,
her face was pressed against him.
"No, no. Lance," she implored. "You might speak for yourself--but
who's to speak for me? What'll I do when they take you from me?
I'd sooner hide like a wild varmint all my days. I'd sooner--oh,
come on and go with me, Lance. I'll run with you as long as
we both live." [385]
"That wouldn't be a fit life for you and the baby," Lance told
her.
"The baby!" replied Callista, almost scornfully. "I didn't aim
to take him along. It's you and me, Lance--you and me."
Gazing up at him, she saw the look in her husband's face; she
saw that his thoughts were clearing, and that the resolute,
formulated negative was coming.
"Oh, don't say it, Lance!" she cried, her arms tightening
convulsively around his body, the tears streaming down her
lifted face, washing away the blood. A great coughing sob shook
her from head to foot. "Oh, Lance, don't--don't do it! I know--"
she hastened pitifully--"I know I haven't got any rights. I know
I've wore out your love. But oh, please, honey, come with me and
let's run."
Through the man's dazed senses the truth had made its way at
last. He sat wonder-smitten. The weeping woman on her knees
before him looking up into his face, with eyes from which the
veil of pride and indifference was rent away, eyes out of which
the sheer, hungry, unashamed adoration gazed.
"Lance," she began at last, in a voice that was scarce more than
a breath, a mere shadow of sound, "I've never told you. Look
like I always waited for you to say. But since--long ago--ever
since you and me was boy and girl--and [386] girl together--They
was never anybody for me but you--you, dear. They's nothing you
could do or be that would make it different. I--my heart--If
they take you away from me, Lance, darlin', they might just as
well kill me."
Lance reached around and got the two hands that were clinging to
him so frantically. He held them, one over the other, in his own
and, bending his head, kissed them again and again. He touched
the loose hair about her forehead, then mutely laid his lips
against its fairness. He lifted his head and looked long into
her eyes with a look which she could not understand.
"You--you're a-comin', Lance?" she breathed.
He shook his head ever so little.
"Callista," he said very softly, and the name was a caress,--
"mine--my girl--my Callista, you're a-goin' to help me do the
right thing."
She started back a little; she caught her breath, and her blue
eyes dilated upon him.
"The right thing," her husband repeated, with something that was
almost a smile on his lips. "And that's to ride over home and
give myself up. God bless you, dear, I can do it now with a
quiet mind. Oh, Callista--Callista--I'm happier this minute than
I ever was before in my life! Whatever comes, I can face it
now."
Callista crouched with parted lips and desperate eyes. About
them there was silence, broken only by the tiny sibilations of
the fire, the hushed voice [387] of the night wind muttering in
the outer chamber of the cave, as the air sighs through the open
lips of a sea-shell. Her ear was against his breast; with a sort
of creeping terror she heard the even beating of his heart. He
could say such words quietly! An awful sense of powerlessness
gripped her. Lance was arbiter of his own fate. If he chose, he
could do this thing. She was like one who waits, the flood at
her lips, while the inevitable death rises slowly to engulf.
Then it was as if the waters closed above her. With a whispered
cry she settled forward against him, and rested so, held close
in his embrace. Little shivers went over her lax body. She
uttered brief, broken murmurs. Down and down she sank in the
arms that clasped her. Lance bent his head to hear.
"Well--if ye won't go with me," she was saying, "I'll go with
you. I'll go wherever they take you. What you suffer, I'll
suffer, Lance; because the fault was mine--oh, the fault was
mine!"
"We ain't got no time to talk about faults, honey," he said
to her, slipping a caressing hand beneath her cheek, lifting
the bent face, kissing her again and again, offering that
demonstrative love for which Callista thirsted, which she had no
initiative herself to proffer. "I'll not let you miscall my
girl. I wouldn't have a hair of her head different. Come on,
darlin', I've got to make good my word." [388]
Strangely stilled as to her grief, Callista rose. She moved
silently about the cave and, without any further word of
remonstrance, helped him gather his belongings together and make
them ready. Lance himself was like a man for whom a new day has
dawned. He was almost gay when they turned to take their
farewell of the place that had been his home for weeks.
When they stepped forth, they found the sun fully risen upon a
morning fair and promising. Callista looked long at the rock-house
as, carrying their bundles, they passed it on the way to their
mounts.
"And I had you for my own--all my own--and nobody to hinder--while
we lived there," she said, speaking in a slow, wondering tone.
"Oh, Lord! Foolish people have to learn hard when 'tis that
they're blessed."
Lance's free arm went around her slight body and drew her close
to his side as they walked. When they reached the animals, he
loaded the bedding and other things carefully upon them, then
turned to her.
"Sweetheart," he said, with that strange deep glow in his eyes,
"folks that love each other like we do are blessed all the time,
whether they're free and together--or separated--or in jail.
They're blessed whether they're above ground or below it." He
kissed her and lifted her lightly to Maje's back and they rode
away.
As they followed down Caney and struck [389] eastward toward the
Cleaverage place, the morning drew on, sweet and towardly. For
all the cold, there was an under-note of Spring in the air.
February felt the stirring of the year which had turned in its
sleep. They rode together, hand in hand, where the trail
permitted, both remembering--Lance with an added light in his eyes
and a meaning smile, Callista with a sudden burst of tears--that
other ride they had taken together. Lance's arm around her,
her head on his shoulder, when they went down to Squire Ashe's
to be married.
They traveled thus, in silence or with few words spoken, for
nearly two hours. Their best road home would take them past the
old Cleaverage place, and within a mile of the house. As they
drew near this point something stirred down deep under Lance's
quiet. His breath quickened, his face set in sharp lines. He
suddenly strained Callista to him in a grasp that hurt, then
released her, touched the patient Maje with his heel and pushed
ahead at a good gait. Callista, watching him, followed drooping
and mute. Moving so, swiftly and in single file they reached the
place whence they could see the chimney of the Kimbro Cleaverage
house through the trees, and were aware of a woman on a black
horse, a child carried carefully in her arms, coming toward
them. Callista lifted her hanging head and looked wonderingly
around her husband. [390]
"Why, I do believe that's Ola Derf on Cindy!" she said heavily.
"Is it? No, I reckon not."
Since the day on which Ola had bidden her strange reproachful
adieu to Lance's empty room, no one had seen her on Turkey
Track, though it was reported that she was staying with kin no
further away than Hepzibah.
"It is Ola," said Callista, as the rider of the black filly came
nearer. "And she--she's got my baby! O Lord! What now?"
For a moment the astonishment of it dulled the agony of
rebellion which once more surged in Callista's soul as she
looked at that chimney through the trees and knew that there by
its hearthstone were the sheriff and his men ready to take Lance
from her.
"I come a-past the Gentry place and stopped to git the boy," Ola
called, as soon as she could make them hear.
It occurred to Callista that this girl, too, supposed that Lance
would try to escape, and that they would wish to take the baby
with them.
"Sheriff Beason and his men are in yon," Lance told Ola,
glancing in the direction of his father's house. "I'm going to
my own place to give myself up--they're coming up there for me."
Ola nodded, without making any immediate reply. She looked with
curious questioning from husband to wife, shifting the baby to
her hip. [391]
"My, but he's solid," she said enviously, the aboriginal mother-woman
showing strong in her ugly little brown face.
"I'll take him," Callista murmured, putting out her arms almost
mechanically.
But Ola made no movement to hand over the baby. She yet sat her
horse, glancing from one countenance to the other.
"I've been a-stayin' down in Hepzibah," she observed abruptly.
"My man, he's about to be out of the pen, and him and Flent
Hands had dealings that--well, that's what Charlie was sent up
for."
"Your man?" echoed Callista; and Lance smiled as she had not
seen him for long.
"Yes, Charlie Massengale, my man," Ola repeated. "Heap o' folks
around here didn't know I had one. We was wedded in the
Territory when I was fo'teen, and he got into trouble in the
Settlement--this here trouble that Flent was mixed up in--and
Pappy 'lowed that as long as 'yo' old man was in the pen you
better not name anything about him.'"
She was smoothing the baby's garments, making ready, with
evident reluctance, to surrender him to them. Ajax the Second
shouted inarticulately at his mother, but kept a fairly
apprehensive eye upon the man who rode beside her.
"Well, young feller," said Ola finally, lifting the baby and
holding him toward his parents, "I [392] reckon I've got to give
you up, jest like I had to give up yo' pappy afore ye."
She laughed a little hardily, and looked with a sort of dubious
defiance at Callista, who paid no attention, but pushed her mule
close in beside Cindy.
"They say that Flenton Hands is--is--Did you go to Flenton's
funeral, Ola?" asked Callista fearfully, as the women negotiated
the exchange of the baby.
Ola laughed again, and more loudly.
"I say funeral!" she exclaimed. "Flenton Hands has got a
powerful lot more davilment to do in this world before they put
him un'neath the ground. I--Pappy--they--well, you know I was
down there when this all happened, and somehow, I thest got the
notion in my head that Flent wasn't so mighty awful bad hurt;
and when I heared how Beason was a-carryin' on, I went to their
house to see Flent. I named to him that Charlie's time was 'bout
to be up an' he'd be out, and that what Charlie had stood for
him was a plenty. I axed him didn't he want to send a writin' up
to Beason and stop this foolishness up here on Turkey Track, and
after I'd talked to him for a little spell he 'lowed he did."
Callista, hearkening in silence, caught the child in so strained
a grasp that he made a little outcry, half scared, half offended.
Ola pulled from the bosom of her dress a letter which she flung
over to [393] Lance with the uncouth yet generous gesture of a
savage.
"'Course Flent could hang on and make you a little trouble--but
he ain't a-goin' to," she said sturdily. "I reckon he's called
off his dogs in that writin'. Hit's to Dan Beason."
With the words she wheeled her horse and would have gone, but
Callista, at the imminent risk of dropping Ajax, caught at
Cindy's bridle rein.
"I've got a heap to thank you for, Ola Derf," she said in a
voice shaken with deep feeling.
"You ain't got a thing in the world to thank me for, Callista
Gentry," declared the little brown girl, and drew her black
brows at Lance's wife. But Callista's whole nature melted into
grateful love.
"Where you goin' now?" she asked wistfully. "Looks like you and
me ought to be better friends than we ever have been."
Ola considered the proposition, and shook her head.
"I reckon not," she said finally. "I'm a-goin' down to Nashville
right soon. Charlie will want me to be right thar when he gits
out. He's not the worst man in the world, ef he ain't--"
She turned a sudden swimming look on the pair with their child.
"Good-by," she ended abruptly, and signaling Cindy with her heel,
loped off down the road.
The hounds at the Kimbro Cleaverage place [394] were evidently away
on hunting enterprises of their own. Lance and his wife rode to the
gate without challenge, dismounted, tethered the animals, and
omitting the customary halloo, opened the door upon the family
seated at a late breakfast.
For a moment nobody in the room stirred or spoke. The sheriff
paused with a morsel checked on its way to his open mouth. Roxy
Griever, coffee-pot in hand, stopped between fireplace and table.
Sylvane, who had half risen at the sound of steps, remained as he
was, staring, while old Kimbro's eyes reached the newcomer with
pathetic entreaty in their depths. Ma'y-Ann-Marth' broke the spell
by rushing at her Uncle Lance and butting into his knees, shouting
welcome. Then Sylvane hastily leaped up and ran to his brother's
side, as though to share as nearly as might be that which must now
befall. The men on Beason's either hand nudged him and whispered.
"Do it quick," Roxy heard one mutter.
"Better get the handcuffs on him," admonished the other. "He's a
slippery cuss."
Roxy cast a look of helpless fury at the officers of the law,
and mechanically advanced to fill their cups once more--gladly
would she have poured to them henbane, plague, the venom of
adders. Beason jammed into his mouth the bite he had started to
take, and speaking around it in a voice of somewhat impaired
dignity, began his solemn recitative, [395]
"Lance Cleaverage, I arrest you in the name of the law--"
"Hold on a minute," suggested Lance, mildly, bending to pick up
Ma'y-Ann-Marth' (both of the deputies ducked as his head went
down); "I've got a letter for you, Daniel Beason." He tossed the
envelope to the sheriff across the little girl's flaxen head.
"Read it before you make your arrest. Read it out, or to yourself."
"Flent ain't dead!" cried Roxy, with a woman's instinctive
piercing to the heart of the matter. They all remained gazing at
Beason while he tore open and laboriously deciphered the
communication. His face fell almost comically.
"No, he ain't dead--an' he ain't a-goin' to die," blustered the
sheriff, trying to cover his own pre-knowledge of the fact.
"Well, he's made a fool of me one time too many. When I go back
to Hepzibah, I'll settle this here business with Mr. Flenton
Hands, that thinks he can sick the law on people and call it
off, same as you would a hound dog. Ouch! The good Lord, woman!
you needn't scald a body."
For in her blissful relief, Roxy had swung the spout of the
coffee-pot a wide circle, which sprayed the boiling fluid
liberally over the sheriff's thumb. He regarded her frowningly,
the member in his mouth, as she set the pot down ruthlessly on
her cherished tablecloth of floursacks and ran to add herself to
the group about her returned brother. [396]
The deputies got to their feet and came over to shake hands,
muttering broken phrases concerning the law, and always having
entertained the utmost good will toward their quarry. Even
Beason, nursing his painful thumb, finally offered a surly paw.
Only old Kimbro wheeled from the table and sat with bent head,
his working face turned toward the hearthstone, tears running
unchecked, unheeded, down the cheeks that had never been thus
wet in the days of his most poignant sorrow.
"No, thank you kindly. Sis' Roxy," Lance refused his sister's
invitation when she would have forced him and Callista into
places at the table. "We'll be movin' along home." His tones
dwelt fondly on the word. "Neither Callista nor me is rightly
hungry yet; we'll take our first meal at our own place to-day."
It was bare branches they rode under going home to the cabin in
the Gap; but the sap had started at the roots. Winter had done
his worst; his bolt was sped; Spring was on the way.
Fire was kindled once more on the cold hearth, a splendid banner
of flame wrapping the hickory logs, and Lance sat before it with
his son on his knees, warming the small rosy feet chilled from
the long ride. For a moment he caught and held both restless,
dimpled little members in one sinewy brown hand, marveling at
them, thrilling to the touch of their velvet softness.
Outside, a cardinal's note came persistently [397] from the stream's
edge, a gallant call. High over the Cumberlands arched the blue,
dappled with white cloud. It was a rarely beautiful day, such as
nearly every February brings a few of in that region. On every
rocky hillside farm of the mountain country harness and implements
were being dragged forth and inspected against the beginning of
the year's work. Winter's prisoners were everywhere rejoicing in
the prospect of release. Doors were left open; girls called from
outside announcing finds of early blossoms; the piping voices of
children at play came shrill and keen on the cool, sunlit air.
Within Callista's dusk kitchen, the firelight set moving ruddy
shine and shadow on the brown walls. Midway one of these she had
hung up the banjo, having carried it home across her shoulders.
Its sheepskin round showed a misty moon within the gleam of
metal band where the blaze struck out a sparkling crescent to
rim one side. It made no question now of "How many miles, how
many years?" for the answer was come. Later Lance would take it
down and string it afresh, and the little feet that kicked their
pink heels against his knee, their fat toes curling ecstatically
in the heat of the fire, would dance to its strumming. Even
Callista would learn the delight of measuring her step by its
music. But now it was mute. There was no need of its voice in
the harmony that was here. And when Callista, in the pauses of
her [398] homely task of dinner making, knelt beside the pair at
the fire and encircled them both with her arms, Lance knew that he
had at last brought home his own to his island. An island! It
stretched away before the eye of his spirit, a continent, a
world, a universe! The confines of that airy domain where he had
dwelt alone and uncompanioned, were suddenly wide enough to take
in all mankind, though they held just now only the trinity of
home--father, mother, and child.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage, by Alice MacGowan