It was close upon nightfall when Alethea, on her homeward journey,
reached the banks of the Scolacutta River. It still had a melancholy
version of the sunset imprinted upon its surface. It was full of dreamy
crimson tints, and olive-green shadows, and gentle pensive effects of
undistinguishable lustres. Its ceaseless monotone was on the air; its
breath was of freshness and fragrance; the bluffs that towered above it
gave the austerity of rugged rocks and the dignity of great heights to
the incidents of its margin. Stunted trees clung to the niches of these
splintered cliffs; everywhere along the banks the leaves of the sourwood
were red and gay as a banner, the tassels all gleaming and white; the
dogwood showed a flaunting ochreous tint, but the sweet-gum was as yet
only a dull purple, and the sumach had merely hung out its garnet tufts.
An amethystine haze rested on the nearest mountains, softening the
polychromatic richness that glimmered all along the great slopes; further
away they wore the softened blue of autumn. The scene was familiar to
her, for she had already passed through the gap of the mountain down into
Eskaqua Cove, and her aunt Dely’s house lay among the tawny corn-fields
on the other side. Very lonely this habitation was among the great
company of the mountains; they rose about the cove on every side with
a visible immensity of wilderness which belittled the slight hold of
humanity expressed in the house, the fields, the road that seemed itself
a vagrant, for there was no bourne in sight of the wide landscape to
which it might be supposed to tend.
The log cabin had heard the river sing for nearly a century. It appeared
for many years the ready prey of decay: the chimney leaned from the
wall, the daubing was falling from the chinking, there were holes in the
floor and the roof. Suddenly a great change came over it. The frivolity
of glass enlivened the windows where batten shutters had formerly
sufficed; a rickety little porch was added; a tiny room was partitioned
off from this, and Mrs. Purvine rejoiced in the distinction of possessing
a company bedroom, which was far from being a haven of comfort to the
occasional occupant of those close quarters. She had always been known to
harbor certain ambitions. Her husband’s death, some two or three years
before, had given her liberty to express her tastes more fully than when
hampered by his cautious conservatism. And now, although the fields
might be overrun with weeds, and the sheep have the rot, and the poultry
the cholera, and the cow go dry, and the “gyarden truck” defer to the
crab-grass, and the bees, clever insects, prepare only sufficient honey
for their own use, Mrs. Purvine preserved the appearance of having made a
great rise in life, and was considered by the casual observer a “mighty
spry widder woman.” Such a one as Mrs. Sayles shook her head and spared
not the vocabulary. “Dely,” she would observe, “air my husband’s sister,
an’ I ain’t goin’ ter make no words about her. Ef she war ennybody else’s
sister, I’d up an’ down declar’ ez she hev been snared in the devices
o’ the devil, fur sech pride ez hern ain’t godly,—naw sir! nur religion
nuther. Glass in the winder! Shucks! she’d better be thinkin’ ’bout
gittin’ light on salvation,—that she hed! Folks ez knowed Dely whenst
she war a gal knowed she war headin’ an’ sot agin her elders, an’ run
away from home ter git married, an’ this is what kem of sech onregenerate
ways. _Glass_ in the winder! I’ll be bound the devil looks through that
winder every day at yer aunt Dely whenst she sets thar an’ spins. He gits
a glimge o’ her when she ain’t a-lookin’. The pride o’ the yearth is
mighty strong in her. Ye oughter sati’fy yerse’f with ’sociatin’ with her
in this life, fur ye ain’t a-goin’ ter meet up with her in heaven. Naw,
sir, yer aunt Dely’ll remember that winder in the darkness o’ Torment,
an’ ef she war ennybody else’s sister than my own husband’s _I’d say so_.”
Mrs. Purvine was standing on the porch, so fine a manifestation of her
pride, and gazing with unrecognizing curiosity at Alethea as the girl
came up the stony hillside.
Mrs. Purvine hardly looked the woman of a vaulting worldly ambition.
She had a broad, moon-like face and blue eyes with much of the whites
showing, the more as she had a trick of peering over her spectacles.
She had no teeth; despite her social culture she had never heard of a
false set, or her mouth would have been a glittering illustration of the
dentist’s art. She held in her hand a short clay pipe, from which the
smoke slowly curled. She wore a blue-checked homespun apron, but a calico
gown, being, according to report, “too triflin’” to do very much weaving
at home, and the cross-roads store was only ten miles from her house, on
the road to Shaftesville. She had journeyed even to the town, twice or
thrice in her life, mounted on a gray mare with a colt at her heels, and
had looked from beneath her sun-bonnet at the metropolitan splendors and
habits with a starveling’s delight in such of the meagre conventional
graces of life as the little village possessed, and as were vouchsafed
to her comprehension. Nobody knew whence she derived her “vagrantin’
ways;” for these excursions earned for her the reputation of an insatiate
traveler, and her frivolous disposition and pride were the occasion
of much reprehension and comment. They could hardly take the form of
remonstrance, however, without open rupture; for Mrs. Purvine, right well
aware of them, with an acumen and diplomacy grafted like some strange
exotic upon her simple character, was always bewailing the frivolous
tendency of the times, the pride of “some folks,” the worthless nature of
women nowadays, and foisting herself upon her interlocutor as an example
of all homely and primitive tastes and virtues.
Her moon face suddenly assumed an expression of recognition and of stern
reprobation as she came solemnly down from the door, a feat which it was
difficult to perform with stateliness or even safety; for the two or
three plank steps were only set against the wall, and although far more
imposing than the hewn logs or rough stones customary elsewhere, they
were extremely insecure. Often when a foot was placed upon the lowest of
the number they careened forward with the weight.
Mrs. Purvine accomplished the descent with dignity, and as she held the
gate open she addressed her niece, looking full in her tear-stained face:—
“I knowed it would kem ter this,—I knowed it, sooner or later. What’s
that thar step-mother o’ yourn been doin’ ter ye?”
Albeit Mrs. Sayles had few equals as a censor, Mrs. Purvine, with a
secret intuition of her animadversions, returned them as best she might,
and Mrs. Sayles’s difficult position as a step-mother rendered her as a
shorn lamb to the blast.
“Nuthin’,” sobbed Alethea,—“nuthin’ ez I knows on.” She started up the
steps, which bounded forward with a precipitancy that had a startling
effect as if the house had jumped at her. Alethea stumbled, and Mrs.
Purvine commented upon her awkwardness:—
“Look at the gal,—usin’ her feet with no mo’ nimbleness ’n a cow.
Laws-a-massy, young folks ain’t what they war in my day. Whenst I war a
gal, ’fore I jined the church an’ tuk ter consortin’ with the saints,
ye oughter hev seen me dance! Could shake my foot along with the
nimblest! But I ain’t crackin’ up bran dances, nuther. I’m a perfessin’
member,—bless the Lord! Satan hides in a fiddle. Ye always remember yer
aunt Dely tole ye that word. An’ ef ever ye air condemned ter Torment,
don’t ye up an’ ’low ez ye hed no l’arnin’; don’t ye do it.” Then looking
over her spectacles, “What ails ye, ef ’tain’t that step-mother?”
“I hev been ter Shaftesville. I bided all night at Cousin Jane Scruggs’s
in Piomingo Cove, an’ next day I footed it ter town.”
This announcement would have surprised any one more than the roving Mrs.
Purvine. Even she demanded, as in duty bound, with every intimation of
deep contempt, “Laws-a-massy, what ye wanter go ter Shaftesville fur?”
“I went ter see Reuben Lorey in jail,” replied Alethea.
Mrs. Purvine looked at her with an expression of deep exasperation.
“Waal,” she observed sarcastically, “I’d hev liked ter seen him thar,
too. I ain’t seen ez good a fit ez Mink Lorey an’ the county jail fur
this many a day. Kem hyar one night, an’ tuk them bran’ new front steps
o’ mine, an’ hung ’em up on the martin-house. An’ thar war a powerful
deep snow that night, an’ it kivered the consarn so ez nex’ mornin’ we
couldn’t find out what unyearthly thing hed fell on the martin-house, an’
we war fairly feared ’twar a warnin’ or a jedgmint till we missed them
front steps. They ain’t never been so stiddy sence.”
Alethea had laid aside her bonnet and bathed her face. She was going
about the house in a way which was a tribute to Mrs. Purvine’s
hospitality, for she felt much at home there. She had glanced toward the
great fireplace, where the ashes piled on the top of the oven and the
coffee-pot perched on the trivet over the coals told that the work of
preparing supper was already done. She suddenly took down the quilting
frame, suspended to the beams above by long bands of cloth, produced
thread and thimble from her pocket, and, seating herself before it
as before a table, began to quilt dexterously and neatly where Mrs.
Purvine’s somewhat erratic performance had left off long before. The
smouldering firelight touched her fine, glistening hair, her pensive,
downcast face; there was still light enough in the room through the
pernicious glass window to reveal the grace of her postures and her
slender figure. Aunt Dely, with some instinct for beauty native in
her blood along with her “vagrantin’ ways” and her original opinions,
contemplated her for a time, and presently commented upon her.
“I’m yer father’s own sister,” she averred. “I ain’t denyin’ it none,
though he did go an’ marry that thar Jessup woman, ez nobody could
abide; an’ I hate ter see a peart gal like you-uns, ez air kin ter me,
a-sp’ilin’ her eyes an’ a-cryin’ over a feller ez her folks don’t favor
no-ways. Yer elders knows bes’, Lethe.”
“Why, aunt Dely, you-uns _married_ a man ez yer elders never favored;
they war powerful sot agin him.”
Mrs. Purvine was clad in logic as in armor.
“An’ look how it turned out,—him dead an’ me a widder woman!”
Alethea stitched on silently for a moment. Then she observed with unusual
softness, for she feared being accounted “sassy,” “I ’lowed I hed hearn
ye say he war fifty-five year old, when he died.”
“What’s fifty-five?” demanded Mrs. Purvine aggressively. “I knowed a man
ez war a hunderd an’ ten.”
And so Alethea was forced to acquiesce in the proposition that Mrs.
Purvine’s consort had been cut off in the flower of his youth as a
judgment for having some thirty years previous eloped with the girl of
his heart.
Both women looked conscious when a sudden step sounded in cautious ascent
of the flight before the door, which illustrated so pointedly the truism
that pride goes before a fall, and a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered,
red-headed fellow strode in at the door.
“Air yer eyesight failin’ ye, Jerry Price?” Mrs. Purvine admonished him.
He was her husband’s nephew. “Thar’s Lethe Sayles.”
Being called to order in this manner might well embarrass the young
man, who had not expected to see Alethea, and who was rebuked for the
dereliction before he was well in the room.
He shambled up to shake hands with her with a somewhat elaborate show of
cordiality.
“Waal, Lethe,” he exclaimed, “ye air a sight fur sore eyes! Ain’t seen ye
fur a month o’ Sundays.”
“Looks like she hed sore eyes herself, bound with red ferretin’,”
commented Mrs. Purvine gruffly. She often had a disposition, as she
averred, to knock these young people’s heads together,—a sufficiently
dangerous proceeding, for according to her account there were not two
such hard heads in all Eskaqua Cove and Piomingo to boot. She had
cherished an earnest desire to make a match between them, frustrated only
by their failure to second the motion. They were well aware of this, and
it impaired the ease of their relations, hampering even the exchange of
the compliments of the season.
“Young folks take the lead!” Mrs. Purvine often exclaimed, oblivious of
her own sentimental history. “Ef nobody war wantin’ ’em ter marry they’d
be runnin’ off with one another.”
She had considered this breach of obedience on the part of her husband’s
nephew a special instance of filial ingratitude, and had begun to remind
him, and in fact to remember, all that she had done for him.
“Folkses ’lowed ter me, whenst Jerry Price’s mammy died, ez I hed
better leave him be, an’ his aunt Melindy Jane would keer fur him. An’
I hedn’t been merried but a few years, an’ bein’ ez I runned away my
folks wouldn’t gin me nuthin’, an’ me an’ my old man war most o’ the
furniture we hed in the house. But law! we hed plenty arter a while,
an’ ter spare!” cried the rich aunt Dely. “An’ they all ’lowed I hed
better not lumber myse’f up with other folkses chill’n. Waal, I never
expected ter, when I went ter the fun’el. But thar on the floor sot the
hardest-featured infant I ever seen, red-headed, blinkin’ eye, lean, an’
sucked his thumb! An’ all them folks war standin’ ’round him, lookin’
down at him with thar eyes all perverted an’ stretched, like a gobbler
looks at a deedie ’fore he pecks him on the noodle. An’ they were all
pityin’ Melindy Jane fur hevin’ ter keer fur him. Thar she war settin’
wropped in a shawl, an’ ’pearin’ ez ef she could bite a ten-penny nail
in two, sayin’ she mus’ submit ter the Lord! Waal, ’peared ter me ez I
jes’ could view the futur’, an’ the sorter time Red-head would hev along
o’ a woman ez war submittin’ on account o’ him ter the Lord! An’ I jes’
ups an’ lied afore ’em all. I sez, ‘That’s the purties’ child I ever see.
Surely he is!’ An’ I sez right hearty ter the b’reaved husband, ‘Ephr’im,
ef ye’ll gin him ter me, I’ll keer fur him till he’s able ter keer fur
me.’ An’ Eph looked up ez s’prised an’ pleased, and says, ‘_Will_ ye,
Dely?’ An’ ef ye’ll b’lieve me, arter I hed called him ‘purty’ Melindy
Jane ’lowed _she_ wanted him, an’ hed nuthin’ ter say ’bout the Lord. But
I jes’ stepped inter the floor an’ snatched him up under my arm, an’ set
out an’ toted him five mile home. An’ lean ez he ’peared, he war middlin’
heavy. I rubbed some pepper on his thumb that night. He ain’t sucked it
sence.”
Jerry Price used to listen, calmly smoking, hardly identifying himself—as
what man would!—with the homely subject of the sketch; and yet with a
certain sense of obligation to Mrs. Purvine, returning thanks in some
sort in behalf of the unprepossessing infant.
“Ye an’ me made a right good trade out’n it, ain’t we, aunt Dely?” he
would say.
She formerly accorded jocund acquiescence to this blithe proposition. But
now she would exclaim, “Did ennybody think ye’d grow up ter set yerse’f
ter spite me, an’ won’t do nuthin’ I ax ye? ’Kase I hev sot my heart on
hevin’ Lethe Sayles ter live along o’ me, ye won’t go courtin’ her.”
The specious Price would demand, “How d’ye know ez I won’t?”
And hope would once more gleam from the ashes of Mrs. Purvine’s
disappointments.
“Lethe’s been ter Shaftesville,” she said, nodding triumphantly, sure to
impress Jerry with this statement, for he was as worldly as she. Then,
with sudden animation, she turned to her niece: “Lethe, did ye see enny
lookin’-glasses thar like mine?” She pointed to a cherry-framed mirror,
some ten or twelve inches square, hung upon the wall at a height that
prevented it from reflecting aught but the opposite wall. It was as
well, perhaps, for glass of that quality could only return a corrugated
image that might have induced depression of spirit in one gazing on the
perversions of its surface. The walls were pasted over with pictures
from almanacs and bright-tinted railway advertisements; for her husband
had once been postmaster of the invisible neighborhood, and these were
the most important trophies and emoluments of the office. They quite
covered the mellow brown logs and the daubing between, and were as crude
and gairish a substitute as well might be. They were the joy of Mrs.
Purvine’s heart, however, and as she dwelt upon them and committed them
to memory they assumed all the functions of a literature. She valued
hardly less a cheap clock that stood upon a shelf, and gave no more
intimation of the passage of time than a polite hostess. Whether it had
no works, whether it had sustained some internal injury, whether the
worldly nephew and aunt had not sufficient knowledge of the springs of
its being to wind it up, Alethea never speculated and Mrs. Purvine did
not care. It was more than was owned by any one else in her acquaintance,
and she rejoiced without stint in its possession.
“An’ I’ll be bound ye never seen no clock like mine!” she said.
“Naw’m,” said Alethea; “but I jes’ went ter the jail.”
“What fur?” demanded Jerry. He was leaning against the door, and did not
notice that he kept the light from Alethea’s work, but she was unwilling
to remonstrate, and sewed on in the shadow.
“She went ter see Mink Lorey,” said his aunt. “I hope he ’lowed he war
sorry fur his sins,—though ’twon’t do him no good now; oughter hev been
sorry fust.”
“I never seen him,” said Alethea.
Mrs. Purvine had knelt before the fire for the purpose of investigating
the baking of the egg-bread; she held the lid of the oven up with a bit
of kindling, while she turned half around to fix an astonished gaze on
the girl.
“In the name o’—Moses!”—she produced the adjuration as if she thought it
equal to the occasion,—“what did ye kem hyar lyin’ ’bout’n it, Lethe,
an’ sayin’ ye hed been ter see him? Ye’ll git yer nose burnt, an’ I’ll
be glad of it.” She broke off suddenly, addressing a hound that, lured
by the appetizing odor gushing out from under the lid of the oven, had
approached with a sinuous, beguiling motion, and was extending his long
neck. “Ye’d look mighty desirable with a blister on it.”
“I never said I seen Reuben,” returned Alethea, regardless of this
interlude. “He wouldn’t see me.”
“What fur?” asked Jerry excitedly.
The lid fell from Mrs. Purvine’s hand upon the oven with a crash. She was
speechless with amazement.
Alethea sat, her hands clasped on the quilting frame, the glow of the
firelight full on her golden hair; her beauty seemed heightened by the
refined pathos which weeping often leaves upon the face when it is once
more calm. It was hard to say the cruel words, but her voice was steady.
“He ’lowed I favored the harnt on Thunderhead what sp’iles folkses’
prospects. I hed ’lowed ter him, when I las’ seen him, ez he oughter gin
what he hed ter old man Griff. An’ he went ter Shaftesville. An’ they
jailed him.”
Mrs. Purvine’s moon face turned scarlet. “Now, ain’t ye up an’ down
’shamed o’ yerse’f, Lethe Ann Sayles? Ter set store by a man ez talks ter
you-uns like that!” She rose, with a toss of her head. “The kentry hev
got my cornsent ter hang him!”
She began to move about more briskly as she placed the plates on the
table. The fact of this breach between Alethea and Mink was auspicious to
her darling scheme. “Naw, child,” she said as the girl offered to assist,
“ye set an’ talk ter Jerry ’bout Mink; he wants ter hear ’bout Mink.”
“I wisht I could be witness fur Reuben,” said Alethea, feeling an intense
relief to be able to mention this without revealing her secret. “I
b’lieve I could holp Reuben some.”
“Whyn’t ye go ter his lawyer?” asked Jerry. “Harshaw, they say, he hev
got ter defend him.”
“He wouldn’t listen; he fairly run from me.”
“In Moses’s name!” cried Mrs. Purvine, with sibilant inversion of her
favorite exclamation, “what ails them crazy bucks in Shaftesville? All of
’em got the jim-jams, in jail an’ out!”
“Waal,” said Jerry coolly, “ef ye want ter tell him sech ez ye know, I’ll
_make_ him listen ter ye. I hev been summonsed on the jury fur the nex’
term, an’ I’ll hev ter go ter Shaftesville or be fined. An’ ef ye air
thar I’ll see Harshaw don’t run from ye,—else he won’t run fur, no mo’.
He’ll lack his motions arter that.”
“Ai-yi! When Jerry talks he ain’t minchin’ his words!” cried aunt Dely
admiringly.
Alethea was very grateful for this stalwart championship. She said
nothing, however, for she had no cultured phrases of acknowledgment.
Her spirits rose; her flagging brain was once more alert; she was
eager to be alone,—to think what she would say to the lawyer, to Mink,
on the witness-stand. She hardly noticed Mrs. Purvine’s manner of
self-gratulation, or her frequent glances toward her young people as
they sat together before the dull fire. Alethea was very beautiful, and
Jerry—Mrs. Purvine never deluded herself with denials of her adopted
son’s ugliness—was good and manly, and as sharp as a brier. Any man might
be esteemed a poor match for looks, unless it were the worthless Mink, so
safe in jail.
The feat a woman’s imagination can accomplish in a given time is the most
triumphant illustration of the agility of the human mind. Before either
spoke again Mrs. Purvine had elaborated every detail of the courtship and
engagement, pausing from time to time, as she placed the dishes on the
table, and looking about the room in complete abstraction, planning how
to arrange the furniture to give space for the dancing at the infair.
“Set out the supper in the shed-room, an’ take these hyar two beds an’
thar steads up-steers inter the roof-room,” she muttered, measuring with
her eye. “The loom kin jes’ be h’isted out ’n the shed-room inter the
yard—an’ I don’t keer ef I never see it agin—an’ the spinning-wheels set
in the bedroom.” As to Satan, she had forgotten that he was quite capable
of making himself small enough to hide in the fiddle.
The light was growing dull out of doors; the stridulous voices of the
September insects sounded ceaselessly, scarcely impinging upon the sense
of quiet, so monotonous was the iteration of their song. The strokes
of an axe, betokening activity at the wood-pile, seemed to cleave the
silence, and reverberated from the mountains, as if the echoes were
keeping a tally. Alethea had rolled up the quilting frame, and it
swung from the beams. Presently the children were trooping in, three
great awkward boys, who evidently formed themselves upon Jerry Price’s
manner, except the youngest, a lad of fourteen, whose face had a certain
infantile lower, saved over from his juvenile days, and concentrating
readily into a pout. Even his mother admitted that he was “sp’iled some.”
Together they made short work of the egg-bread and “br’iled bacon.”
They tarried not long afterward, but trooped noisily up the ladder to
the roof-room; and as they strode about on the floor, which was also the
ceiling of the room below, it seemed momently that they would certainly
come through.
Jerry lighted his pipe and sat on the doorstep; the fashionable Mrs.
Purvine lighted hers and took a chair near. All the doors stood open, for
the night was sultry. The stars were very bright in the moonless sky. The
dogs lolling their tongues, sat on the porch, or lay in the dewy grass;
making incursions now and then into the room, climbing cavalierly over
Jerry’s superfluity of long legs, and nosing about among the ashes to
make sure that none of the scraps had escaped.
“Don’t ye know I never waste nuthin’, ye grisly gluttons?” demanded Mrs.
Purvine, the model housekeeper. But their fat sides did not confirm this
statement, and, bating a wag of homage in the extreme tip of their tails,
they paid no attention to her.
“What _I’m_ a-honin’ ter know,” said Jerry Price presently, “air how them
boys ez war along o’ Mink an’ war summonsed ez witnesses air goin’ ter
prove he war drunk. Ef they ’low Mink war drunk the ’torney-gin’al ’ll
try ter make out he war sober. He’s a-goin’ ter ax, ‘Whar’d he git the
whiskey, bein’ ’s all the still thar is air a bonded still, an’ by law
can’t sell less ’n five gallons. Then them boys’ll be afeard ter tell
whar they got the whiskey, ’kase folks mought think they knowed who war
makin’ it. An’ ef the moonshiners war raided, _they_ mought declar’ ez
some o’ them boys war aidin’ an’ abettin’ ’em, an’ the revenuers would
arrest them too.”
“Don’t ye know who air makin’ it?” Alethea asked, a vivid picture in
her mind of Boke’s barn, and Jerry Price and his cronies stalking their
fantastic rounds about it.
“Naw, sir! an’ don’t wanter, nuther. I war along o’ ’em in the woods that
night. I holped tote the jug. We lef’ it empty in Boke’s barn an’ fund it
filled, but I dunno nuthin’ mo’.”
“Lethe,” said Mrs. Purvine, handing her a ball of gray yarn, the
knitting-needles thrust through an ill-knit beginning of a sock, “I wish
ye’d try ter find out whar I drapped them stitches, an’ ravel it out an’
knit it up agin. I hate ter do my work over, an’ I hev ter be powerful
partic’lar with Jerry’s socks,—he wears ’em out so fas’. Ye’d ’low he war
a thousand-legs, ef ye could see the stacks of ’em I hev ter darn.”
Alethea drew up a great rocking-chair, and now and then leaned over its
arms toward the fire to catch the red glow of the embers upon her work,
as her deft hands repaired the damages of Mrs. Purvine’s inattention.
Suddenly she said in a pondering tone, “Why would the ’torney-gineral
ruther prove Reuben war sober?”
“’Kase ef he war proved drunk the jury would lean ter him,” said Jerry.
She laid her work down in her lap, and gazed intently at him. His face
had the transient glow of his pipe upon it, and then, as he took it from
his lips, was as indistinct as his long, lank figure disposed in the
doorway.
“They oughtn’t ter do it,—but they do. I ain’t never seen nare jury hold
a drunk man ez up an’ down ’sponsible ez ef he war sober. They’ll lean
ter him ef he could be proved drunk.”
Alethea said nothing. Her mental attitude was one of intense receptivity.
Her keen appreciation of how much depended on her comprehension, her
desire that no point should escape her attention, were positive pain in
their acute consciousness.
The discerning Jerry went on with that acumen and cogency which were such
odd concomitants of his ignorance and uncouthness:—
“It makes me laff every time I see a witness swore ter tell ‘the truth,
the whole truth, an’ nuthin’ but the truth.’ Folks is so apt ter b’lieve
the truth air jes’ what they wanter b’lieve. Git them boys skeered up
right smart ’bout the revenuers on one side an’ the moonshiners on t’
other, an’ they’ll feel the truth war ez none o’ we-uns hed ennythin’
ter drink that night; mought hev hed a dram o’ cider, or mebbe nuther
stronger ’n yerb tea, but nobody war bodaciously boozy. Then they don’t
know sure enough whar the liquor kem from; mos’ folks don’t b’lieve
thar’s no still round ’bout the mountings now.”
Alethea leaned back in the rocking-chair, her nerveless hands falling
idly upon the work in her lap. The crude mosaic of advertisements on the
walls started out with abnormal distinctness, as a tiny flame rose from
the embers and fell into sudden extinction among the ashes, leaving the
only picture in the room the dusky night-scene dimly painted in purple
and dove color upon the panes of the window.
It was only she who could remedy the deficiency in this valuable
testimony. She knew full well the source of their secret supply. She it
was who had seen the jug left in the barn by the roistering blades, and
the moonshiner swing down from the loft to seize upon it. She had his
full confession from his own lips. She appreciated the distinctions the
jury would make between hilarious drunken sport and coolly intentional
malice in the prisoner, and that it was in her hands to sacrifice one of
these men to the other.
For the first time she was quick to distrust her own intuitions. Her
tyrant conscience, hitherto always ready to immolate every cherished
wish on the altar of the right, seemed now the suavest mentor, urging
that her lover’s liberty, his life for aught she knew, should not be
jeopardized to protect a man whose vocation she accounted a curse to the
community. She felt a secret amaze that her first vague project should
expand into a fully equipped plan, with hardly a conscious process of
thought to give it shape and detail. Her natural doubts, her efforts at
alternatives, were flouted by some inner imperious determination. It was
in the nature of a concession from this suddenly elate and willful power
that she obtained her own consent, as she would have phrased it, to warn
Sam Marvin, for the sake of his “houseful,” that he might elude capture,
and perhaps save his still and appliances from destruction. And she would
warn Jerry, too, despite that triumphant, tumultuous consciousness which
held all else so slight since she had knowledge that could aid in proving
Mink’s irresponsibility for what he had really done, and his innocence of
the graver crime of which he was accused.
“Jerry,” she said, observing that Mrs. Purvine had fallen asleep in
her chair, her moon face all askew, her idle hands neatly rolled up in
her apron,—“Jerry, I reckon ye wouldn’t want me a-goin’ testifyin’ ter
Shaftesville ef ye knowed I seen you-uns leave the jug that evenin’ in
Boke’s barn. I sca’cely b’lieved ’twar ye, at fust, all of ye acted so
cur’ous; I ’lowed ’twar sperits in yer likeness. An’ I seen the distiller
kem an’ git the jug. An’ he seen me.”
“Look-a-hyar, Lethe!” exclaimed Jerry, seriously. “Don’t joke ’bout sech
ez that. Ye know the moonshiners mought fairly kill ye, ef they fund out
ye knowed an’ tole on ’em. They hev done sech afore now. Ye keep yer
mouth shet an’ yer tongue ’twixt yer teeth, ef ye knows what’s healthy
fur ye.”
“I ain’t jokin’,” said Alethea.
“Ye mind what I say,” declared Jerry. “I ain’t afeard myself o’ the
moonshiners nor the revenuers, nare one,—ain’t got no call ter be,—but
words sech ez ye air speakin’ air powerful ticklish an’ techy kind o’
talk. Ye better tend ter the cows an’ sheep an’ weavin’ an’ sech, an’
leave the men’s business alone. I hev never knowed,” continued Jerry,
a trifle acrimoniously, “a woman git ten steps away from home but what
she acts ez ef she hed tuk off her brains an’ lef’ ’em thar along of her
every-day clothes.”
“I jes’ went ter git the lam’ out’n a hole,” said Alethea, in no wise
daunted, and ready with her retort. “His leg’s mendin’, though he hops
some yit. An’ I war in the cow-pen when the moonshiner kem an’ talked ter
me.”
“Listen at ye, a-settin’ talkin’ ’bout law-breakers,” said the fastidious
Mrs. Purvine, who had abruptly waked. “I ain’t kin ter none o’ ’em. Naw,
sir, an’ I wouldn’t own it ef I war. Mind me o’ yer uncle Pettin Guyther,
ez war always talkin’ ’bout murder an’ robbery: every tale he told they
killed the folks a diff’ent way,—spilled thar blood somehows, an’ cracked
thar skulls bodaciously; an’ whenever he’d git hisself gone from hyar I
useter be ’feared lawless ones would kem hyar of a night ter thieve an’
kill, knowin’ ez I hed consider’ble worldly goods. The Bible say riches
ain’t no ’count. Mebbe so, but I ain’t so sure ’bout that.”
Perhaps it was her clock which she had in mind, for—without any monition
from it, however—she added, “Time ter go ter bed, chill’n,—time ter go
ter bed.”
She did not rise from her chair at once. She admonished Jerry to “kiver”
the fire with ashes, and watched him as he did it. Then he tramped up
the ladder to the roof-room, noisily enough to wake the dead, perhaps,
but not aunt Dely’s boys.
She gave a long, mournful yawn of sleepiness and fatigue, and stretched
her arms wearily above her head. Then with sudden cheerfulness she
exclaimed, “Lethe, ye hain’t never hed a chance ter sleep in the bedroom!”
She spoke as if there were but one on the face of the earth.
“Ye hev never been down hyar ’thout yer elders an’ sech, ez ye hev
hed ter show respec’ ter, an’ stan’ back fur,—yer step-mam, an’ Jacob
Jessup’s wife, an’ sech; but ye shell sleep in the bedroom one time,
sure, instead o’ in this room, ez be het up so hot with cookin’ supper in
it.”
She rose bustlingly to stir up the fire, that there might be light enough
to make the requisite preparations. Alethea’s heart failed her when she
thought of the tiny apartment partitioned off at the end of the porch,
and beheld her aunt lighting a little tin lamp without a chimney at
the fire. The mountain girl, with all the conservatism of her class,
possessed the strength of prejudice against innovation which usually
appertains to age. The characteristic of years seemed reversed as she
looked on with reluctance, and the old woman flustered about, full of
her experimental glories and her eager relish of a new fashion. “Ye kem
along, child!” she exclaimed, her moon face wreathed with a toothless
smile and the redolent emanations of the smoking and sputtering lamp. It
was placed on a shelf in the little room, and as Alethea buttoned the
door it gave out less light than a suffocating odor. It served, however,
to reveal the timbers that formed the sides of the room, for it was
built after the treasures of the post-office had been exhausted in the
decoration of the main house. Upon them hung an array of Mrs. Purvine’s
dresses, suspended by the neck, and suggesting the uncheerful idea of a
row of executed women. The bed was high, huge with feathers and heaped
with quilts. There were no means of ventilation, unless sundry cracks
incident to mountain architecture might be relied upon. Alethea made
haste to extinguish the lamp. When she had climbed the altitudes of the
feather bed she could not sleep. The roof-room at home, with its windows
and its sweeps of high air, was not so fine, it might be, but as she
smothered by slow degrees she thought poorly of fashion. Her brain was
hot with the anxious, strenuous thoughts that seethed through it. She was
much less cheerful as the hours wore on. The recollections of the sad
day bore heavily upon her spirit. Over and again Mink’s cruel words, the
ridicule to which the lawyer had subjected her in her own estimation,
the affront to her dignity,—she had no such fine name for it, she could
only feel,—came back to her, and she could but marvel that the evening
had passed so placidly; she wondered that she even lived, so acute were
the pangs of her wounded pride. She had an ineffable repugnance to the
idea of ever seeing Harshaw again; for herself alone, for her life, she
felt, she would have made no further effort. “I’ll do it fur Reuben,
though,” she said. The thought of him, too, was very bitter. Her wakeful
eyes were hot, but they harbored no tears. Once she slipped down from
the bed and unbuttoned the door, hoping to sleep with the influx of air.
It came in fresh, sweet, full of the sense of dew. The night was not
black; only a subdued gray shadow lay over all the land: how its passive,
neutral aspect expressed the idea of rest! Looking out from the cavernous
overhanging portal of the little porch, she could see the Great Smoky,
darkly rising above the cove. She heard the stir of a bird roosting in an
althea bush by the gate, and then a scuttling noise under the house. She
had moved very softly, but the vigilant Towser bounded upon the porch.
He knew her—for she spoke to him instantly—as well as he knew his name,
but for some unexplained affectation of his nature he would not recognize
her, and sat before her door and barked at her with a vehemence that made
the roof ring, the sound reverberating from the mountains as if a troop
of wolves were howling in the melancholy woods. Twice he tired of this
pastime, and withdrew under the house, coming out once more to renew it.
She shut the door, finally, and again and again he threw himself against
it, at last lying down before it and growling at intervals. She fell
asleep after a time, through sheer fatigue, regardless of the lack of air
in the little dungeon; waking heavy-eyed and fagged in the morning, able
to acquiesce only faintheartedly when Mrs. Purvine triumphantly saluted
her: “Waal, Lethe, now nobody kin never say ez ye ain’t slep’ in the
bedroom.”
All day she felt the effects of her vigil. She thought it was this which
had touched her courage. She stood still with a quaking at her heart,
when, climbing the Great Smoky, she reached the forks in the road where
she should turn off to go to Sam Marvin’s house. There was no view of
the valley. The woods were immeasurable about her, all splendid with
the pomp and state of autumn. Those great trees, ablaze with color,—the
flaming yellow of the hickory, the rich, dull purple of the sweet-gum,
the crimson of the oaks,—reached up in endless arches above her head, all
boldly painted against the blue sky. An incredible brilliancy of effect
was afforded by the long vistas, free of undergrowth, and carpeted with
the poly-tinted leaves. Among the boughs often the full purple clusters
of the muscadines hung, the vines climbing to the tops of the trees,
and then trailing over to the ground. As she stood she heard a creaking
and straining of the strong cables,—a fox in their midst as they lay
tangled upon the earth. She noted, too, the translucent red globes of the
persimmon hanging upon trees denuded of all but a few yellow leaves.
She sat down on a log at the forks of the road, feeling greatly perturbed
and anxious. To do what she proposed to do was to take her life in her
hands. Not her step-mother alone, but Jacob Jessup, had warned her, and
Jerry Price had repeated what they had said, almost in their very words.
But they had only sought to curb her foolish tongue. They had never
dreamed of the reckless temerity of going into the moonshiner’s den to
defy him, proclaim herself the informer, and warn him to save himself.
He had already threatened her; she remembered his stern, vehement face
in the closing dusk. She wondered that her mind should balk from the
decision so imperatively urged upon it. She seemed, as it were, to catch
herself in lapses of attention. Often she looked, first at one, then at
the other, of the roads,—neither visible for more than a few yards up the
steep ascent,—as if she expected some diversion, some extraneous aid, in
her dilemma, something to happen to decide it for her.
What, she said to herself, if never again she should behold this place?
What if, in taking choice of the forks of the road, she should take a
path she might never tread again?
And then she wondered that she should notice that the log on which she
sat was a “lick log,” should speculate whether the cattle often came here
for salt, should look idly into the cleft within it to see if perchance
there were still salt there.
It would be safer, it might be better for all, to give her testimony if
it should be called for, and leave Sam Marvin to the law. “I’m fairly
feared o’ him, ennyways. I’m feared ter go thar an’ let him know that
he’ll git fund out, mebbe, fur I’ll tell on him ef I’m summonsed ez a
witness. My step-mother’s always sayin’ I’m a meddler, an’ mebbe I be.”
She listened to the sound of an outgushing roadside spring. She looked up
at the new moon, which seemed to follow the lure of the wind beckoning in
the trees. They shook their splendid plumes together like an assemblage
of bowing courtiers, gayly bedight.
She remembered the “houseful,” the pinching poverty, the prison, the
destruction of the still. She rose reluctantly and turned to the left.
Her eyes were bright; her cheeks were flushed; her red lips parted. She
listened intently from time to time: not a sound but her own slow, light
footfall. She had thought to hear the dogs barking, for the place was
now near at hand. When she saw a rail-fence terminating the vista her
heart gave a great bound; she paused, looking at it with dilated eyes.
Then she went on, up and up, till the house came in view,—a forlorn
little cabin, with a clay and stick chimney, smokeless! She stared at it
amazed. There was no creature in the hog-pen, which was large for the
pretensions of the place,—the distillery refuse explained its phenomenal
size, perhaps; the door of the house swung loose in the wind. There were
several slats nailed across the entrance low down, evidently intended to
keep certain vagrant juveniles from falling out of the door. No need for
this now. The place was deserted. Alethea walked up to the fence,—the
bars lay upon the ground,—and stepped over the slats into the empty room.
The ashes had been dead for days in the deep chimney-place; a few rags in
a corner fluttered in the drafts from crannies; the whole place had that
indescribable mournfulness of a deserted human habitation that had so
pathetically appealed to her in the little house at Boke’s Spring. Here
it pierced her heart. It was from fear of her that they had fled,—and
whither? A poor home at best, where could they find another? She need
not have quaked, she said to herself; they had not sought to still her
tongue, lest it should wag against them. They had uprooted their home,
and had withdrawn themselves alike from the informer and the law that
threatened them. The tears sprang into her eyes. She deprecated their
bitter feeling, their saddened lives, their deserted hearth-stone. And
yet it was all wrong that they should distill the brush whiskey, and
could she say she was to blame?
A faint scratching sound struck her attention. It came from behind the
closed door of the shed-room. She stood listening for a moment, unable to
account for it. Then she went forward and unlatched the door.
A starved cat, emaciated and forlorn to the last degree, forgotten in
the removal, shut by some accident into the room, crept quivering out.
It went through the dumb show of mewing; it could not walk; its bones
almost pierced its skin. Its plight served to approximate the date of the
flitting. It had been there for days, weeks perhaps.
She picked up the creature, and carried it home in her arms.