“One fur the cut-worm an’ one fur the crow,
Two fur the blackbird an’ one fur ter grow.”
Jerry, glancing toward the house, called out a salutation to Alethea, and
then at long range entered upon a colloquy with Mrs. Purvine touching the
lack of seed.
“Whar’s that thar t’other bag o’ seed-corn?” he demanded.
“Waal, I ain’t got none!” cried out Mrs. Purvine peremptorily. “I mus’
hev made a mistake, and fedded that thar bag o’ special an’ percise
fine seed-corn ter the chickens,—I wish they war every one fried. I
disremember now what I done, an’ what I done it fur. Ye jes’ gear up
Bluff in the wagin an’ go ter mill, an’ see ef ye can’t git some thar.”
“Laws-a-massy!” objected Jerry, “’tain’t no use ter make Bluff go. I kin
git thar an back quicker an’ easier ’thout him ’n with him.”
“Ye do ez ye air bid,” said Mrs. Purvine; and while Jerry stared she
presently explained, as she sawed away on the draw-strings of a bag, “I
want ye ter take Lethe along ter the post-office, ter see ef thar’s enny
letter fur me.”
Now, Mrs. Purvine had never written nor received a letter in her life; in
fact, would not have understood the functions of a post-office, had it
not been for her husband’s incumbency some years ago. Nevertheless, in
common with half the country-side, whenever she thought of it she gravely
demanded if there were a missive for her, and was gravely answered in the
negative, and went her way well content.
Both young people understood her ruse well enough,—to throw them
together, in the hope that propinquity might do a little match-making.
Since Mink’s long sentence of imprisonment had been pronounced upon him,
she felt that there was no longer fear of rivalry from that quarter, as
the Supreme Court would hardly reverse so plain and just a judgment. And
now, she thought, is Jerry’s golden opportunity. However, she elaborately
justified the expedition upon the basis of convenience.
“Ye _could_ fetch the letter an’ the corn too,” she observed, in a
cogitating manner; “but then, goin’ ter mill, ye’d be apt ter git meal
sprinkled onto it. I reckon I’d better send Lethe too. Ye kin leave her
at the post-office till ye go ter mill.”
This verisimilitude imposed even upon Alethea.
“Who air ye expectin’ a letter from, aunt Dely?” said the girl.
Mrs. Purvine was equal to the occasion.
“I ’lowed,” she said, with swift inspiration, “ez some o’ them folks ez
we-uns bided with down thar in Shaftesville mought take up a notion ter
write ter us.”
Alethea thought this not unlikely, and set out with Jerry with some
interest, fully prepared to preserve the precious letter from any contact
with meal.
Mrs. Purvine, her ill-humor evaporating in the successful exploiting of
her little plan, gazed after them with a benignant smile illuminating her
features, as they creaked off in the slow little ox-cart, its wheels now
leaning outward and now bending inward, as the loose linch-pin or some
obstruction in the road might impel. She noted, however, that the old
slouch hat and the brown sun-bonnet, with its coy tress of golden hair
showing beneath its curtain, were seldom turned toward each other, and
there was evidently little disposition for conversation between the two
young people.
“Bluff hev got mos’ o’ the brains in that thar comp’ny,” she said to
herself with indignation because of their mutual indifference. “But Lethe
Ann Sayles air mighty diffe’nt from some wimmin, ef she kin hold her jaw
fur twenty year, an’ keep that thar dead-an’-gin-out look on her face
fur Mink Lorey. He can’t git back ’fore then. An’ Jerry’s got ez good a
chance ez Ben Doaks. But it’s mighty hard on a pore old woman like me,
ez hed trouble enough marryin’ herself off thirty year ago, a-runnin’
away an’ sech, ter gin herself ter studyin’ ’bout sech foolishness in her
old age ez love-makin’, an’ onsettlin’ her mind, ’kase they hain’t got
enough sense ter do thar courtin’ ’thout help.”
But this unique grievance was so inadequate that Mrs. Purvine gave
up the effort to eke out thereby her ill-humor, and gazed about with
placid complacence at the spring landscape, tossing all the bags of seed
together into a splint basket, to be sorted at some more propitious day.
In Bluff’s slow progress along the red clay road, the gradual unfolding
of the scene, the vernal peace, the benedictory sunshine, had their
benignant effect on Alethea. Absorbed as she had been, in descending the
mountain, by her anxiety for the specious aunt Dely’s illness, she had
not noted until now how far the spring was advanced in the sheltered
depths of the cove, how loath to climb to the sterile fastnesses of
Wild-Cat Hollow.
“The season ’pears ter be toler’ble back’ard in the hollow, jedgin’ by
the cove,” she remarked, her eyes resting wistfully upon the tender
verdure on the margin of the river. The sun was warm, for it was not
long past noon, and Bluff stopped to drink in the midst of the ford.
The translucent brown water above the bowlders, all distinct in its
clear depths, washed about the miry wheels, and lapsed with soft sighs
against the rocky banks; great silvery circles elastically expanded on
its surface about the ox’s muzzle, distorting somewhat the image of his
head and his big, insistent, sullen eyes and long horns, as he drank.
Whenever the sunbeams struck the current a bevy of tiny insects might be
seen, skittering about over the water; and hark! a frog was croaking on
a rotten log in the dank shadow of the laurel. From the fields beyond
the call of the quail was sweet and clear. The ranges encompassing the
cove on every hand seemed doubly beautiful, doubly dear, with the
tender promise of summer upon them, with the freshened delights of soft
airs pervading them, with the predominant sense of the liberated joys
of nature in the bourgeonings and the blooms, in the swift rushing of
torrents, in the whirl of wings. The wooded lines of those summits close
at hand were drawn in fine detail against the sky, save where the great
balds towered,—symmetrical, ponderous, bare domes; further mountains
showed purple and blue, and among them was a lowering gray portent that
might have seemed a storm-cloud, save to those who knew the strange,
cumulose outline of Thunderhead.
Everywhere birds were building. A couple of jays were carrying straws
from a heap in a corner of a fence; they rose with a great whirl of blue
and white feathers, as Bluff, his horns nodding, approached them. A dove
was cooing in a clump of dogwood trees, whitely blooming by the road.
There was a great commotion of wings in the air from a lofty martin-house
in a wayside door-yard, as the plucky denizens chased a hawk round and
round and out of sight.
“Thought that thar war the way ter the post-office at Squair Bates’s,
Jerry,” Alethea observed, pointing down one of those picturesque winding
roads, so common to the region, threading the forests, its tawny red
convolutions flecked with shadow and sheen, showing in long, fascinating
vistas, and luring one to follow.
“Yes, sir,” said Jerry, “but I hev got ter take ye ter the post-office
at Locust Levels. Ain’t ye hearn aunt Dely ’low that? An’ I hev got ter
leave ye thar whilst I go ter the grist-mill nigh by, off the road a
piece.”
Alethea flushed with a dull annoyance, recognizing the device that the
long drive might be still longer. She nevertheless made no comment. They
were each too dutiful to vary the plan of the journey, although aunt Dely
might have considered this only obedience in the letter, and not in the
spirit, as neither again spoke for a mile or more.
“This be Kildeer County,” said Jerry, at last, breaking the long
silence. “We-uns crossed the line back thar ’bout haffen hour ago.”
Alethea’s pensive enjoyment of the gentle influences of the scene was
marred. To be sure, aunt Dely had an unequivocal right to send, if she
liked, to the post-office at Locust Levels, a hamlet of Kildeer County,
rather than to the one nearer, in her own county; but it was a patent
subterfuge that she should expect to receive letters here from their
friends in Shaftesville. It was Alethea’s excellent common sense that had
preserved her from the folly of the continual anticipation of a letter,
so common among ignorant people, who, with no acquaintances elsewhere,
beset the post-offices with their demands. She had never asked for a
letter for herself, and there had begun to be revealed to her the fact
that it was not a post-office which could produce an epistle for Mrs.
Purvine; she needed a correspondent.
“Ef ye ’low ye’ll feel like a fool axin’ fur that thar letter, Lethe,”
said the acute Jerry, divining her thoughts, “I’ll do it. I never mind
feelin’ like a fool,—thar’s a heap o’ ’em in this worl’. An’ whenever I
acts like one, I remembers I’m in powerful good company. An’ that’s why I
don’t try ter be no smarter ’n I am.”
But Alethea said that she would ask for the letter, as aunt Dely had
directed. When she alighted from the wagon at Locust Levels, Jerry and
Bluff drove off at a whisking pace, which indicated that both might feel
relieved.
At the post-office the wood-pile was in front of the house, and therefore
the approach was over chips, splinters, and shreds of bark, which gave
out a pungent fragrance. It was a low little gray cabin, partly of log
and partly of plank, and with a blossoming company of peach-trees about
it. They hung over the fence, and all the steep bank down to the road was
covered with their pink petals shed in the wind. Some golden candlesticks
and “butter-and-eggs” were blooming inside the rickety little palings,
and a girl stood upon the porch beside a spinning-wheel.
Alethea noted the unrecognizing stare bent upon her. She opened the gate
with difficulty, and went up on the shaded porch. The girl had stopped
spinning, but was still gazing at her. A yellow dog, who had been asleep
on the floor, his muzzle on his fore-paws, also scanned her curiously,
not stirring his head, only lifting his eyes. When she faltered her
inquiry for a letter for Mrs. Purvine, the dog got up as briskly as if he
were the postmaster.
“Fur who?” demanded a masculine voice, as a man with a plough-line in his
hand stepped around the corner, lured by the sound of the colloquy.
“Mis’ Purvine,” repeated Alethea.
He looked at her with a touch of indignation. He would never get through
his spring ploughing at this rate. He strode into the house, however, to
investigate. “I never hearn o’ her in all my life,” he said tartly.
And Alethea began to have a realization how very wide this world is.
The walls of the room bore many flaming graces of advertisement, pasted
over the logs. They were of more fantastic device and a newer fashion
than Mrs. Purvine’s relics of her husband’s postmastership. There were
two neat beds in the room, a very clean floor, and a woman in the
chimney-corner, smoking her pipe, who nodded with grave courtesy to
Alethea.
The postmaster inserted a key in the lock of a table-drawer, and there,
by some perversity, it stuck; it would neither come out nor go further
in, nor turn in either direction. The dog had entered, too, as he always
did, with a business-like air, and was standing beneath the table, slowly
wagging his tail and lolling out his tongue; what strange ideas did he
connect with the distribution of the mail? His position involved some
danger, as his master struggled and pulled at the drawer, and jerked the
table about. Finally, one of its legs came in contact with the foot of
the dog, who had the worst of it. As his shrieks filled the room, the
perspiring man turned to Alethea.
“I know thar ain’t no letter fur no Mis’ Purvine,” he declared. “Thar air
jes fower letters in this hyar dad-burned drawer, an’ they be fur Judge
Gwinnan. Ye see I can’t open it.”
The mail seemed indeed in safe-keeping. His daughter, who had been
peering down the road, suddenly spoke:—
“Ye’ll hev ter open it. Fur thar be Jedge Gwinnan now, a-ridin’ up on
that thar roan colt o’ his’n, what he hev jes’ bruk.”
A little play with the key, and the drawer abruptly opened.
There was, indeed, no letter for Mrs. Purvine, and snatching up the four
for Judge Gwinnan, with some newspapers, the postmaster ran hastily out,
hailing the rider as he drew rein at the corner of the orchard fence.
Alethea hesitated for a moment at the gate, gazing at the equestrian
figure that had paused under the soft pink glamours of the orchard. She
had heard of his belated plea for Mink Lorey. He evidently bore no grudge
for his injuries. Suddenly there flashed into her mind a word that she
might say for that graceless and forlorn wight,—a word which, perhaps,
might not be taken amiss; and if it should do no good, it could at least
work no harm. It was an abrupt resolution. She stood in eager impatience,
yet loath to interrupt him.
Gwinnan read his letters, one by one, while the postmaster went back to
the plough, where the gray mare dozed in the furrow.
As Gwinnan gathered up the reins, looking absently ahead, the girl
waiting by the roadside signed to him to stop. He did not see her.
Somehow Alethea could not speak. She sprang forward with a hoarse cry, as
he was about to pass like a flash, and caught his bridle. The young horse
swerved, instead of trampling upon her, but dragging her with him.
“Take care!” cried out Gwinnan sharply. He drew up his horse with an
effort, and looked down at her in amazement as she still clung to the
bridle.
The next moment he recognized her.