The Dumb Supper
It was the thirty-first of October, All Souls' eve, that mystic point of
contact between the worlds when quick and dead are fabled to walk the
ways of earth together, to meet eye to eye, and hold converse. A web of
mountain legend clings dimly about this season.
The spirit of it--weird, elfin--was abroad, the air was full of it as,
alone out in the gusty darkness of the autumn night, at eleven o'clock,
Judith walked swiftly toward the Lusk place. Wrapped in a little packet
she carried bread and salt, and a length of candle. She went across
fields, and thus cut down the distance till it was possible to walk it in
fifteen minutes.
As she approached the house, Speaker, a barely grown hound-pup, came
rollicking out to meet her, leaping about her shoulder-high, frisking
back toward the porch and waiting for her, all the while barking
joyously.
"My Lord!" said Pendrilla's sleepy small voice when Judith tapped on
their window in the wing of the building where the girls roomed. "Ef that
thar fool hound-pup ain't loose! I hope he don't wake up Grandpap. Cain't
you make him hush, Judith?"
Judith stooped and caressed the dog for a moment, quieting him. The girls
presently appeared in the doorway fully dressed and, as it seemed, with
their packets made, in addition to which Cliantha carried an old lantern
unlighted in her hand.
"I'll light it as soon as we get out in the road," she announced
whisperingly.
When they would have secured the dog that he might not follow them, they
found that he, wise for his age, had disappeared.
"I bet he's run down the road apiece; he'll be a-hidin' in the bushes
waitin' for us," Cliantha opined pessimistically. But there was nothing
to be done about it, and they set out, to be intercepted in just such
manner as she foretold.
"I vow, I ain't so mighty sorry Speaker's along of us," Pendrilla said
after they had vainly browbeaten, threatened, and stoned the hound to
drive him back through the gate. "He's a mighty heap of company and
protection out thisaway in the night."
"Girls," said Judith, suddenly halting them all in the little byroad
which they were travelling, "don't you think we'd better cut across here?
Hit'll be a lot nearer."
"Grandpap's jest ploughed that thar field to put in his winter wheat,"
objected Pendrilla. "Hit'll make mighty bad walkin'."
"But we'll get there quicker," urged Judith feverishly, and that closed
the argument. Between them the Lusk girls had succeeded in lighting the
old lantern; by its illumination the party climbed the rail fence, and
struggled for some distance across the loose hillocks of ploughed
ground.
"Hit wouldn't make such awful walkin' if it had been drug," Cliantha
murmured. In the mountains they hitch a horse to a log or a large piece
of brush and, dragging this over the ploughed ground, make shift to
smooth it without a harrow.
They had hobbled about one third of the toilsome way when there came a
rush of galloping hoofs, the girls had barely time to crouch and cry out,
Speaker barked loud, and suddenly half a dozen young calves ran almost
into them.
"Oh landy!" cried Pendrilla. "Ef them thar calves ain't broke the fence
again! Grandpap will be so mad--and we don't darst to tell him that we
know of it."
"Come on," urged Judith. "We've got to get over there."
But it was found when they would have moved forward that they could not
shake off their unwelcome escort. The calves had been tended occasionally
in the dusk by a man with a lantern, and they hailed this one as a beacon
of hope. Finally even Judith, desperately impatient to be gone, agreed
that they would have to turn back and put the meddlesome creatures into
their pasture and lay up the fence before they could make any progress.
"Hit'll save time," she commented briefly, as though time were the only
thing worth considering now.
At last, one after the other, they climbed the fence at the side of the
Bonbright place. The air was soft, heavy with coming rain. Up through the
weed-grown yard they went, greeted and beckoned by the odours of Mary
Bonbright's garden, thyme and southernwood, herbs by the path-side,
clumps of brave chrysanthemums, a wandering spray or two of late-blooming
honeysuckle. Judith trembled and locked her teeth together in anguish as
she remembered that other night in the odorous dusk when she and Creed
had stood under these trees and sought in the darkness for the bush of
sweet-scented shrub.
The empty house bulked big and black before them in the gloom. She took
the key from her pocket and opened the front door, Pendrilla and Cliantha
clinging to her in an ecstasy of delicious terror. She stepped into the
front room, struck a match, and lighted her candle. It was half-past
eleven by the small nickel alarm-clock which she carried. Its busy,
bustling, modern tick roused strange, incongruous echoes in the old
house, and reproved their errand.
Speaker made himself at home, coming in promptly, seeking out the corner
he preferred, and turning around dog-fashion before he lay down and
composed himself to half-waking slumbers.
"I reckon in here will be the best place," murmured Cliantha, seeking a
candlestick from the mantel for their light. "We could set around this
table."
"It's more better ef we-all set on the flo'," reminded Pendrilla
doubtfully. "Don't ye ricollect? all the dumb suppers we ever hearn tell
of was held thataway. Set on the flo' and put yo' bread and salt on the
flo' in front of you."
"Mebbe that's becaze they was held in desarted houses, and most generally
desarted houses don't have no tables nor chairs in 'em," Cliantha
speculated.
From the moment the lantern revealed the room to them, Judith had stood
drawn back against the wall curiously rigid, her hand at her lip, her
over-bright eyes going swiftly from one remembered object to another.
This fleeting gaze fixed itself at last on the inner door.
"I'll go in the other room a minute for--for something," she whispered
finally. "You gals set here. I'll be right back. I've got two candles."
She lighted the second candle, left the girls arranging the dumb supper,
and stole, as though some one had called her, into that room which she
had made ready for Creed's occupancy on the night of the play-party. It
had reverted to its former estate of dust and neglect. She looked about
her with blank, desolate eyes which finally found upon the bed a withered
brown something that held her gaze as she crept toward it--the wreath of
red roses!
There it was, the pitiful little lure she had put forward to Love, the
garland she had set in place to show Creed how fine a housewife she was,
how grandly she would keep his home for him. The brave red roses, the
bold laughing red roses, their crimson challenge was shrivelled to
darkened shreds, each golden heart was a pinch of black dust; only the
thorny stems remained to show what queen of blossoms had been there.
She knelt beside the bed, and when the Lusk girls, frightened at her long
absence, crept timidly in to look for her, they found her strangling
passionate sobs in its white covering.
"It's most twelve o'clock, Jude," whimpered Cliantha.
"Hit's come on to rain," supplied Pendrilla piteously, and a gusty
spatter on the small-paned window confirmed her words, as the three girls
went back into the room where the candle stood in the middle of the floor
with the three portions of bread and salt about it.
The pale little sisters glanced at each other, and then at Judith,
wistfully, timorously, almost more in terror of her than of their
anomalous situation, this new, unknown Judith who scarce answered when
she was spoken to, who continually failed them, who looked so strangely
about her and wept so much.
"Pendrilly an' me has done put our pins in close to the bottom," Cliantha
explained deprecatingly. "Hit wouldn't do any good to have Andy an' Jeff
come trompin' in here--though I shore would love to see either or both of
'em this minute," she concluded forlornly, as they set the door ajar and
the long slanting lines of rain began to drive obliquely in at the
opening.
"Push the candle back whar the draught won't git a fair chance at it,"
quavered Pendrilla. "We're obliged to have the do' open, or what comes
cain't git in. An' we mustn't ne'er a one of us say a word from now on,
or hit'll break the charm."
Judith moved the candle and bent to thrust her pin in, close to the top
where the melting wax might soon free it, concentrating all her soul in a
passionate cry that Creed should come to her or send her some sign. Then
she crouched on the floor next to Pendrilla and nearest to the door, and
the three waited with pale faces.
The wavering light of the candle, shaken by gusts which brought puffs of
mist in with them, projected huge, grotesque shadows of the three heads,
and set them dancing upon the walls. The hound-pup raised his head,
cocked his ears dubiously, and whined under his breath.
"What's that?" gasped Cliantha. "Didn't you-all hear somethin'?"
Judith was staring at the candle flame and made no reply. Her big dark
eyes had the look of one self-hypnotised.
"Oh, Lordy! Ye ortn't to talk at a dumb supper--but I thort I hearn
somebody walkin' out thar in the rain!" chattered Pendrilla.
The old house creaked and groaned in the rising autumn storm, as old
houses do. The rain drummed on the roof like fingers tapping. The wind
stripped dry leaves from the bough, or scooped them up out of the hollows
where they lay, and carried them across the window, or drove them along
the porch, in a gliding, whispering flight that was infinitely eerie.
In their terror the girls looked to Judith. They saw that she was not
with them. Her gaze was on the pin in the candle. Back over her heart
swept the sweetness of her first meeting with Creed. She could see him
stand talking to her, the lifted face, the blue eyes--should she ever see
them again?
Then suddenly the flame twisted and bent, the tallow melted swiftly on
one side, and Judith's pin fell to the floor.
"Hit's a-comin'!" hissed Cliantha frantically.
"Oh, Lord! I wish 't we hadn't--" Pendrilla moaned.
The dog uttered a protesting sound between a growl and a yelp. He raised
on his forelegs, and the hair of his head and neck bristled.
Outside, a heavy stumbling step came up the walk. It halted at the
half-open door. That door was flung back, and in the square of dripping
darkness stood Creed Bonbright, his face death white, his eyes wide and
fixed, the rain gemming his uncovered yellow hair.
A moment he stood so, and the three stared at him. Then with a swish of
leaves in the wind and a spatter of rain in their faces, the candle blew
out. The girls screamed and sprang up. The hound backed into his corner
and barked furiously. Whatever it was, it had crossed the threshold and
was in the room with them.
"Jude--Jude!" shrieked Cliantha. "Run! Come on, Pendrilly!"
Judith felt a wavering wet hand fumbling toward her in the darkness. It
clasped hers; the arm went around her; she raised her face, and the cold
lips of the visitant met her warm tremulous ones.
For an instant she had no thought but that Creed had returned from the
dead to claim her--and she was willing to go. Then she was aware of a
swift rush, as the fleeing girls went past them, and the patter of the
hound's feet following. Slowly the newcomer's weight sagged against her;
he crumpled and went to the floor, dragging her down in his fall.
"Girls! Clianthy! Pendrilly!" she cried as she crouched there, clinging
to the prostrate form. "Don't leave me--it's Creed himself. You got to
he'p me!"
[Illustration: "The door was flung back and in the darkness stood
Creed Bonbright."]
But the girls were gone like frightened hares. As she got to her feet in
the doorway she could hear the sound of their flying footsteps down the
lane. All was dead still in the room behind her, yet only an ear as fine
as hers could have distinguished those light, receding footfalls that
finally melted into the far multitudinous whisper and rustle of the
storm.
She turned back in the dark and knelt down beside him, passing a light,
tender hand over his face and chest. He breathed. He was a living man.
"Creed," she whispered loud and desperately. There was no movement or
response.
"Creed," raising her voice. "O my God! Creed, darlin' cain't you hear me?
It's me. It's Jude--poor Jude that loves you so--cain't you answer her?"
There came no reply. She lifted the cold hand, and when she let go of it,
it fell. She leaped to her feet in sudden fear that he might die while
she delayed here. With trembling fingers she struck a match and lit her
candle. Her eye fell on the two pins the girls had thrust in it and named
for Andy and Jeff. With a swift motion she plucked them out and threw
them on the floor. She looked from the prostrate figure to the bed in the
corner. No--she couldn't lift him to lay him there; but she ran and
brought pillows and covers, raising his head upon the one, lapping him
softly in the other.
When all was done that she could do, there was the instant need to hurry
home for help. She hated terribly to leave him alone in the dark, yet a
lighted candle with a man so ill was a risk that she dared not run--he
might move about and set the house on fire. When she closed the darkened
room with its stark figure lying under the white covers, her heart sank
and sank. She must turn the key upon him. There was no good in
hesitating. Only her strong will, her high courage, sustained her as she
locked the door, and turning ran, with feet that love and terror winged,
toward her own home. The rain drenched her; the darkness seemed a thing
palpable; she slipped and fell, got to her feet and ran on. Jephthah
Turrentine, asleep in his own cabin, heard the sound of beating palms
against his door, and a voice outside in the dark and the rain that cried
upon him.
"Uncle Jep! Uncle Jep! For God's sake get up quick and help me. Creed
Bonbright's come home to his house, and I think he's dead or dyin' over
there."