The second Sunday after the partition of goods the entire Coolly turned
out to church in spite of the muddy road. The men, after driving up to
the door of the little white church and helping the women to alight,
drove out to the sheds along the fence and gathered in knots beside
their wagons in the warm spring sun. It was very pleasant there, and the
men leaned with relaxed muscles upon the wagon-wheels, or sat on the
fence with jack-knives in hand. The horses, weary with six days seeding,
slept with closed eyes and drooping lips. Generally the talk was upon
spring work, each man bragging of the number of acres he had sown during
the week, but this morning the talk was all about the division which had
come between the nieces of "deceased Williams." They discussed it slowly
as one might eat a choice pudding in order to extract the flavor from
each spoonful.
"What is it all about, anyhow?" asked Jim Cranby. "I ain't heard nothing
about it." He had stood in open-mouthed perplexity trying to catch a
clew. Coming late, he found it baffling.
"That shows where he lives; a man might as well live in a well as up in
Molasses Gap," said one of the younger men, pointing up to the Coolly.
"Why, Ike Harkey is kicking about the six shotes the Deacon put off on
him."
"No, it wasn't the shotes, it was a farrer cow," put in Clint Stone.
"Well, _I_ heard it was a shote."
"So did I," said another.
"Well, Bill Gray told Jinks Ike had stole a cow-bell that belonged to
the black farrer cow," said another late comer.
"Stole a cow-bell," and they all drew closer together. This was really
worth while!
"Yes, sir; Jinks told me he heard Bill say so yesterday. That's the way
I heard it."
"Well, I'll be cussed, if that ain't small business for Ike Harkey!"
"How did it happen?" asked Cranby, with sharpened appetite.
"Well, I didn't hear no p'rtic'lars, but it seems the bell was hangin'
on a peg in the barn, and when they got home from church it was gone,
hide an' hair. Bill is dead sure Ike took it."
"Say, there'll be fun over that yet, won't they," said one of the
fellows, with a grin.
"Well, Ike better keep out of Bill's way, that's all."
"Well--I ain't takin' sides. Some young'un may have took it."
"Well, let's go in, boys; I see the Elder's come. By gum, there's
Harkey!" They all looked toward Harkey, who had just driven up to the
door.
Harkey came into church holding his smooth, serious face a little one
side, in his usual way, quiet and dignified, as if he were living up to
his Sunday suit of clothes. He seemed to be unconscious of the attitude
in which he stood toward most of his neighbors.
Bill and Sarah were not present, and that gave additional color to the
story of trouble between the sisters.
After the sermon Deacon Harkey led the Sunday School, and the critics of
his action were impressed more than usual with his smooth and quiet
utterance. Emma seemed more than ordinarily worn and dispirited.
It was perfectly natural that Mrs. Gray should be the last person to
know of the division which had slowly set in between the two sisters and
their factions. Charitable and guileless herself, it was difficult for
her to conceive of slander and envy.
Nevertheless, a division had come about, slowly, but decisively. The
entire Coolly was involved in the discussion before Mrs. Gray gave it
any serious attention, but one day, when Sarah came in upon her and
poured out a mingled flood of sorrow and invective, the good soul was
aghast.
"Well, well, I swan! There, there! I wouldn't make so much fuss over
it!" she said, stripping her hands out of the biscuit dough in order to
go over and pat Sarah on the shoulder. "After all that to-do gettin'
settled, seems 's if you ought 'o _stay_ settled. Good land! It ain't
anything to have a fuss over, anyway!"
"But it is _our_ cow-bell. It belonged on the black farrer cow, that Jim
turned his nose up at, and he sneaked around and got it just to spite
us."
"Oh, I guess not," she replied incredulously.
"Well, he did; and Emmy put him up to it, and I know she did," said
Sarah in a lamentable voice.
"Sary Ann," said Mrs. Gray, as sharply as any one ever heard her speak,
"that's a pretty way to talk about your sister, ain't it?"
"Well, Mrs. Jim Harkey said--"
"You never mind what Mrs. Jim Harkey said; she's a _snoop_ and everybody
knows it."
"But she wouldn't tell that, if it weren't so."
"Well, I tell you, I wouldn't pay no attention to what she said, and I
wouldn't make such a fuss over an old cow-bell, anyway."
"But the cow-bell is only the starting point; she ain't been near the
house since, and she says all kinds of mean, nasty things about us."
"All comes through Mrs. Jim, I suppose," said Mrs. Gray, with some
sarcasm.
"No, it don't. She told Dade Walker that I got all the biggest
flat-irons, when she knows I offered her the bureau. I did everything I
could to make her feel satisfied."
"I know you did, and now you must just keep cool till I see Emmy
myself."
When Mrs. Gray started out on her mission of pacification, she found it
to be entirely out of her control. The Coolly was actively partisan. One
party stood by the Harkeys, and another took Sarah's part, while the
_tertium quid_ said it was "all darn foolishness."
Mrs. Gray was appalled at the state of affairs, but struggled to
maintain a neutral position. In May, when Bill and Sarah were married,
things had reached such a stage that Emma was not invited to the wedding
supper. Nothing could have cut deeper than this neglect, and thereafter
adherents of the third remove declined to speak when passing; some even
refused to nod. The Harkey faction also condemned the early marriage of
Bill and Sarah as unseemly.
Soon after, Emma came again to see Mrs. Gray, salty with tears, and
crushed with the slight Sarah had put upon her. She was a plain pale
woman, anyway, and weeping made her pitiable. She explained the
situation with her head on Mrs. Gray's lap:--
"She never has been to see me since that day, and--but I hoped she'd
come and see me, but she never sent me any invitation to her wedding."
She choked with sobs at the memory of it.
Mrs. Gray realized the enormity of the offence, and she could only put
her arms around Emma's back and say, "There, there, I wouldn't take on
so about it." As a matter of fact, she had striven to have Bill send an
invitation to his brother-in-law, but Bill was inflexible on that point.
With the sound of the stolen cow-bell ringing in his ears, he could not
bring himself to ask Ike Harkey into his house.
After Emma grew a little calmer, Mrs. Gray tried again to bridge the
chasm. "Now, I just believe if you would go to Sarah--"
"I can't do that! She'd slam the door in my face. Jim's wife says Sarah
said I shouldn't pick a single currant out of the garden this year!"
"I don't go much on what Jim's wife says," put in Mrs. Gray, guardedly.
She had begun to feel that Jim's wife was the main disturbing element.
The sisters really suffered from their separation. They had been so used
to running in at all times of the day that each missed the other
wofully. It had been their habit whenever they needed each other to help
cook, or cut a dress, to hang a cloth out of the chamber window, a sign
which was sure to bring help post-haste; but now nothing would induce
either of them to make the first concession.
Two or three times when Emma, feeling especially lonely, was on the
point of hanging out the signal, she was prevented by the thought of
some cruel message Mrs. Jim had brought. Jim lived on Ike's farm in a
small house that had been Emma's first home, and Mrs. Jim was almost as
much in her house as in her own. She had no children, and was a
mischief-maker, not so much from ill will as from a love of dramatic
situations; it was her life, this dramatic play of loves and hates
among her friends and neighbors.
Emma feared her husband, too; he was so self-contained, and so
inexorably moral, at least in appearance. He sweetly said he bore no ill
will toward the Grays, but he must insist that his wife should not visit
them until they apologized. He took the matter very serenely, however.
The sound of the cow-bell was a constant daily irritation to Bill; he
was slow to wrath, but the bell seemed to rasp on his tenderest nerve;
it had a curiously exultant sound heard in the early morning--it seemed
to voice Harkey's triumph. Bill's friends were astonished at the change
in him. He grew dark and thunderous with wrath whenever Harkey's name
was mentioned.
One day Ike's cattle broke out of the pasture into Bill's young oats,
and though Ike hurried after them, it seemed to Bill he might have got
them out a little quicker than he did. He said nothing then, however,
but when a few days later they broke in again, he went over there in
very bad humor.
"I want this thing stopped," he said.
Ike was mending the fence. He smiled in his sweet way, and said
smoothly, "I'm sorry, but when they once git a taste of grain it's
pretty hard to keep 'em--"
"Well, there ought to be a new fence here," said Bill. "That fence is as
rotten as a pumpkin."
"I s'pose they had; yes, sir, that's so," Harkey assented quickly. "I'm
ready to build my half, you know," he said, "any time--any time you
are."
"Well, I'll build mine to-morrow," said Bill. "I can't have your cattle
pasturing on my oats."
"All right, all right. I'll have mine done as quick as yourn."
"Well, see't you do; I don't want my grain all tramped into the ground
and I ain't a-goin' to have it."