salt, coffee, sugar, crackers, and stick candy in glass jars, they
finally extracted several bolts of gingham and calico, and selected the
prettiest. Going up again, Isabel quickly cut out the dress, and pinned
it on Lethie.
"I'll run up again and finish this after dinner," she said, "and
to-morrow you can begin another in class. I wonder, Lethie, if you know
how pretty you are? You ought to be dressed in silks and gossamers all
the time, like a fairy princess."
A rosy flush dyed Lethie's milk-white skin. "I never had no looks,"
she said. "You are the one that's pretty--the prettiest ever I seed!"
"In a beauty-show I'd never for an instant hold a candle to you," said
Isabel. "Do you mind taking your hair down and letting me see it before
I go?"
Lethie unfastened the large knot tightly drawn to the back of her head,
and her beautiful pale gold hair fell in a thick shower, almost to her
knees.
"Truly a fairy princess!" said Isabel. "Now do you mind if I put it up
for you as a fairy princess ought to wear hers?"
She plaited the shining tresses in two large braids, and, leaving the
hair loose and waving about Lethie's face, wound the braids about her
head coronet-fashion, then held the child off, and gazed at her.
"Lethie," she said, "when I go home, I'm going to take you with me and
astonish the Blue Grass with your beauty. I mean it!" as Lethie looked
at her breathless. "From this day I'm going to adopt you for a younger
sister, and see that your looks are properly set off."
As soon as dinner was over, Isabel returned to work on the dress,
and by four it was finished and on Lethie, as were also a pair of
Isabel's white canvas shoes and white stockings. Before the two started
up the hill together, Lethie gazed at her reflection in the little
looking-glass on the porch, with a loudly beating heart.
Isabel managed to see Fult before the playing began.
"Lethie is here to-day," she said; "and must be your partner the first
time, and at least half the others."
So Lethie was made happy again by seeing Fult come to claim her. And
she was no longer afraid of shaming him. Joy flushed her cheeks. She
hoped he would say something about her changed appearance; but when
he seemed abstracted and failed to, she was not deeply disappointed.
Her unselfish heart demanded very little. To be near him, and to catch
Isabel's reassuring smile across the circle, filled her cup.
That evening after the "sing," when the others, Charlie and Charlotta,
Thad and Ruby and Lethie were starting down, and Fult, banjo in hand,
prepared to linger, Isabel told him that she would be too busy about
other things to learn ballads that night, and he must hurry down with
the others. He went, with a darkened brow.
The following days brought to him always the same bafflement. Isabel
was as friendly and smiling as ever, but never by any chance or effort
could he see her alone; Lethie was always on hand, and Isabel was
especially solicitous, even affectionate, toward her.
He waited, however, in expectation of the ride they were to have
together on Sunday, to a funeral occasion over on Clinch. Several of
the women, and some of the young folks from the village, were going in
a party, for the first time deserting the Sunday School, which was to
be conducted that day by just the kindergartner and the nurse, with
Giles Kent's assistance.
The pleasure of the women in the trip was marred, however, by some
shooting in the village the night before--the first since they had been
settled on the hill. The nurse, coming up early in the morning, after
sitting up with Polly Ainslee, who had typhoid, reported that it was
not done by Fult and his crowd, as the women had at first feared, but
by some of the very young boys, who had in some way gotten whiskey.
"Bob Ainslee came in the room where his mother was half dead with
fever, and shot several times into the ceiling and then fell over on
the other bed, too drunk to sit up," she said. "I wonder who is giving
those boys liquor?"
When they went down to the hotel to mount their nags, Virginia spoke of
the disturbance to Fult.
"I was so afraid at first it was your crowd," she said, "and so very
thankful to hear it wasn't."
Fult flushed. "Had you forgot what I done to Charlie the Fourth of
July?" he asked.
"I didn't really think you'd fail us," she said. "I wonder where those
poor boys, Bob and the others, are getting whiskey?"
"I reckon they could find hit up most any hollow, now the corn is laid
by," he said. "They ought to have sense enough not to take too much."
He had already noticed, and felt some surprise over the fact, that
Lethie was in the crowd, saying her farewells to little Madison, who
was to be kept by Cynthia Fallon. He knew that he had not asked her, or
provided the nag. Silently he helped her, and the others, into their
side-saddles; and, as soon as they had started, began to manœuvre so
that he and Isabel should fall behind. But in vain. Nothing could
detach her from Lethie's side.
After following Left Fork of Troublesome for a few miles, they went
up a smaller branch, and then crossed a mountain. As they reached the
"gap" in the ridge and looked down on the far side, a faint thread of
song came up to them from the valley, increasing in volume as they
descended; until, as they reached the burying-ground, on a little rise
beside the creek, it became a rich, minor, hauntingly beautiful chorus
of men's voices.
Hundreds of people were already gathered, some seated on rows of planks
laid across logs in the shade, others wandering about on the outskirts.
There were a number of small, latticed grave-houses; and with their
backs to these, and facing the crowd, sat five preachers, on a special
plank under a spreading beech.
When the party from The Forks took seats on a rear plank, Fult achieved
a seat beside Isabel, only to have her, at the last moment, change,
leaving Lethie between them. She did not see the angry glance he turned
upon her.
As they were seated, the singing ceased, and one of the preachers,
an old man with a kind face, arose and announced that this crowd was
"mustered" and this meeting held for the purpose of "doing up" the
funerals of four deceased persons--Elhannon Bowles, who had passed away
the previous summer with the fever; his month-old child, who had died
the year before; his old father, dead five years; and his mother, dead
eight years.
Short biographies were then given of the four, beginning with the
infant child, who had "gone home to glory with the choking-disease
afore sin had ever smirched the whiteness of hits soul"; of the
old father, who had "drapped dead all unthoughted" one day in the
cornfield, ill-prepared, it was to be feared, for what awaited him;
of the old mother, who had "allus fit the good fight, and passed on
a-shouting"; and, finally, of Elhannon, whose future status would have
been shrouded in some doubt had it not been for a vision of a "shining
nag," which brightened his last moments and left hope in the bosoms of
his bereaved widow and seven orphant offsprings.
"Yes, Ardely," he said, addressing the widow, who, in black sunbonnet
and dress, occupied the front plank with her seven small children and
a disconsolate-looking man, "you have a right hope of j'ining Elhannon
again in the land where there hain't no widows or orphants, no sorrow
or no parting or no tears, no fever or no choking-disease. Yes, I know
all about hit, Ardely--twicet have I been along the lonesome road you
now tread; twicet was I called upon to part with a fond companion, and
to be paw and maw to my young-uns; two good women have I got in glory,
and one in this mortal spere. I know how to sympathize with all widows,
having been twicet a lone-lie widow myself, and a fair prospect, my
present companion being puny-turned, of walking yet again in that vale
of tears. Yes, Ardely, nobody knows better than me what hit is to have
the heartstrings tore and frazzled, and the light of day everly put
out, by affliction."
The widow bowed her head and wept loudly beneath the black sunbonnet,
and the seven offsprings laid their heads on her lap or on one
another's shoulders and joined in the lament, as did also a number of
black-bonneted women on the front seats.
With the words, "I feel to take the hand of every widow here, man or
woman, that has ever lost a dear companion," the preacher, stepping
forward, offered a consoling hand, first to Ardelia, and then to all
the other bereaved ones who pressed forward, the women weeping, the men
silent, but with working faces, to clasp the understanding hands of one
who could enter into the fellowship of their sufferings. The spectacle
of human loss and sorrow, always a poignant one, was relieved and
softened by the outpouring of this old man's sympathy and love.
With tears trickling down his own cheeks, the preacher then returned
to his place, to begin, in a breathless singsong, a minute history of
the death-bed scenes of his two companions. During these recitations,
the weeping on all sides increased to such an extent that he was again
impelled to come forward and shake hands all around to assuage the
storm of feeling he had raised.
After returning to his place this time, it was with a different voice
and manner that he spoke--sternly, and to the point.
"Hiram," he said, addressing the dejected-looking young man who sat
with the widow and children, "hit now remains my duty to speak a few
words of counsel and admonishment to you. Ardely here, not being able,
as no lone woman is, to keep food in the mouths of seven young-uns and
several head of property, tuck and married you at corn-planting time in
Aprile, so's to have a man to make the crap for her. Hit is a mighty
solemn thing for a man to take upon hisself sech a yoke as you have,
and it behooves you often to examinate yourself and study on whether
you are doing right by Elhannon's widow and orphants. Keep Elhannon's
memory green, ricollect that, as him and you is now husbands-in-law,
you must one day give account, not only to God Almighty, but to
Elhannon hisself, for how you done his woman and young-uns. Elhannon
allus had what might be called a fiery natur', and onless he's changed
a sight, I'd hate to be in your shoes and face him, Hiram, on the Day
of Judgment, if I didn't have a clear bill of quittance writ in the
Book of Life. You allus was, as far as I knowed, a well-intended boy,
and never done much meanness, and I hope you never will do no more.
"And now, people, I will give way, and take my seat, as there's
four more preachers sp'iling for a chanct to talk. Will one of the
brethering line out the old hime-tune, 'My head and stay is called
away.'"
Again the volume of song, rich, minor, beautiful, rolled forth, and
this time the "lined out" words were plainly audible:--
"My head and stay is called away
And I am left alone.
My husband dear, who was so near,
Is fled away and gone.
"Hit breaks my heart, 'tis hard to part
With one who was so kind.
Where shall I go to ease my smart,
Or heal my troubled mind?
"Naught can I find to ease my mind
In things which are below.
For earthly toys but vex my joys
And aggravate my woe."
Nothing could have been better than the new husband's solemn,
self-effacing manner during the singing. Not only did he appear
entirely reconciled to being a "mere earthly toy," and playing second
fiddle to Elhannon in both time and eternity, but also he seemed
solicitous not to "aggravate" Ardelia's woe in any possible way.
The next preacher then flung off his coat, and launched into a vigorous
exposition of the controversy between predestination and free will,
which lasted for two hours. Many of the younger folks, and older ones,
too, would quietly rise and take a rest-cure by promenading around
through the trees for a while; but the real Old Primitives up in
front, among them Uncle Lot, sat rapt and immovable throughout, strong
doctrine being very meat and drink to their souls.
A third preacher discoursed for an hour upon the four beasts of
Daniel's vision; a fourth for another hour upon nothing in particular;
a fifth in his talk took a fling at "this here new-fangled, fotched-on
notion of Sunday Schools, which fine-haired furriners has brung amongst
us, and which I defy 'em to find mentioned from one eend of the Bible
to t'other." In the discourses of the last four preachers, there were
two things in common--each took a special singsong and preached to it,
and not one of the four referred in the slightest way to the occasion
for the meeting, or to any of the deceased persons.
Before the meeting broke, at three o'clock, the invitation was extended
to all and singular to come to dinner with Ardelia, who had "cooked up"
for a week, and was ready for all comers.
Much as the party from The Forks wanted to go to the dinner, they felt
that it was too late. They mingled with the crowd for a short while,
talking and handshaking, and hearing from various persons that it had
been a "pretty meeting." Then, half-famished, they fell upon the lunch
they had brought with them, and, as soon as possible afterward, started
homeward.
Fult helped Isabel on her nag last of all, and in a low voice, with
handsome, imploring eyes, begged her to let the others ride on and wait
a minute for him.
She said, "All right," and called out: "Lethie, come back--Mr. Fallon
wants us to wait a minute for him."
Fult, flinging himself on his nag, darted a furious glance at her. A
dark flush mounted to his very forehead. He rode beside the two girls
in silence a few minutes, then quickened the pace until the three had
caught up with the others. Just before the ascent of the mountain
began, he jumped down, saying something about Isabel's saddle-girth,
and did something to it, she could not see what.
He remounted, and they rode on as before, along the road as it wound
around the lower part of the mountain. Then suddenly, at the first
steep ascent, Isabel felt her girth give, her saddle slip from under
her, and clutched wildly at her horse's mane.
Fult was at hand, and caught her before she could fall to the ground.
"Girt's broke," he said, "I allowed hit wasn't very safe. Anybody got a
stout string, or a piece of ground-hog hide?"
Nobody had. "I'll have to ride back to that house nigh the
burying-ground and get some," he said. "The rest of you go right on;
you too, Lethie,--hit's getting late,--and me and Miss Isabel will
catch up with you in just a little grain."
The others, including Lethie, rode on; and Isabel sat on a small bank
alongside the road and waited for Fult, who was delayed somewhat
longer than she had expected. At last he rode up, waving a string of
ground-hog hide in his hand.
"Had to wait to cut the string off the hide," he explained.
He drew the saddle up on the bank beside her, and began to work at the
girth. She watched him idly for a while, then suddenly leaned forward
and took the girth from his hands.
"This girth was cut, not worn," she said, in an astonished voice.
Fult laughed, "Are you just finding hit out?" he said.
"What do you mean?" she demanded.
"You seed me get off and fix hit back there?"
"Yes," said Isabel, puzzled.
"Well, I cut hit then," he said, "nigh in two, not quite."
"You cut it--why?"
With anger gathering in his eyes, he dropped knife and string and
slowly faced her. "Because," he said, "I've stood being treated this
way as long as I aim to. For four days you hain't hardly looked at me
or spoke to me; and when I try to talk to you, or sing to you, you all
the time drag somebody else in,--Lethie or somebody,--so I don't never
get a chance to be with you like I want to. And I'm tired of hit. I aim
to talk to you, whether or no." His eyes blazed, his chest heaved.
"I don't think I just understand you," Isabel replied.
"Yes, you do," he exclaimed, angrily. "You seed, from the minute I
laid eyes on you in that wagon down Troublesome, how things was with
me--how I was plumb crazy about you, couldn't stay away from you a
minute hardly, or get you off my mind day or night. You knowed hit as
well as I did."
"I did not," replied Isabel, slowly. "I knew, or hoped, that you
liked me, because I liked you immensely; but I didn't imagine that it
was--the other thing."
"You was bound to," cried Fult. "Hit was there plain in my heart and my
eyes for you to see. Hit wouldn't be possible for me to feel so much
and you not know hit."
"I wasn't thinking of such matters. I came up here to work, not to have
love-affairs. And, another thing, I didn't know anything about you and
Lethie being sweethearts, or maybe I would have been more careful not
to let you be with me so much."
"I thought that was hit," exulted Fult; "I allowed somebody had been
telling you tales."
"No," said Isabel; "I simply overheard someone say how you had changed
to Lethie; and then, of course, I was distressed to death over being a
possible cause of suffering to her. It is really best, perhaps, that
you and I should have this talk, and understand each other plainly.
I want you to know that I won't permit this feeling you say you have
for me to go on, or be spoken about, or even thought of. You must put
it instantly out of your mind, unless you want me to leave for home
to-morrow; for I'll never stay here and be the cause of suffering to
that beautiful child, who already carries so many burdens. Of course
she is the one you truly love, deep down in your heart; you have loved
her truly, haven't you?"
"I loved her all right, or thought I did, till you come in; then she
seemed to me just like you said,--a child,--and I knowed you was the
woman for me, the one I had allus heared tell of in song-ballats,
and had drempt about all my life. I knowed hit the minute I seed you
setting there in the wagon in the middle of Troublesome, with the
sunlight sifting down on your hair."
"It was because I was something new and strange," said Isabel. "People
have these infatuations, but they don't amount to anything, they don't
last. You'll get over it and wonder how you ever could have looked at
me. I'm a most ordinary everyday person, but Lethie is beautiful, body
and soul."
"Your looks suit me all right," said Fult, shortly. "You said a minute
back you liked me immensely. Did you mean hit?"
"I meant just what I said, and no more: like, not love," said Isabel,
firmly.
"Well," demanded Fult, tensely, "is there anybody else you _do_ love?"
An unexpected thought of Thomas Vance crossed Isabel's mind, only to
be carelessly dismissed. "I can answer you truly, I am not in love with
any man; I don't think I am the falling-in-love kind."
Fult veiled a triumphant gleam in his eyes. "Hit's all I want to know,"
he said. "If you don't already love nobody else, you can learn to love
me."
Isabel answered sharply: "Of one thing you may be sure--I'd never let
myself love a man who changes so easily as you do, and can be willing
to treat a girl as you would treat Lethie."
Fult laughed, as if highly amused. "I'd never change to _you_," he
said, with conviction; "I'd never treat _you_ no way but right." Then,
leaning toward her with pleading eyes, he said: "I hain't so hard to
love, am I?"
Isabel rose. "I have told you what I shall do if you persist in this,"
she said.
Fult smiled. "I'd foller you down to the level land if you went," he
declared. "Hit wouldn't make any difference to me where you was. I
don't know but what I'd like hit better down there, without so many
people around all the time."
"There would be my father and mother," said Isabel; "and I can tell you
they would be very far from approving of you."
"Why?" demanded Fult, in a tone of surprise.
"Because of the wild and reckless things you have done."
Fult threw back his head and laughed aloud.
"Do you allow that would make any difference to me?" he asked. "I
wouldn't ax nobody for my wife--if she liked me, I'd take her in the
teeth of all the devils of hell! You mind how Earl Brand, and the Elf
Knight, and all them other old-time fellows in the ballats done? Well,
that's my way. I don't know but what I'd enjoy hit better if I did have
to steal you!"
"Mr. Fallon," said Isabel, with dignity, "I see it is useless for us to
talk further. Finish the girth and put the saddle on for me, please,
and I'll ride on, and get my things together to start home to-morrow."
Fult reached up and gripped her wrist till it hurt.
"Do you think you can get away from me that way?" he said fiercely.
"Don't you know I allus have what I want before I finish? That nothing
can't stop me?"
The next instant, however, he was another man, calm, gentle, smiling.
He released her hand, with the words: "I don't want to bother you none,
though, or make you go home. Stay another week, and try me. I'll do
like you say--be just friends. I got a lot to do this week, getting out
timber, and maybe I can kindly work you off my mind."
"I don't doubt you can if you try," said Isabel; "I'll give you the
chance, anyhow. You see, I know I am very much needed in the work
here, and really don't want to leave."
He helped her into the saddle, and they rode on as rapidly as possible,
in the effort to catch up with the crowd.
VIII
MOONSHINE
The night of the women's return from the funeral occasion, there was
again some shooting down in the village, as there had been the night
previous; and the women feared that Billy Lee was one of the culprits,
as Lethie came up in his place to milk their cow next morning.
They were much troubled; and as Uncle Ephraim Kent, on account of
rheumatism, was unable to come to his reading lesson Monday morning,
Amy and Virginia, accompanied by Isabel, went across Troublesome after
dinner, to consult with him on the subject. The Kent lands extended for
a mile or two along the far side of the creek, and Uncle Ephraim's home
was in a hollow opposite the village. They crossed on a long footlog,
which was chained to a great water-elm on Uncle Ephraim's bank, so that
it should not be entirely carried away by "tides."
The old man was sitting just inside the doorway of his ancient log
house, trousers rolled up, and his legs, from the knee down, bound in
red flannel. His wife placed chairs. It was Isabel's first visit to his
home, and her eyes flew at once to the long old muzzle-loading rifle
and the strange musical instrument that hung over his "fireboard," and
as soon as possible she asked him about them.
The rifle, it appeared, had been the one used by his "grandsir," the
old Cap'n, when he "fit under Washington"; the dulcimer he himself had
made when a young man courting his first wife (the present one was his
second).
"Dulcimores," he said, "used to be the onliest music in this country;
the knowledge how to make 'em and pick on 'em was fotched in by our
forebears. But banjos and fiddles has nigh run 'em out now."
At Isabel's urging, he picked a tune on the old dulcimer, laying it
across his knees and using two quills, one to "note" with, and one to
pick with. The music was like the droning of a million mosquitoes.
He said that the old musket was still in use in his young days--that he
had killed many a deer with it. "Allus in them days I follered wearing
red, because hit makes the deer stand at gaze. And"--pointing to the
crimson linsey hunting-jacket that hung on a peg by the door--"I'm
still a-wearing hit, though there hain't been a deer seed in these
parts for allus. In them early days I never bothered with no shoes, or
even moccasins--the soles of my feet was so thick I could easy crush
chestnut-burrs with 'em. And many's the time I have laid out all night
in the pouring rain and never kotched ary cold. Present-day young
folks hain't no account--they have tendered theirselves too much."
He also had his wife get out from a chest his greatest treasure--his
grandsir's old yellow, crumbling Bible, "fotched out in his saddlebags
when he come acrost from Old Virginny. And which now," he said
triumphantly, "I can read myself, nigh as good as him."
So saying, he opened the faded pages at the Twenty-third Psalm, and,
with some prompting from Amy at the hard words, read it through proudly.
The women then broached the subject of their visit--the shooting in the
village the past two nights.
"I heared hit all," said the old man. "Hit hain't Fult and his crowd,
or Darcy and his'n, thank God! but just some of the sprouting-age boys
that has got hold of liquor some way, and tuck too much."
"But where do they get the liquor?"