In the Night
In dark silence Judith made ready a late breakfast for the boys, leaving
her coffee-pot as of custom on its bed of coals in the ashes, hot bread
in the Dutch oven, and a platter of meat on the table. Jeff and Andy
straggled in and ate, helping themselves mutely, with sidelong glances at
her stormy face.
During the entire forenoon Wade was off the place, but the twins put in
their time at the pasture over the breaking of a colt to harness. Old
Jephthah was in his room with the door shut. Jim Cal, almost immediately
on Creed's departure, had retired to the shelter of his own four walls,
and, sick and trembling, taken to his bed, after his usual custom when
the skies of life darkened.
Dinner was got ready with the same fury of mechanical energy. During its
preparation Iley stole to the door and looked in. The only women on the
place, held outside the councils of the men, she longed to make some
unformulated appeal to Judith, to have at least such help and comfort as
might come from talking over the situation with her. But when the
desolate dark eyes looked full into hers, and uttered as plainly as words
the question that the sister dreaded, Jim Cal's wife turned and fled.
"She might as well 'a' said 'Huldy,'" whimpered the vixen, plucking at
her lip and hurrying back, head down, to her own cabin.
The day dragged its slow length. The sun in the doorway had crept to the
noon-mark, and away again. Flies buzzed. A cicada droned without. The old
hound padded in to lie down under the bed.
After dinner Jephthah went away somewhere, and the boys gathered in their
room, whence Judith could hear the clink and snap which advised her that
the guns were having a thorough overhauling, cleaning, and oiling. She
looked helplessly at the door. What could she do? Follow Creed as Huldah
had done? At the thought, all her bitterness surged back upon her. What
had she been able to accomplish when she stood face to face alone with
him on the woods-path? Nothing. She turned and addressed herself once
more savagely to her tasks. That was what women were for--women and
mules. Men had the say-so in this world. She--she the owner of this
house, its real mistress--was to cook three meals a day for the men
folks, and see nothing and say nothing.
Supper was the only meal at which the entire family gathered that day. It
was eaten in an almost unbroken silence, the younger boys plainly
hesitating to speak to either Judith or their father. Save for elliptical
requests for food, the only conversation was when Wade offered the
opinion that it looked like it might rain before morning, and his father
replied that he did not think it would. Leaving the table without further
word, Jephthah returned to his own quarters; the boys drifted away one by
one giving no destination.
The light that used to wink out in friendly fashion from the smaller
cabin across the slope was darkened. Jim Cal had crawled out of bed after
a somewhat prolonged conversation with Wade. A little later he had
sullenly harnessed up a mule of Blatch's and, with Iley and the children,
started for old Jesse Spiller's, out at Big Buck Gap, the sister
maintaining to the last that Huldah must certainly have gone out to
pap's, and would be found waiting for them at the old home.
There was nobody left on the place but Judith and her uncle. The girl
went automatically about her Saturday evening duties, working doggedly,
trying to tire herself out so that she might sleep when the time came
that there was nothing to do but go to bed. As she passed from her
storeroom, which she had got Wade to build in the back end of the
threshing-floor porch, to the great open fireplace where a kettle hung
with white beans boiling that would be served with dumplings for the
Sunday dinner, as she took down and sorted over towels and cloths that
were not needed, but which made a pretext for activity, her mind ground
steadily upon the happenings of the past days. She could see Creed's face
before her as he had looked the night of the play-party. What coarse,
crude animals the other men were beside him! She could hear his voice as
it spoke to her in the dark yard at the Bonbright place, and her breath
caught in her throat.
She must be up and away; she must go to him and warn him, protect him
against these her fierce kindred.
Then suddenly came the vision of Creed's laughing mouth as he bent to
claim the forfeited kiss when Huldah Spiller had openly pushed herself
across the line "and mighty nigh into his arms." Huldah had run hot-foot
to warn him. Arley Kittridge brought word of having seen her dodge into
the Card orchard on her way to the house on the evening before, and
nobody had had sight of her since.
Judith's was a nature swayed by impulse, more capable than she herself
was aware of noble action, but capable also of sudden, irrational
cruelty. Just now her soul was at war with itself, embittered by rage, by
what she had done, by what she had left undone, by her helplessness, by
what she desired to do. Finally, despairing of any weariness bringing
sleep--she had tried that the night before and failed--she put by her
work and went up to her room, undressed and lay down in the dark.
For a long time she interrogated the blackness about her with wide open
eyes. The house was strangely still. She could hear the movement and
squawk of a chicken in one of the trees in the side yard when some fellow
lodger disturbed it, or a sudden breeze shook the limb upon which it
roosted. She wondered if the boys had come back yet and slipped in
quietly. Had she slept at all? About eleven o'clock there arose an
unquiet, gusty, yet persistent wind, that moved the cedar tree against
the edge of the porch roof and set it complaining. For a time it moaned
and protested like a man under the knife. Then its deep baritone voice
began to cry out as though it were calling upon her. The tree had long
ceased to mean anything other than Creed to Judith, and now its outcry
aroused her to an absolute terror. Again and again as the wind the tree,
so those tones shook her heart with their pain and love and anguish of
entreaty.
Finally she arose in a kind of torture, slipped on her clothes and went
through all the rooms. They were silent and empty. Not a bed had been
disturbed. She breathed loud and short in irrepressible excitement.
"They're all over at the still," she whispered, clutching at the breast
of her dress, and shivering. But the old man never went near the still,
she knew that. For a while she struggled with herself, and then she said,
"I'll just go and listen outside of Uncle Jep's door. That won't do any
harm. Ef so be he's thar, then the boys is shore at the still. Ef he
ain't----"
She left her mentally formed sentence unfinished and, on feet that fear
winged, stole through the side yard, across the long, lush, uncut grass
to her uncle's door.
The old man must have been a light sleeper, or perhaps he was awake
before she approached, for he called out while she yet stood irresolute,
her hand stretched toward the big wooden latch.
"Who's thar?"
Startled, abashed, she replied in a choked, hesitating tone.
"It's only me--Jude. I reckon I'm a fool, Uncle Jep. I know in reason
there ain't nothin' the matter. But I jest couldn't sleep, and I got up
and looked through the house, and the boys is all gone, and I got sorter
scared."
He was with her almost instantly.
"I reckon they're all over 'crost the gulch," he said in his usual
unexcited fashion, though she noted that he did not go back into his
room, but joined her where she lingered in the dark outside.
"Of course they air," she reassured herself and him. "Whar else could
they be?"
"Now I'm up, I reckon I mought go over yon myself," the old man said
finally. "My foot hurts me this evening; I believe I'll ride Pete. I took
notice the boys had all the critters up for an early start in the
mornin'."
Both knew that this was a device for investigating the stables, and
together they hurried to the huddle of low log buildings which served to
house forage and animals on the Turrentine place. Not a hoof of anything
to ride had been left. The boys would not have taken mules or horse to go
to the still--so much was certain. In the light of the lantern which
Jephthah lit the two stood and looked at each other with a sort of
consternation. Then the old man fetched a long breath.
"Go back to the house, Jude," he said not unkindly, putting the lantern
into her hand; and without another word he set off down the road running
hard.