THERE was a quilting-party at Porter's that day. Cynthia had invited
some of her friends to help her, and the quilt, a big square of colored
scraps, more or less artistically arranged in stars, crescents, and
floral wreaths, occupied the centre of the sitting-room. It was stitched
to a frame made of four smooth wooden bars which were held together at
the corners by pegs driven into gimlet-holes and which rested on the
backs of four chairs. The workers sat on two sides of it, and stitched
with upward and downward strokes, towards the centre, the quilt being
rolled up as the work progressed.
Hattie Mayhew was there, and Kitty Welborn, and two or three others. As
usual, they were teasing Cynthia about the young preacher.
“I know he's dead in love,” laughed Kitty Welborn. “He really can't
keep from looking at her during preaching. I noticed it particularly
one Sunday not long ago, and told Matt Digby that I'd be sure to get
religion if a man bored it into me with big, sad eyes like his.”
“I certainly would go up to the mourners' bench every time he called
for repentant sinners,” said Hattie Mayhew. “I went up once while he was
exhorting, and he didn't even take my hand. He turned me over to Sister
Perdue, that snaggletoothed old maid who always passes the wine at
sacrament, and that done me.”
Cynthia said nothing, but she smiled good-naturedly as she rose from
her chair and went to the side of the quilt near the crudely screened
fireplace to see that the work was rolled evenly on the frame. While
thus engaged, her father came into the room, vigorously fanning himself
with his old slouch hat. The girls knew he had been to the village, and
all asked eagerly if he had brought them any letters.
“No, I clean forgot to go to the office,” he made slow answer, as he
threw himself into a big armchair with a raw-hide bottom near a window
on the shaded side of the house.
“Why, father,” his daughter chided him, “you promised the girls
faithfully to call at the office. I think that was very neglectful of
you when you knew they would be here to dinner.”
“And he usually has a good memory,” spoke up Mrs. Porter, appearing in
the door-way leading to the dining-room and kitchen. She was rolling
flakes of dough from her lank hands, and glanced at her husband
reprovingly. “Nathan, what _did_ you go and do that way for, when you
knew Cynthia was trying to make her friends pass a pleasant day?”
“Well, I clean forgot it,” Porter said, quite undisturbed. “To tell
you the truth, thar was so much excitement on all hands, with this un
runnin' in with fresh news, an' another sayin' that maybe it was all a
false alarm, that the post-office plumb slipped out o' my head. Huh! I
hain't thought post-office once sense I left here. I don't know whether
I could 'a' got waited on, anyway, fer the postmaster hisse'f was
runnin' round outside like a chicken with its head chopped off. Besides,
I tell you, gals, I made up my mind to hit the grit. I never was much of
a hand to want to see wholesale bloodshed. Moreover, I've heard of many
a spectator a-gittin' shot in the arms an' legs or some vital spot.
No, I sorter thought I'd come on. Mandy, have you seed anything o' my
fly-flap? When company's here you an' Cynthia jest try yoreselves on
seein' how many things you kin stuff in cracks an' out-o'-way places.
I'm gittin' sick an' tired o'--”
“Nathan, what's going on in town?” broke in Mrs. Porter. “What are you
talking about?”
“I don't know what's goin' on _now_,” Porter drawled out, as he slapped
at a fly on his bald pate with an angry hand. “I say I don't know what's
goin' on right at this minute, but I know what was jest gittin' ready to
go on when I skipped. I reckon the coroner's goin' on with the inquest
ef he ain't afeared of an ambush. Jeff Wade--” Porter suddenly bethought
himself of something, and he rose, passed through the composite
and palpable stare of the whole room, and went to the clock on the
mantel-piece and opened it. “Thar!” he said, impatiently. “I wonder what
hole you-uns have stuck my chawin'-tobacco in. I put it in the corner of
this clock, right under the turpentine-bottle.”
“There's your fool tobacco,” Mrs. Porter exclaimed, running forward and
taking the dark plug from beneath the clock. “Fill your mouth with it,
maybe it will unlock your jaw. What is the trouble at Springtown?”
“I was jest startin' to tell you,” said Porter, diving into his
capacious trousers-pocket for his knife, and slowly opening the blade
with his long thumb-nail. “You see, Jeff Wade has at last got wind o'
all that gab about Minnie an' Nelson Floyd, an' he sent a war-cry by
Pole Baker on hoss-back as fast as Pole could clip it to tell Floyd to
arm an' be ready at exactly twelve o'clock, sharp.”
“I knew it would come,” said Mrs. Porter, a combination of finality and
resignation in her harsh voice. “I knew Jeff Wade wasn't going to
allow that to go on.” She was looking at her daughter, who, white and
wide-eyed, stood motionless behind Hattie Mayhew's chair. For a moment
no one spoke, though instinctively the general glance went to Cynthia,
who, feeling it, turned to the window looking out upon the porch, and
stood with her back to the room. Mrs. Porter broke the silence, her
words directed to her daughter.
“Jeff Wade will kill that man if he was fool enough to wait and meet
him. Do you think Floyd waited, Nathan?”
“No, he didn't wait,” was Porter's answer. “The plucky chap went 'im one
better. He sent word by Mel Jones to Wade that it would be indecent to
have a rumpus like that in town on a Saturday, when so many women an'
childem was settin' round in bullet-range, an' so if it was agreeable
he'd ruther have it in the open place at Price's Spring. Mel passed me
as he was goin' to Jeff with that word. It's nearly one o'clock now, an'
it's my candid opinion publicly expressed that Nelson Floyd has gone
to meet a higher power. I didn't want to be hauled up at court as a
witness, an' so, as I say, I hit the grit. I've been tied up in other
folks's matters before this, an' the court don't allow enough fer
witness-fees to tempt me to set an' listen to them long-winded lawyers
talk fer a whole week on a stretch.”
“Poor fellow!” exclaimed Hattie Mayhew. “I'm right sorry for him. He was
so handsome and sweet-natured. He had faults and bad ones, if what folks
say is true, but they may have been due to the hard life he had when
he was a child. I must say I have always been sorry for him; he had the
saddest look about the eyes of any human being I ever saw.”
“And he knew how to use his eyes, too,” was the sting Mrs. Porter added
to this charitable comment, while her sharp gaze still rested on her
daughter.
There was a sound at the window. Cynthia, with unsteady hands, was
trying to raise the sash. She finally succeeded in doing this, and in
placing the wooden prop under it. There was a steely look in her eyes
and her features were rigidly set, her face pale.
“It's very warm in here,” they heard her say. “There isn't a bit of
draught in this room. It's that hot cook-stove. Mother, I will--I--”
She turned and walked from the room. Mrs. Porter sighed, as she nodded
knowingly and looked after the departing form.
“Did you notice her face, girls?” she asked. “It was as white as death
itself. She looked as if she was about to faint. It's all this talk
about Floyd. Well, they _were_ sort of friends. I tried to get her to
stop receiving his attentions, but she thought she knew better. Well, he
has got his deserts, I reckon.”
“And all on account of that silly Minnie Wade,” cried Kitty Welborn,
“when you know, as well as I do, Mrs. Porter, that Thad Pelham--” The
speaker glanced at Nathan Porter, and paused.
“Oh, you needn't let up on yore hen-cackle on my account,” that blunt
worthy made haste to say. “I'll go out an' look at my new hogs. You gals
are out fer a day o' pleasure, an' I wouldn't interfere with the workin'
of yore jaws fer a purty.”
Mrs. Porter didn't remain to hear Kitty Welborn finish her observation,
but followed her daughter. In the dining-room, adjoining, an old woman
sat at a window. She was dressed in dingy black calico, her snowy
hair brushed smoothly down over a white, deeply wrinkled brow, and was
fanning herself feebly with a turkey-feather fan. She had Mrs. Porter's
features and thinness of frames.
“Mother,” Mrs. Porter said, pausing before her, “didn't Cynthia come in
here just now?”
“Yes, she did,” replied the old woman, sharply. “She _did_. And I just
want to know, Mandy, what you all have been saying to her in there. I
want to know, I say.”
“We haven't been saying anything to her, as I know of,” said the
farmer's wife, in slow, studious surprise.
“I know you have--I say, I know you _have!_” The withered hand holding
the fan quivered in excitement. “I know you have; I can always tell when
that poor child is worried. I heard a little of it, too, but not all. I
heard them mention Hillhouse's name. I tell you, I am not going to sit
still and let a whole pack of addle-pated women tease as good a girl as
Cynthia is plumb to death.”
“I don't think they were troubling her,” Mrs. Porter said, her face
drawn in thought, her mind elsewhere.
“I know they _were!_” the old woman insisted. “She may have hidden it
in there before you all, but when she came in here just now she stopped
right near me and looked me full in the face, and never since she was a
little baby have I seen such an odd look in her eyes. She was about to
cry. She saw me looking at her, and she come up behind me and laid her
face down against my neck. She quivered all over, and then she said,
'Oh, granny! oh, granny!' and then she straightened up and went right
out at that door into the yard. I tell you, it's got to let up. She
sha'n't have the life devilled out of her. If she don't want to marry
that preacher, she don't have to. As for me, I'd rather have married any
sort of man on earth when I was young than a long-legged, straight-faced
preacher.”
“You say she went out in the yard?” said Mrs. Porter, absently. “I
wonder what she went out there for.”
Mrs. Porter went to the door and looked out. There was a clothes-line
stretched between two apple-trees near by, and Cynthia stood at it
taking down a table-cloth. She turned with it in her arms and came to
her mother.
“I just remembered,” she said, “that there isn't a clean cloth for the
table. Mother, the iron is hot on the stove. You go back to the girls
and I'll smooth this out and set the table.”
The eyes of the two met. Mrs. Porter took a deep breath. “All right,”
she said. “I'll go back to the company, but I've got something to say,
and then I'm done for good. I want to say that I'm glad a daughter of
mine has got the proper pride and spunk you have. I see you are not
going to make a goose of yourself before visitors, and I'm proud of you.
You are the right sort--especially after he's acted in the scandalous
way he has, and--and laid you, even as good a girl as you, liable to be
talked about for keeping company with him.”
The girl's eyes sank. Something seemed to rise and struggle up within
her, for her breast heaved and her shoulders quivered convulsively.
“I'll fix the cloth,” she said, in a low, forced voice, “and then I'll
set the table and call you.”
“All right.” Mrs. Porter was turning away. “I'll try to keep them
entertained till you come back.”