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OLDFIELD
A KENTUCKY TALE OF THE LAST CENTURY
BY NANCY HUSTON BANKS
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1902
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1902,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped May, 1902.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
To My Father
CONTENTS
I. THE LITTLE SISTERS
II. THE OLDFIELD PEOPLE
III. PHASES OF VILLAGE LIFE
IV. THE CHILD OF MISS JUDY'S HEART
V. AN UNCONSCIOUS PHILOSOPHER
VI. LYNN GORDON
VII. THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA
VIII. AT OLD LADY GORDON'S
IX. A ROMANTIC REGION
X. RELIGION IN OLDFIELD
XI. BODY OR SOUL
XII. MISS JUDY'S LITTLE WAYS
XIII. THE DANCING LESSON
XIV. MAKING PEACE
XV. SIDNEY DOES HER DUTY
XVI. THE SHOCK AND THE FRIGHT
XVII. LOVE'S AWAKENING
XVIII. AN EMBARRASSING ACCIDENT
XIX. INVOKING THE LAW
XX. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN FAITH AND LOVE
XXI. WHAT OLDFIELD THOUGHT AND SAID
XXII. THE UPAS TREE
XXIII. THE BEGINNING OF THE END
XXIV. OLD LADY GORDON'S ANGER
XXV. THE REVELATION OF THE TRUTH
XXVI. THE TRAGEDY
XXVII. THE LAST ARTFULNESS OF MISS JUDY
OLDFIELD
I
THE LITTLE SISTERS
The old white curtain was slightly too short. Its quaint border of
little cotton snowballs swung clear of the window ledge, letting in the
sunbeams. The flood of light streaming far across the faded carpet
reached the high bed, and awakened Miss Judy earlier than usual on that
bright March morning, in the Pennyroyal Region of Kentucky, a half
century ago.
Miss Judy was always awake early, and usually arose while her sister lay
still fast asleep on the other side of the big bed. She had learned,
however, to creep so softly from beneath the covers, and to climb so
quietly down the bed's steep incline, that Miss Sophia was hardly ever
in the least disturbed. Moreover, Miss Judy always kept a split-bottomed
chair standing near her pillow at night. This served not only as a stand
for the candlestick and matches,--so that the candle need not be blown
out before Miss Sophia was comfortably cuddled down and Miss Judy was in
bed,--but it also furnished a dignified and comparatively easy means of
ascending the bed's heights. On descending, Miss Judy had but to step
decorously from the mound of feathers to the chair and to drop
delicately from the chair to the floor.
To have seen Miss Judy doing this must have been a sight well worth
seeing. She was so very pretty, so small, so slight, so exquisite
altogether. Old as she was, she had still the movements of a bird. Her
sweet old face was as fair as any girl's, and as ready with its delicate
blushes. Her soft hair, white as falling snowflakes and as curly as a
child's, was burnished by a silver gloss lovelier than the sheen of
youth. And her beautiful eyes were still the blue of the flax flowers.
Lifting her shining, curly head on that sunny morning, Miss Judy cast a
glance of dismay at the ruthless sunbeams lying on the carpet, and she
could not help a slight start. Then she held her breath for a moment,
turning her blue eyes on the back of Miss Sophia's nightcap, in a look
of anxious love. It always gave Miss Sophia a headache to be aroused
suddenly. Miss Judy was afraid that the involuntary movement might have
startled her. They were very tender of each other, these two poor little
sisters. And they were very, very polite to one another; more polite to
one another than they were to others, if that were possible. Miss
Sophia, who could not always remember the smaller matters of fine
breeding where other people were concerned, never forgot the smallest
courtesy toward her sister. Miss Judy, who was ever the pink--the
sweetest, old-fashioned clovepink--of politeness to everybody, always
treated Miss Sophia with such distinguished consideration as was a
lesson in manners to see. And no one ever smiled: it was too lovely to
be laughed at--too sincere to be absurd. Lying down side by side every
night of their long and blameless lives, they formally wished each other
pleasant dreams, and bade one another a ceremonious good night. Rising
every morning--separately, with delicate regard for the simple mysteries
of one another's toilet--they greeted each other at breakfast as two
high-bred strangers might meet in some grand drawing-room.
Leaning upon her elbow, Miss Judy now listened for a space to her
sister's breathing. She could always tell when all was well with Miss
Sophia's slumbers, by a mild little puffing sound, which did no harm,
but which nothing would ever have induced Miss Judy to mention to Miss
Sophia or to any one. The puffs continuing peacefully, Miss Judy smiled
lovingly and, laying the cover back with no more noise than a mouse
makes, she flitted birdlike from the mound of feathers to the chair and
thence to the home-made rug. She was always careful to stand on the rug
while dressing, in order to save the carpet. Miss Sophia also always
meant to stand on it, but she sometimes forgot that as she did many
other things. The carpet was long past saving, as it was long past
further fading; but neither Miss Judy nor Miss Sophia had begun to
suspect the fact. To them it was still the elegant all-wool three-ply
which their mother had spun and woven and sewed with her own hands.
Accordingly, Miss Judy now hastened to spread a strip of rag carpet in
the sun's path, before commencing to dress. The big, bare room was cold,
the handful of chips, which had made a cheerful blaze at bedtime, having
died out during the night. But Miss Judy did not know that she was
shivering. She was not in the habit of thinking of her own comfort, and
it did not occur to her to kindle a fire with the chips which were in
the basket beside the hearth, until such time as Miss Sophia should need
the warmth. She merely dressed as fast as she could, lingering only over
the last look in the mirror lying along the top of the tall chest of
drawers. Such a queer old mirror! Long and narrow in its frame of
tarnished gilt, with a faded landscape painted on each dim end, which
was divided from the rest of the glass by a solemn little column. The
chest stood so high and Miss Judy was so small that it was not easy for
her to get a good look at her straight little back. But there was no
other way of making sure that the point of her white muslin kerchief was
precisely on a line with the bow of her black silk apron strings. And
any irregularity in this matter would have shocked Miss Judy as being
positively immodest. She managed, however, by standing on the very tips
of her toes, to see that all was as it should be. Settling her cap, she
bent down, and noiselessly taking the basket of chips, kindled a fire in
one corner of the wide, empty fireplace, thinking with a loving glance
at the bed that the room would be comfortably warm when Miss Sophia got
up. Finally, she went into the passage to open the front door.
All the Oldfield front doors were set open in the morning and left open
all day, whenever the weather was reasonably mild; except during the
summer, when very few of them were closed at any time, either night or
day. Miss Judy alone, of the whole village, always closed hers at
bedtime all the year round. And she did not do it because she was
afraid, though everybody knew how timid she was. It never occurred to
her, during the whole of her gentle, innocent life, that there could be
in the world a living creature who would wish to do her any harm. There
was really nothing for the most timid to fear in that quiet, peaceful,
pastoral country. To be sure, Alvarado, The Terrible, sometimes dashed
into the village--unexpected, dazzling, fascinating, bewildering--and
out again like a lightning flash. Then most of the men did indeed
disappear as suddenly as though the earth had opened and swallowed them
up. But Alvarado never noticed the women, and he never came at night.
That is, no one ever claimed to have _seen_ him galloping by after
nightfall. Late watchers with the sick, who were the only late watchers
in Oldfield, sometimes told fearsome tales of thunderous hoofs at
midnight and of sparks that flew blue through the darkness. But Miss
Judy had never seen or heard anything of the kind. She had never seen
Alvarado at all, except in the distance and surrounded as he always was
by a cloud of dust and mystery. She was ever slow to believe evil of any
one and she rather leaned to Alvarado's side. It was unchristian, she
thought, to ascribe all sorts of wickedness to a man about whom no one
actually knew anything beyond the fact that he was a stranger and a
foreigner and had been most unfortunate. Moreover, he had been and was
still very unhappy, and the unfortunate and the unhappy had always a
friend in Miss Judy. Then the romance of his marriage appealed strongly
to her imagination. It was, of course, very wrong, and even very wicked,
for him to have tricked and frightened poor Alice Fielding into marrying
him, but he could hardly have known that she loved another man. Nobody
seemed to have known it until too late,--not even John Stanley whom she
loved,--and Alvarado also had loved her. There was never any doubt of
that. He had not been quite in his right mind since her death, many
years before. In Miss Judy's tender judgment he was much more to be
pitied than to be feared. No, Alvarado had nothing to do with Miss
Judy's closing her door at bedtime. She had closed it long before he had
ever been heard of in that country. She closed it simply and solely
because she considered it the _proper_ thing to do, on account of there
being no men-folks about the house. The other lone women of Oldfield
closed theirs too--when they remembered to do it--without a murmur, no
matter how hot the nights were, simply and solely because Miss Judy
closed hers; for no right-minded member of the whole community ever
needed a better reason for doing, or not doing anything, than to know
that Miss Judy deemed it proper or improper.
This quality of leadership is always interesting, wherever found, and it
is nearly always hard to explain. In Miss Judy's case it was even harder
to make out than it commonly is. The singularity of her supremacy had
nothing to do with her poverty. Neither poverty nor riches would appear
ever to have anything to do with the quality of leadership in any part
of the earth, and none of Miss Judy's neighbors could be considered
either very poor or more than well-to-do. The most utterly
incomprehensible feature of Miss Judy's long and absolute reign was,
perhaps, her total lack of every personal characteristic of the
autocrat. It is certainly not the usual qualification for autocracy to
be as gentle and shy as Miss Judy was--or as distrustful of self and as
trustful of others--or as self-forgetful and as thoughtful of every one
else. The little lady was far too timid and soft of spirit knowingly to
lay down laws for any one: she was only strong and firm enough to cling
timidly to her own gentle convictions through a hard life of privation,
as a dove clings to its nest through the fiercest storms.
She never dreamt that she _was_ an autocrat. When she noticed the
universal and marked deference with which she was always treated, she
thought it was because her father had been greatly respected, and her
mother much beloved. It was quite natural that they should have been,
Miss Judy thought in justification of her own shining by a reflected
light. They had been justly prominent among the earliest settlers of the
Pennyroyal Region, coming with their two infant daughters when
Virginia--like a rich and generous queen--first began giving away the
county of Kentucky, to the sons who had served her in the Revolution.
Those were glorious days! To tell about them now sounds like a fairy
tale. And yet they were sad days as well. For, great though the honor
was and dazzling as was the reward, the officers so honored and rewarded
must have known that the claiming of these lands meant lifelong exile
for their families and for themselves. It would appear so, at all
events, since few came who could stay nearer to civilization. The more
fortunate ones stayed on in the old Virginia homes, content with holding
cloudy titles to vast estates lying in this unknown wilderness of
Kentucky; and with rearing there splendid castles in the air. So very
cloudy, indeed, were many of these titles sent to Virginia by
irresponsible agents, that litigation over them has only recently ceased
in the local courts. Other officers were too poor to employ agents
either good or bad, and these were consequently compelled to go in
person, or to lose the grant of land. Among those reduced to this sore
strait was Major John Bramwell, Miss Judy's father, who had won
distinction as a captain of horse in the War for Independence. The
home-coming found him utterly stranded. His small patrimony was long
since spent, and his wife's ample fortune had shrunk to a mere pittance.
He knew no means of earning a livelihood, knowing even less of the
business of peace than most soldiers know. Hopelessly in debt, he knew
not where to turn for relief; he knew not how to find bare bread for his
family. The new home and the fresh start in the far-off county of
Kentucky offered the only refuge. The young wife consented to go, as she
would have consented to anything he wished or thought best; for she was
the gentlest of women, and her faith in her husband was absolute. Thus
it was that they gathered up the few fragments of the old happy life,
and, taking their two little ones, rode sadly away into exile.
Sad indeed and heavy-hearted must have been all those first
gentle-people who thus rode away from their old homes in Virginia over
the Alleghanies into the wilderness of Kentucky, bearing tender little
children in their arms. Miss Judy was much too young to remember that
terrible journey, and Miss Sophia was only a baby, but they both knew
all about it as soon as they were old enough to understand. They always
wept when they heard how tired the delicate little mother was before the
awful mountains were crossed--no matter how often they heard the story.
They always smiled when they heard how glad all the weary pilgrims were
to find a broad-horn waiting to bear the little band down the
Ohio--though they heard the story over and over again. And they always
followed the broad-horn with ever new interest, on and on down that
long, long river through the primeval forest growing to the water's
edge. Forest, forest, forest everywhere for hundreds of miles, till they
came--with the travellers--almost to the vast mouth of the mighty river
near which the Pennyroyal Region lies.
Miss Judy was not sure that it was called so when she entered it, an
infant in her father's arms. She always thought it more likely that the
whole of Kentucky may still have been known as The Dark and Bloody
Ground, so great were still the sufferings of the brave men and braver
women who were still giving their lives to redeem it from darkness and
blood. But there never was the slightest doubt in Miss Judy's mind that
these gentle-people coming now were braver than any who had come
before--the bravest because they were the gentlest. It always made her
own gentle heart beat, as if to strains of martial music, to be told in
the little mother's soft voice of the leaving of the broad-horn's frail
protection, and of the undaunted plunge into the depths of the
wilderness. Yet there were dangers there to be met which courage itself
must flee from. These fearless Virginians who did not shrink from facing
savages, nor from encountering wild beasts, shrank and fled appalled
before the more frightful dangers then lurking all along the banks of
the lower Ohio. There, hidden under the beauty of the almost tropical
vegetation, was the hideous rack of the fever and ague, waiting ready to
torture the strength out of the men, the heart out of the women, and the
very lives out of the children. There, beneath the noble trees and above
the wide open spaces, rolling like gentle prairies--sunlit, flower
filled, so richly covered with wild strawberries that the horses' hoofs
were dyed rosy-red--there the deadly mystery of "the milk-sickness" was
already spreading its invisible shroud over the whole beautiful land.
Fleeing from these perils more to be feared than the cruelest savages,
and more to be dreaded than the fiercest wild beasts, the travellers
went further into the heart of the wilderness, seeking the safety of
higher ground; on and on, following the buffalo tracks which still
traversed the country from end to end like broad, hard-beaten highways.
One of these led them along a range of hills and into a fertile little
valley, and it was here that the Virginians finally found a
resting-place. It was here in this vale of rest, folded between these
quiet hills, that the village of Oldfield grew out of that settlement,
and here that it stands to-day scarcely altered from its beginning. Over
the hills--there on the east where tender green of the crowning trees
melts into the tenderer blue of the arching clouds--there still lies the
untouched strip of broad brown earth, which the people of to-day call
the Wilderness Road, just as those wandering Virginians called it when
they first found it.
The forest crowded close to the valley, but the sun shone bright where
the giant trees stood farther apart. Then the skies of Kentucky were as
blue as the skies of Italy, just as they are now, so that the sunshine
and the peace of the spot, and the pure air of the wooded hills, gave
the wayfarers heart to believe themselves safe from the terrors of the
Ohio. The homes which they built were all humble enough, the merest
cabins of rough logs, since they had nothing else wherewith to build.
Major Bramwell's house was no better than the rest. Like most of the
settlers' cabins it had two low, large rooms with a closed passage
between and a loft above. But it is the mistress who makes the real
home,--wherever reared; the mere building of it has little to do with
its making. And the softest little woman, who is neither very brilliant
nor very wise, can work miracles for her husband and her children, no
matter where her wings may rest upon the earth. This one, softer and
less wise than many, not only made a real home of perfect refinement out
of that log hut in the wilderness, but she reared her daughters--amongst
white men rougher than the wild beasts, and near red men infinitely
fiercer--as gently as any royal princesses were ever trained in any old
palace for the gracing of courts.
It was easy enough to train Miss Judy, whose nature responded to
exquisiteness as an aeolian harp responds to the breeze. Miss Sophia was
different, but the little mother did not live long enough to find it
out. Perhaps no true mother ever lives long enough to find anything
lacking in her child. Miss Sophia was standing on the threshold of
womanhood, and Miss Judy had barely crossed it, when the little mother
died, worn out by hardship and broken-hearted by exile, but cheerful and
uncomplaining to the last, as such mothers always are.
Is it not amazing that a small, soft woman can leave such a large, hard
void in the world? Is it not bewildering to learn, as most of us do,
sooner or later, that those whom we have always believed we were taking
care of, were really stronger than ourselves, and that we have always
leaned on them. The very foundations of life seem falling away, when the
truth first comes home to the heart. No one knew what Major Bramwell
felt or thought when the gentle wife who had yielded in everything first
left him to stand alone. He was naturally a silent, reserved man, and
misfortune had embittered him. Within the year following her death he
returned to Virginia for a visit, apparently unable to endure the exile
without her. His daughters were lonely too, but they were glad to have
him go. That is, Miss Judy was glad, and Miss Sophia was always pleased
with anything that pleased Miss Judy. They were still content, believing
him to be happier, when the visit went on into the second year, and even
into the third. But as the fourth and the fifth passed, they grew
anxious, and the neighbors wondered, and gradually began to shake their
heads. News travelled slowly over the Alleghanies even yet, but it was
whispered at last that the major would never come back,--that he could
not,--because he had been arrested for old debts left unpaid when he
came to Kentucky, and that he was thus held "within prison bounds."
The Oldfield people could never tell whether the sisters were aware of
the truth. The neighbors noticed that as the years went by Miss Judy
said less and less about his coming back, though she spoke of him as
often and as proudly as ever, and that Miss Sophia, who never had much
to say about anything, now rarely mentioned her father at all. They
heard from him, however, at long intervals. The neighbors were sure of
so much concerning the major, by reason of Miss Judy's being sometimes
compelled to borrow the two bits to pay the postage on the letter.
Nothing else ever forced her to borrow, though she had not a penny to
call her own for weeks together, and Miss Sophia--poor soul--never had
one. Everybody in Oldfield knew when anybody got a letter. The stage
carrying the mail came twice a week. The postmaster, who was also a
tailor, always locked the door of his little shop as soon as he had
taken the mail-bag inside. He could not read writing very readily, and
he did not wish to be hurried. The villagers fumed outside as they
looked through the one smoky, broken window, and saw him deliberately
spelling out his own letters, sitting down with his feet on the stove.
In the winter when the days were short, and it began to grow dark early,
they used to stuff something into the stovepipe which came out of a
broken pane, so that the smoke soon compelled him to open the door. In
the summer the heat prevented the postmaster's keeping the door closed
for any great length of time; but no matter what the season most of the
Oldfield people were waiting when the mail came; consequently, everybody
knew what everybody else received. And then Miss Judy used to give out
kind messages to the neighbors from her father's letters; messages which
did not sound at all like the major. But Miss Judy was wholly
unconscious that her own sweetness colored whatever it may have been
that her father had really written. She was as unconscious of this as of
any reason that she herself might have had for growing sour, as her
lovely youth faded, neglected like the wild flowers blooming unseen in
the shadowy woods.
The quiet lives of the little sisters thus went on uneventfully from
youth to maturity. They were as utterly alone, so far as association
with their own class was concerned, as if they had lived on a desert
island. Only the occasional letter from their father marked the passing
of the years. They were sheltered by the old log house, and they
subsisted somehow on what grew from its bit of ground. It was the same
now that it had always been; it was still the same, except that the
little sisters had passed unawares into middle age, when they heard that
their father was dead.
No one ever knew whether the daughters were told the whole sad truth:
that this gallant old soldier of the Revolution, who had done much for
the winning of Independence, had died in prison bounds for debts which
he was never able to pay. Miss Judy's beautiful eyes were dim with
weeping for a long time. Miss Sophia was sad for many months through
sympathy with her sister's grief. Miss Judy took the purple bow off Miss
Sophia's cap and a blue one off her own and dyed them black. Their
Sunday coats, as they called two thread-bare bombazines, were black
already, and their everyday coats had also been black before turning
brown. So that those two poor little bits of lutestring ribbon were the
only outward signs of new bereavement.
II
THE OLDFIELD PEOPLE
Living was leisurely down in the Pennyroyal Region of those old days.
About the middle of the last century, some twenty years after the
major's death, the weeks and months and years went by so quietly that
his daughters grew old without knowing it.
No one indeed ever thought of Miss Judy as old. Charm so purely
spiritual as hers has never any age. And then it would seem as if an
element of perpetual youth often lingers to the last around a lovable
unmarried woman as it rarely does around the married. The rose keeps its
beauty and sweetness longest when left to fade ungathered.
Possibly Miss Judy may have been a shade slighter than she had been
twenty years before, although she was never much stouter than a willow
twig. Her hair can hardly have been whiter than it had been ever since
anybody could remember, and it was just as curly, too, notwithstanding
that she tried harder every day to brush it till it was prim and smooth,
as she thought white hair should be.
Miss Sophia had never seemed very young, and she now appeared little if
at all older. Her dark hair never whitened, and if the gray streaks over
her placid temples had broadened slightly, it was no more trouble than
it used to be to reach up the chimney and get a bit of soot on the tip
of her finger--while Miss Judy was out of the room or looking the other
way. It was an innocent artifice, but it remained always the darkest
secret between the sisters. And this was probably not quite so dark a
secret as Miss Sophia supposed it to be, since she, being so very plump,
could not stand on tiptoe to look in the mirror, as Miss Judy did.
Consequently, it was perhaps inevitable that the touching up intended
for the gray streaks over Miss Sophia's placid temples, sometimes fell
unawares on her honest little cheeks, or her guileless little ears.
Almost unaltered as the sisters were, their environment was, if
possible, even less changed by the quiet passing of the uneventful
years. For all outward changes, this March morning on which Miss Judy
looked out over the sleeping village might have been the first morning
after the first settlers had made their homes in this vale of peace. The
folding hills were yet covered by the primeval forest. The log houses
built by the Virginians still straggled beside a single thoroughfare.
The highway, too, was the same buffalo track which they had followed
through the wilderness--just as crooked in its direction, just as
irregular in its width, just as muddy in winter and dusty in summer, and
it was called the "big road" now, just as it had been in the beginning.
And the sleepers in the still darkened houses were, with scarcely an
exception, the descendants of the sounder sleepers in the graveyard on
the furthest, highest hilltop. For the people of that far-off Pennyroyal
Region came and went in those old days only with the coming and the
going of the generations.
The night's shadows still lingered among the great, black tree-trunks
draping the leafless boughs, but the sun's radiant lances were already
lifting the white mists from the lowlands. Soft sounds coming up from
the silent fields echoed the gentle awakening of flocks and herds,
deepening, as the light brightened, into the eternal matin appeal of the
dumb creature to human brotherhood. The birds alone were all wide awake
and vividly astir. Flocks of plovers wheeled white-winged across the
low-hung sky. A lonely sparrow-hawk swung high on seemingly motionless
pinions. There were redbirds, too, and bluebirds and blackbirds--pewees,
thrushes, vireos, kingfishers--all flocking in with the red and gold of
the sunrise, making the dun meadows bright and melodious with their
plumage and song. Miss Judy saw and heard them in pleased surprise. She
could not recall having seen any of them that season, save two or three
melancholy robins, drooping in the cold rain of the previous day. But
here they all were, and singing as if _they_ had no doubt that spring
had come, however doubtful mere mortals might be.
It was light enough now to see the tavern which stood on the edge of the
village. The sign of the tavern, a big rusty bell hung in a rough,
rickety wooden frame, stood clear against the gray horizon, dangling its
rotting rope, which few travellers ever came to pull.
The court-house and the jail faced the tavern from the other side of the
big road. The court-house, with its stately little pillars and its queer
little cupola, looked like some small and shabby old gentleman in a very
high, very tight stock. There were two terms of circuit court, lasting
about a month, one in the spring and one in the fall. The quarterly and
the county courts convened at stated periods. The magistrate's court,
which was also in the court-house, was held usually and almost
exclusively as the peace of the colored population might require.
Fortunately, the magistrate was regarded with a good deal of wholesome
awe, and it was fortunate that he lived in the village, inasmuch as his
pacific services were likely to be needed at irregular and unexpected
times. The county judge, however, found it entirely convenient to live
in the country, on a farm near Oldfield, though he rode into the village
and spent an hour or so in his office nearly every day. Judge John
Stanley of the higher court lived a long way off, quite on the other
side of the district, coming and going twice a year with the convening
and adjournment of the spring and fall terms. He had lived in Oldfield
when a young man, and up to the time that a terrible thing had happened.
He was not to blame, yet it had blighted his whole life; it had driven
him in horror away from the place which he had loved. It was a great
loss to him to be separated from Miss Judy, the only mother he had
known. But he used to return to Oldfield now and then until another
misfortune made the place forever unendurable to him. After this only
the drag of his duty and his fondness for Miss Judy ever brought him
back, and he went away again as soon as he could. He always called upon
her when he came, and always went to bid her good-by before going away;
but he visited no one else and knew nothing of the village outside the
strict line of his official duties.
Adjoining the court-house was the county jail, a tumble-down pile of
mossy brick. Only the bars across the window indicated the character of
the building. A prisoner was occasionally enterprising enough to pull
out the bars, but they were always put in again sooner or later. There
were two rooms, one above and one below, with a movable ladder between.
When, at long and rare intervals a stranger was brought to the jail as a
prisoner, he was put in the upper room and--as an extreme measure of
precaution--the ladder was taken away during the night. Both the rooms
were apt to be chilly in cold weather on account of the broken
window-panes, yet the jail was on the whole more comfortable than many
of the cabins in which the negroes lived, and any one--no matter what
the color of his skin--can endure a good deal of cold without great
discomfort, when abundantly and richly fed. The jailer, Colonel
Fielding, and his family never thought of taking so much trouble or of
being so mean and selfish as to make any difference in the food sent to
the jail and that which was served on their own table. Now and then in
the winter the turkey and the pudding would, it is true, get rather cold
in transit, the jail and the jailer's residence being some distance
apart; but the prisoners did not mind that. They used to stand at the
windows good-humoredly hailing the passers-by to kill time; and waiting
with such patience as they could muster for the coming of the good
dinner, especially when they knew that there was more "quality" company
than usual in the jailer's house. The colonel, a beautiful old
man--tall, stately, clear-eyed, clean and upright in heart and mind and
body--was a gentleman of the old school who had never earned a penny in
all the days of his blameless life. Such a picture as he was to look at,
with his long silver hair curling on his shoulders and his tall erect
form draped in the long cloak which he wore like a Roman toga!
"By the o'wars!" he used to declare, "the older I am the faster and
thicker my hair grows. As for my cloak--it's the only suitable thing,
sir, for a gentleman's wear."
His house had always been the social centre of Oldfield. When his
friends elected him to the office of jailer, deeming that the best and
easiest way of providing for him, since it was the nearest to a sinecure
afforded by county politics, his family became still more active leaders
of society. In those good old days of the Pennyroyal Region, a gentleman
of birth and breeding might engage in any honest avocation, without the
slightest injury to his social position. The only difference that the
colonel's election to the office of jailer made to his family and his
neighbors was, that the salary enabled him to indulge his hospitable and
generous inclinations more fully. The salary was small, to be sure, but
it was more than he had ever had before. About this time, too, the
colonel's five beautiful daughters--all famous beauties--were in the
perfection of bloom, and none of them had yet married, thus beginning
the breaking up of the happy home. Such dinners, such suppers, such
dances as there were in that plain old house! The colonel's handsome,
indolent, sweet-tempered wife used to say that they were always ready
for company, because they had the best they could get every day. Usually
there was not the slightest conflict between the colonel's large social
obligations and his small official duties. On the contrary, the more
fine dinners and suppers he gave the higher the prisoners lived, and the
happier everybody was. In fact, the colored vagrant who managed to get
into the jail when winter was near--when there were no vegetables in
anybody's garden, no fruit in anybody's orchard, no green corn in
anybody's field--was regarded by his fellows as very fortunate indeed.
It chanced, however, that a wandering stranger was one day locked in
among the prisoners who were otherwise all home-folks. On that very
evening the Fielding girls were giving a grand ball and supper, to which
the whole fashion of the county was invited. The prisoners, with the
exception of the stranger, were as deeply interested in what they saw
and heard of the great stir of preparation as the guests could possibly
have been. The stranger probably knew nothing of his companions' glowing
and confident expectation of a generous share of the feast. If they told
him anything of the feasting which the next day was sure to bring, he
either did not believe it, naturally enough--having had most likely some
experience with jails and jailers--or he preferred liberty to luxury. At
all events on that eventful evening the colonel, whose mind was full of
the ball, incidentally forgot to lock the door of the jail. The strange
prisoner had, therefore, nothing to do but to open the door as soon as
the jailer's back was turned; and this he did at once, disappearing in
the darkness, never to be seen or heard of again. The other prisoners
had tried to prevent his going, and they now did their utmost to give
the alarm. They hallooed long and loud at the top of their strong lungs.
But the wind was blowing hard in the wrong direction, the jail was too
far from the house, and they could not make themselves heard above the
music and dancing and laughter and drinking of toasts. Finally one of
them, who was a sort of leader because he wintered regularly in the
jail, offered to go to the colonel's house in order to let him know what
had occurred. And he did go--willingly too--although the night was very
cold and very dark, and the mud so deep that the very bottom seemed to
have dropped out of the big road. The colonel himself with his youngest
daughter was leading the Virginia reel, and just going down the middle
to the tune of _Old Dan Tucker_; so that the bearer of the evil tidings
had to wait a few moments looking in on the ball before he found a
chance to tell his story. It was a cruel blow to come at such a time,
and the colonel felt it sorely. The prisoner reported to his companions,
after his return alone to the jail, that he thought "Marse Joe was about
to swear" then and there. It was in vain that the colonel's guests
hastened to reassure him; to tell him that it would be a great saving to
the county--so all the gentlemen said--if every one of the lazy black
rascals could be induced to run away. But the colonel felt the wound to
his pride. It was a matter touching his honor. And finally, finding him
inflexible in his determination to do his duty under the circumstances,
the men present offered--almost to a man--to go with him when he went to
search for the fugitive; and they kept their word on the following day
about noon when the sun was warmest, just to please the colonel,
although they knew beforehand how futile the pursuit would be with vast
canebrakes near by and the Cypress Swamp just beyond the hills.
That memorable night of the ball was long, long past when this March
morning dawned. The colonel was very old now and very feeble, with
dimmed memories and utterly alone. He had lost his wife years before.
His five beautiful daughters were married and gone. Alice, the most
beautiful of all, the youngest, the brightest, the highest spirited, was
dead after the wrecking of her young life. The old man had aged and
failed rapidly since Alice's death. He, who used to be so cheerful, sat
brooding at first, turning his aching memories this way and that way,
trying to see whether he might not have done something to prevent the
soft-hearted child from being frightened into marrying a man whom she
feared almost as much as she disliked. He was always thinking about it
in those early days after her death in the bloom of youth and beauty,
but he rarely spoke of it even then, and after a time he was allowed to
forget. Mercifully memory faded as weakness increased. The gentle,
unhappy old man became ere long again a gentle, happy child, and
yet--even to the last--when aroused to glimmering consciousness the
gallant manner of the courtly gentleman of the old school came back.
Miss Judy thought she had never seen so polished a bearing as the
colonel's had been and would be--in a way--as long as he lived. She
wondered uneasily that morning, as she looked toward his house, whether
the servants took good care of him; and she made up her mind to be more
watchful of him herself. She was much afraid that the rain might make
his rheumatism worse.
Next to the colonel's, coming down the big road, was the Gordon place,
the largest and best kept in the village. The house was a low rambling
structure of logs, whitewashed inside and out. The rooms had been added
at random as suited the comfort and convenience of the family. It was
not the habit of the Oldfield people to consider appearances. It was not
the habit of the widow Gordon to consider anything but her own wishes.
It may have been on account of this imperiousness, this open and
scornful disregard of everything and everybody except herself and her
own comfort, that she was always called "old lady Gordon" behind her
back. She lived alone with a large retinue of servants in the
comfortable old house, spending her days in a state of mental and
physical semi-coma from over-eating and over-sleeping, using both like
lethean drugs. Miss Judy alone sometimes thought that old lady Gordon so
used them and pitied her. Old lady Gordon, who had a strong keen sense
of humor, almost masculine in its robustness, would have laughed at the
idea of Miss Judy's pity. She was the richest member of that community
in which all living was simple, and in which the extremes of riches and
poverty were not known as they are known to the greater world. Most of
the Oldfield people dwelt contentedly in the middle estate which the
wisest of men prayed for. None was poorer than Miss Judy, who had only a
pittance of a pension, the old house, and the scrap of earth; none, that
is, except Sidney Wendall, who, although she owned the log cabin which
sheltered her family and the bit of garden lying by its side, had not a
penny of income for the support of her three children, her husband's
brother, and herself. Yet Miss Judy managed to provide for Miss
Sophia--and herself also as an afterthought; and Sidney provided for her
family without difficulty, though in both cases a steady, strenuous
effort was required.
Among the few who were really well-to-do, were Tom Watson and Anne his
wife. Their house, facing Miss Judy's across the big road, was rather
more modern than the rest of the Oldfield houses, and it was better
furnished. And yet as Miss Judy looked at its closed blinds she sighed,
thinking how little money had to do with happiness, when it could give
no relief from pain of mind or body. More than a year had dragged by
since the master of that darkened household had been brought home after
the accident which had crushed the great, strong, passionate,
undisciplined, good-hearted giant into a helpless, hopeless
paralytic--as the lightning fells the mighty oak in fullest leaf. The
mistress of the stricken home had always been what the Oldfield people
called a "still-tongued" woman, and she was now become more silent than
ever. The house had never been a cheerful one, save as the noisy master
blustered in and out. Now it was sad indeed: now that both husband and
wife knew that he could never be any better, never otherwise than he
was, although he might live for years.
Miss Judy wondered as she gazed, whether Doctor Alexander, living a
little further along the big road, had yet told Anne the whole truth.
After a moment she was sure that he had not. He was the kindest of
bluff-spoken men. And what would be the use--since neither Anne nor the
doctor nor the power of the whole world of sympathy or science could do
anything more? She was glad to see the doctor's curtains still drawn. He
needed all the rest he could get; he was always overworked in his
practice for twenty miles around. And Mrs. Alexander, the doctor's wife,
was one of the rare kind, who are always ready to sleep when other
people are sleepy and to breakfast when other people are hungry: a much
rarer kind, as even Miss Judy knew, unworldly as she was, than the kind
who always expect others to be sleepy when _they_ wish to sleep and to
be ready to eat when _they_ are hungry.
In the unpainted, tumble-down house next to the doctor's, somebody was
awake and stirring. Miss Judy guessed it to be Kitty Mills, and she knew
it was more than likely that the poor woman had not been in bed at all.
It was nothing uncommon for old man Mills, Kitty's father-in-law, to
keep her busy in waiting upon him the whole night through. It was
utterly impossible for Kitty, or anybody else, to please him, but Kitty
never seemed to mind in the least; she merely laughed and tried
again--over and over with untiring kindness and unflagging patience.
Miss Judy never knew quite what to make of Kitty Mills, though she had
lived just across the big road from her through all these years. Miss
Judy could understand submission without resistance easily enough; she
had submitted to a good many hard things herself, without a murmur. But
she could not comprehend the acceptance of unkindness and injustice and
ingratitude and endless toil and hardship with actual hilarity, as Kitty
Mills accepted all of these things, day in and day out, year after year.
And there she was now singing, blithe as a lark! Well, such a
disposition as Kitty's was a good gift, Miss Judy thought almost
enviously, as though her own disposition were very bad indeed. Then she
began to reproach herself for uncharitable thoughts of old man Mills's
daughters. They may have had their reasons for bringing their father to
Kitty's house to be nursed by her, instead of nursing him themselves.
Perhaps they had brought him because they believed Kitty would take
better care of him than they could, knowing how faithfully she had
nursed their mother who had been unable to leave her bed for years, and,
indeed, up to her death, only a few months before. We cannot look into
one another's hearts, so Miss Judy reminded herself. No doubt we should
judge more justly if we could. And Sam, Kitty's husband, was really a
good, kind man, and maybe he _would_ work sometimes were it not for the
misery in his back, which always grew worse whenever work was even
mentioned in his presence. Still Miss Judy could not see, try as she
might, how Kitty Mills could laugh till she cried, when old man Mills
snatched up the dinner which she had cooked on a hot day and flung it
out the window--dishes and all.
Looking farther along the big road, Miss Judy saw that the Pettuses also
were awake and stirring about. The bachelor brother and the maiden
sister were both early risers. Mr. Pettus kept the general store, and he
liked to have it open and ready for trade when the farmers taking grain
and tobacco to market drove the big-wheeled wagons with their swaying
ox-teams through the village on the way to the river. Miss Pettus arose
with the first chicken that took its head from under its wing, her main
interest in life being concentrated in the poultry-yard. She always held
that any one having to do with hens must be up before the sun; and she
used to tell Miss Judy a great deal about the Individuality of Hens, the
subject with which she was best acquainted and upon which she discoursed
most entertainingly and instructively. Miss Judy always listened with
much interest and entire seriousness. Gentle Miss Judy had not a very
keen sense of humor; it is doubtful if any really sweet woman ever had.
"The folks who think all hens are alike except the difference that the
feathers make outside, don't know what they are talking about!" Miss
Pettus once said, in her excited way. "Hens are as different inside as
folks are. Some hens are silly and some have got plenty of sense, only
they're stubborn. There's that yellow-legged pullet of mine. _She's_ so
silly that she is just as liable to lay in the horse-trough as in her
nice, clean nest. Every blessed morning, rain or shine, unless I'm up
and on the spot before she can get into the trough, old Baldy eats an
egg with his hay, and I'm expecting every day that he'll eat her. And
there's that old dorminica, the one that Kitty Mills cheated me with
when we swapped hens that time. Well, the old dorminica ain't a _bit_
silly. She's just out and out contrary. The great, lazy, fat thing! Set
she _won't_--do what I will! And Kitty Mills _knew_ she wouldn't--knew
it just as well when we swapped as I know it this minute. There's no use
trying to persuade me that she didn't. It's awful aggravating, because
the dorminica's the heaviest hen I've got. Well, night before last I
made up my mind that I'd _make_ her set, whether she wanted to or not.
When it began to get dark and she sauntered off to go to roost, I caught
her and put her down on a nest full of fine, fresh eggs--set her down
real firm and determined, like _that_--as much as to say 'we'll _see_
whether you don't stay there,' and then I turned a box over her so that
she couldn't get out if she tried. But I couldn't help feeling kind of
uneasy, with fresh eggs gone up so high, clear to ten cents a dozen. The
next morning at break o' day, cold and rainy as it was, I put on my
overshoes and threw my shawl over my head, and went to take a peep under
the box. And there--you'll hardly believe it, Miss Judy, but I give you
my word as a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church--there was that
old dorminica _a-standing up_!"
Miss Judy had said at the time what a shame it was to waste nice eggs
so, and she had spoken with sincere feeling. She had been cherishing a
secret hope that she might get a few eggs from Miss Pettus to complete a
setting for Speckle. Miss Judy had saved ten eggs with great care,
keeping them wrapped in a flannel petticoat; but Speckle, the docile and
industrious, could easily cover fifteen and was quite willing to do it.
Now, Miss Judy's hope was lost through the dorminica's contrariness. She
thought about this again with a pang of disappointment, as she heard the
cackling and confusion going on in the Pettus poultry-yard, which told
the whole neighborhood that Miss Pettus was wide awake and actively
pursuing her chosen walk in life.