The rain ceased the next day, but the clouds did not vanish. Their
folds, dense, opaque, impalpable, filled the vastness. The landscape was
lost in their midst. The horizon had vanished. Distance was annihilated.
Only a yard or so of the path was seen by Dorinda, as she plodded along
through the white vagueness that had absorbed the familiar world. And
yet for all essentials she saw quite enough; in her ignorant fashion she
deduced the moral, that if the few immediate steps before the eye are
taken aright, the long lengths of the future will bring you at last
where you would wish to be.
The reflection sustained her in some sort as she went. She was reluctant
to acknowledge it even to herself; but she had a terrible fear that she
had imposed a test that Rick would not endure.
'Ef he air so powerful jealous ez that, ter not holp another man a
leetle bit, when he knows it can't hurt him none, he air jes' selfish,
an' nuthin' shorter.'
She paused, looking about her mechanically. The few blackberry bushes,
almost leafless, stretching out on either hand, were indistinct in the
mist, and against the dense vapour they had the meagre effect of a hasty
sketch on a white paper. The trees overhung her, she knew, in the
invisible heights above; she heard the moisture dripping monotonously
from their leaves. It was a dreary sound as it invaded the solemn
stillness of the air.
'An' _I'm_ boun' ter try ter holp him, ef I kin. I know too much, sence
Rick spoke las' night, ter let me set an' fold my hands in peace. 'Pears
like ter me ez that thar air all the diff'ence 'twixt humans an' the
beastis, ter holp one another some. An' ef a human won't, 'pears like
ter me ez the Lord hev wasted a soul on that critter.'
Despite her logic she stood still; her blue eyes were surcharged with
shadows as they wistfully turned upward to the sad and sheeted day; her
lips were grave and pathetic; her blue dress had gleams of moisture here
and there, and a plaid woollen shawl, faded to the faintest hues, was
drawn over her dense black hair. She stood and hesitated. She thought of
the man she loved, and she thought of the word she denied the man in
prison. Poor Dorinda! to hold the scales of justice unblinded.
'I dunno what ails me ter be 'feared he won't kem!' she said, striving
to reassure herself; 'an' ennyhow'--she remembered the few immediate
steps before her taken aright, and went along down the clouded,
curtained path that was itself an allegory of the future.
The justice's gate loomed up like fate--the poor little palings to be
the journey's end of hope or despair! A pig, without any appreciation of
its subtler significance, had in his frequent wallowings at its base
impaired in a measure its stability. He grunted at the sound of a
footfall, as if to warn the new-comer that she might step on him.
Dorinda took heed of the imperative caution, opened the gate gingerly,
and it only grazed his back. He grunted again, whether in meagre, surly
approval, or reproof that she had come at all, was hardly to be
discriminated in his gruff, disaffected tone.
She noticed that the locust leaves, first of all to show the changing
season, were yellow on the ground; a half-denuded limb was visible in
the haze. There were late red roses, widely a-bloom, by the doorstep of
the justice's house--a large double cabin of hewn logs, with a
frame-inclosed passage between the two rooms. There was glass in the
windows, for the justice was a man of some means for these parts; and
she saw behind one of the tiny panes his bald polished head and his
silver-rimmed spectacles gleaming in animated curiosity. He came
limping, with the assistance of a heavy cane, to the door.
'Howdy, D'rindy,' he exclaimed cheerfully; 'come in, child. What sort o'
weather is this?'
In abrupt digression, he looked over her head into the blank vagueness
of the world. But for the dim light, it might have suggested the empty
inexpressiveness of the periods before the creation, when 'the earth was
without form and void.'
'It air toler'ble airish in the fog,' said Dorinda, finding her voice
with difficulty.
The room into which she was ushered seemed to her limited experience a
handsome apartment. But somehow the passion of covetousness is an
untouched spring in the nature of these mountaineers. The idea of
ownership did not enter into Dorinda's mind as she gazed at the green
plaster parrot that perched in state on the high mantelpiece. She was
sensible of its merits as a feature of the domestic landscape at the
'jestice's house,' precisely as the sight of the distant Chilhowee was
company in her lonely errands about the mountain. To be deprived of
either would be like a revulsion of nature. She did not grudge the
justice his possession, nor did she desire it for herself. She
entertained a simple admiration for the image, and always looked to see
it on its lofty perch when she first entered the room.
There were several books piled beside it, which the justice valued more.
There was, too, a little square looking-glass, in which one might behold
a distortion of physiognomy. Above all hung a framed picture of General
Washington crossing the Delaware. The mantelpiece was to the girl a
museum of curiosities. A rag-carpet covered the floor; there was a
spinning-wheel in the corner; a bed, too, draped with a gay quilt--a mad
disportment of red and yellow patchwork, which was supposed to represent
the rising sun, and was considered a triumph of handicraft. The
justice's seat was a splint-bottomed chair, which stood near
a pine table where ink was always displayed--of a pale green
variety--writing-paper, and a pile of books. The table had a drawer
which it was difficult to open or shut, and now and then 'the Squair'
engaged in muscular wrestling with it.
He sat down, with a sigh, and drew forth his red bandana handkerchief
from the pocket of his brown jeans coat, and polished the top of his
head, and stared at Dorinda, much marvelling as to her mission. She had
not, in her primitive experience, attained to the duplicity of a
subterfuge; she declined the invitation to go into the opposite room,
where his wife was busy cooking supper, by saying she was waiting for a
man whom she expected to meet here to explain something to the justice.
'Is it a weddin', D'rindy?' exclaimed the old fellow waggishly.
''Tain't a weddin',' said Dorinda curtly.
'Ye air foolin' me!' he declared, with a jocose affectation of
inspecting his attire. 'I hev got another coat I always wears ter marry
a couple, an' ye don't want ter gimme a chance to spruce up, fur fear
I'll take the shine off'n the groom. It's a weddin'! Who is the happy
man, D'rindy?'
This jesting, as appropriate, according to rural etiquette, to a young
and pretty woman as the compliments of the season, seemed a dreary sort
of fun to Dorinda, so heavy had her presaging heart become. There was a
trifle of sensibility in the old Squire, perhaps induced by much
meditation in his inactive indoor life, and he recognised something
appealing in the girl's face and attitude, as she sat in a low chair
before the dull fire that served rather to annul the chilliness of the
day than to diffuse a perceptible warmth. The shawl had dropped from her
head and loosely encircled her throat; her hand twisted its coarse
fringes; she was always turning her face toward the window where only
the pallid mists might be seen--the pallid mists and a great glowing
crimson rose, that, motionless, touched the pane with its velvet petals.
The old justice forbore his jokes, his dignities might serve him better.
He entertained Dorinda by telling her how many times he had been elected
to office. And he said he wouldn't count how many times he expected to
be, for it was his firm persuasion that, 'when Gabriel blew that thar
old horn o' his'n, he'd find the Squair still a-settin' in jedgment on
the Big Smoky.' He showed her his books, and told her how the folks at
Nashville were constrained by the law of the State to send him one every
time they made new laws. And she understood this as a special and
personal compliment, and was duly impressed.
Outdoors the still day was dying silently, like the gradual sinking from
a comatose state, that is hardly life, to the death it simulates. How
did the gathering darkness express itself in that void whiteness of the
mists, still visibly white as ever! Night was sifting through them; the
room was shadowy; yet still in the glow of the fire she beheld their
pallid presence close against the window. And the red rose was shedding
its petals!--down dropping, with the richness of summer spent in their
fleeting beauty, their fragrance a memory, the place they had
embellished, bereft. She did not reflect; she only felt. She saw the
rose fade, the sad night steal on apace; the hour had passed, and she
knew he would not come. She burst into sudden tears.
The old man, whether it was in curiosity or sympathy, had his questions
justified by her self-betrayal, and his craft easily drew the story from
her simplicity. He got up suddenly with an expression of keen interest.
She followed his emotions dubiously, as he took from the mantelpiece a
tallow dip in an old pewter candlestick, and with slow circumspection
lighted the sputtering wick.
'I want ter look up a p'int o' law, D'rindy,' he said impressively. 'Ye
jes' set thar an' I'll let ye know d'rec'ly how the law stands.'
It seemed to Dorinda a long time that he sat with his book before him on
the table, his spectacles gleaming in the light of the tallow dip, close
at hand, his lips moving as he slowly read beneath his breath, now and
then clutching his big red handkerchief, and polishing off the top of
his round head and his wrinkled brow. Twice he was about to close the
book. Twice he renewed his search.
And now at last it was small comfort to Dorinda to know that the
affidavit would not, in the justice's opinion, have been competent
testimony. He called it an _ex parte_ statement, and said that unless
Rick Tyler's deposition were taken in the regular way, giving due notice
to the attorney-general, it could not be admitted, and that in almost
all criminal cases witnesses were compelled to testify _viva voce_.
Small comfort to Dorinda to know that the effort was worthless from the
beginning, and that on it she had staked and lost the dearest values of
her life. As he read aloud the prosy, prolix sentences, they were
annotated by her sobs.
'Dell-law! D'rindy, 'twarn't no good, nohow!' he exclaimed, presently,
breaking off with an effort from his reading, for he relished the rotund
verbiage--the large freedom of legal diction impressed him as a
privilege, accustomed as he was only to the simple phrasings of his
simple neighbours. He could not understand her disappointment. Surely
Rick Tyler's defection could not matter, he argued, since the affidavit
would have been worthless.
She did not tell him more. All the world was changed to her.
Nothing--not her lover himself--could ever make her see it as once it
was. She declined the invitation to stay and eat supper, and soon was
once more out in the pallid mist and the contending dusk. The scene that
she had left was still vivid in her mind, and she looked back once at
the lucent yellow square of the lighted window gleaming through the
white vapours. The rose-bush showed across the lower panes, and she
remembered the melancholy fall of the flower.
Alas, the roses all were dead!