Produced by David Widger
THE MOONSHINERS AT HOHO-HEBEE FALLS
By Charles Egbert Craddock
1895
I
If the mission of the little school-house in Holly Cove was to impress
upon the youthful mind a comprehension and appreciation of the eternal
verities of nature, its site could hardly have been better chosen. All
along the eastern horizon deployed the endless files of the Great Smoky
Mountains--blue and sunlit, with now and again the apparition of an
unfamiliar peak, hovering like a straggler in the far-distant rear,
and made visible for the nonce by some exceptional clarification of the
atmosphere; or lowering, gray, stern; or with ranks of clouds hanging on
their flanks, while all the artillery of heaven whirled about them, and
the whole world quaked beneath the flash and roar of its volleys. The
seasons successively painted the great landscape--spring, with its
timorous touch, its illumined haze, its tender, tentative green and gray
and yellow; summer, with its flush of completion, its deep, luscious,
definite verdure, and the golden richness of fruition; autumn, with
a full brush and all chromatic splendors; winter, in melancholy sepia
tones, black and brown and many sad variations of the pallors of white.
So high was the little structure on the side of a transverse ridge that
it commanded a vast field of sky above the wooded ranges; and in the
immediate foreground, down between the slopes which were cleft to
the heart, was the river, resplendent with the reflected moods of the
heavens. In this deep gorge the winds and the pines chanted like a Greek
chorus; the waves continuously murmured an intricate rune, as if conning
it by frequent repetition; a bird would call out from the upper air some
joyous apothegm in a language which no creature of the earth has learned
enough of happiness to translate.
But the precepts which prevailed in the little school-house were to the
effect that rivers, except as they flowed as they listed to confusing
points of the compass, rising among names difficult to remember, and
emptying into the least anticipated body of water, were chiefly to be
avoided for their proclivity to drown small boys intent on swimming or
angling. Mountains, aside from the desirability of their recognition as
forming one of the divisions of land somewhat easily distinguishable
by the more erudite youth from plains, valleys, and capes, were full
of crags and chasms, rattlesnakes and vegetable poisons, and a further
familiarity with them was liable to result in the total loss of the
adventurous--to see friends, family, and home no more.
These dicta, promulgated from the professorial chair, served to keep
the small body of callow humanity, with whose instruction Abner Sage was
intrusted by the State, well within call and out of harm's way during
the short recesses, while under his guidance they toddled along the
rough road that leads up the steeps to knowledge. But one there was
who either bore a charmed life or possessed an unequalled craft in
successfully defying danger; who fished and swam with impunity; who was
ragged and torn from much climbing of crags; whose freckled face bore
frequent red tokens of an indiscriminate sampling of berries. It is too
much to say that Abner Sage would have been glad to have his warnings
made terrible by some bodily disaster to the juvenile dare-devil of the
school, but Leander Yerby's disobedient incredulity as to the terrors
that menaced him, and his triumphant immunity, fostered a certain grudge
against him. Covert though it was, unrecognized even by Sage himself,
it was very definitely apparent to Tyler Sudley when sometimes, often,
indeed, on his way home from hunting, he would pause at the school-house
window, pulling open the shutter from the outside, and gravely watch his
protégé, who stood spelling at the head of the class.
For Leander Yerby's exploits were not altogether those of a physical
prowess. He was a mighty wrestler with the multiplication table. He
had met and overthrown the nine line in single-handed combat. He had
attained unto some interesting knowledge of the earth on which he lived,
and could fluently bound countries with neatness and precision, and was
on terms of intimacy with sundry seas, volcanoes, islands, and other
sizable objects. The glib certainty of his contemptuous familiarity with
the alphabet and its untoward combinations, as he flung off words
in four syllables in his impudent chirping treble, seemed something
uncanny, almost appalling, to Tyler Sudley, who could not have done the
like to save his stalwart life. He would stare dumfounded at the erudite
personage at the head of the class; Leander's bare feet were always
carefully adjusted to a crack between the puncheons of the floor,
literally “toeing the mark “; his broad trousers, frayed out liberally
at the hem, revealed his skinny and scarred little ankles, for
his out-door adventures were not without a record upon the more
impressionable portions of his anatomy; his waistband was drawn high up
under his shoulder-blades and his ribs, and girt over the shoulders of
his unbleached cotton shirt by braces, which all his learning did not
prevent him from calling “galluses”; his cut, scratched, calloused
hands were held stiffly down at the side seams in his nether garments in
strict accordance with the regulations. But rules could not control the
twinkle in his big blue eyes, the mingled effrontery and affection on
his freckled face as he perceived the on-looking visitor, nor hinder the
wink, the swiftly thrust-out tongue, as swiftly withdrawn, the egregious
display of two rows of dishevelled jagged squirrel teeth, when once
more, with an offhand toss of his tangled brown hair, he nimbly spelled
a long twisted-tailed word, and leered capably at the grave intent
face framed in the window. “Why, Abner!” Tyler Sudley would break out,
addressing the teacher, all unmindful of scholastic etiquette, a flush
of pleasure rising to his swarthy cheek as he thrust back his wide black
hat on his long dark hair and turned his candid gray eyes, all aglow,
upon the cadaverous, ascetic preceptor, “ain't Lee-yander a-gittin' on
powerful, _powerful_ fas' with his book?”
“Not in enny ways so special,” Sage would reply in cavalier
discouragement, his disaffected gaze resting upon the champion scholar,
who stood elated, confident, needing no commendation to assure him of
his pre-eminence; “but he air disobejient, an' turr'ble, turr'ble bad.”
The nonchalance with which Leander Yerby hearkened to this criticism
intimated a persuasion that there were many obedient people in this
world, but few who could so disport themselves in the intricacies of the
English language; and Sudley, as he plodded homeward with his rifle on
his shoulder, his dog running on in advance, and Leander pattering
along behind, was often moved to add the weight of his admonition to the
teacher's reproof.
“Lee-yander,” he would gently drawl, “ye mustn't be so bad, honey; ye
_mustn't_ be so turr'ble bad.”
“Naw, ma'am, I won't,” Leander would cheerily pipe out, and so the
procession would wend its way along.
For he still confused the gender in titles of respect, and from force of
habit he continued to do so in addressing Tyler Sudley for many a year
after he had learned better.
These lapses were pathetic rather than ridiculous in the hunter's ears.
It was he who had taught Leander every observance of verbal humility
toward his wife, in the forlorn hope of propitiating her in the interest
of the child, who, however, with his quick understanding that the
words sought to do honor and express respect, had of his own accord
transferred them to his one true friend in the household. The only
friend he had in the world, Sudley often felt, with a sigh over the
happy child's forlorn estate. And, with the morbid sensitiveness
peculiar to a tender conscience, he winced under the knowledge that it
was he who, through wrong-headedness or wrongheartedness, had contrived
to make all the world besides the boy's enemy. Both wrongheaded and
wronghearted he was, he sometimes told himself. For even now it still
seemed to him that he had not judged amiss, that only the perversity of
fate had thwarted him. Was it so fantastically improbable, so hopeless
a solace that he had planned, that he should have thought his wife might
take comfort for the death of their own child in making for its sake a
home for another, orphaned, forlorn, a burden, and a glad riddance to
those into whose grudging charge it had been thrown? This bounty of hope
and affection and comfort had seemed to him a free gift from the dead
baby's hands, who had no need of it since coming into its infinite
heritage of immortality, to the living waif, to whom it was like life
itself, since it held all the essential values of existence. The idea
smote him like an inspiration. He had ridden' twenty miles in a snowy
night to beg the unwelcome mite from the custody of its father's
half-brothers, who were on the eve of moving to a neighboring county
with all their kin and belongings.
Tyler Sudley was a slow man, and tenacious of impressions. He could
remember every detail of the events as they had happened--the
palpable surprise, the moment of hesitation, the feint of denial which
successively ensued on his arrival. It mattered not what the season or
the hour--he could behold at will the wintry dawn, the deserted cabin,
the glow of embers dying on the hearth within; the white-covered
wagon slowly a-creak along the frozen road beneath the gaunt, bare,
overhanging trees, the pots and pans as they swung at the rear, the
bucket for water swaying beneath, the mounted men beside it, the few
head of swine and cattle driven before them. Years had passed, but he
could feel anew the vague stir of the living bundle which he held on the
pommel of his saddle, the sudden twist it gave to bring its inquiring,
apprehensive eyes, so large in its thin, lank-jawed, piteous little
countenance, to bear on his face, as if it understood its transfer of
custody, and trembled lest a worse thing befall it. One of the women
stopped the wagon and ran back to pin about its neck an additional
wrapping, an old red-flannel petticoat, lest it should suffer in its
long, cold ride. His heart glowed with vicarious gratitude for her
forethought, and he shook her hand warmly and wished her well, and hoped
that she might prosper in her new home, and stood still to watch the
white wagon out of sight in the avenue of the snow-laden trees, above
which the moon was visible, a-journeying too, swinging down the western
sky.
Laurelia Sudley sat in stunned amazement when, half-frozen, but
triumphant and flushed and full of his story, he burst into the warm
home atmosphere, and put the animated bundle down upon the hearth-stone
in front of the glowing fire. For one moment she met its forlorn gaze
out of its peaked and pinched little face with a vague hesitation in her
own worn, tremulous, sorrow-stricken eyes. Then she burst into a tumult
of tears, upbraiding her husband that he could think that another child
could take the place of her dead child--all the dearer because it was
dead; that she could play the traitor to its memory and forget her
sacred grief; that she could do aught as long as she should live but
sit her down to bewail her loss, every tear a tribute, every pang its
inalienable right, her whole smitten existence a testimony to her love.
It was in vain that he expostulated. The idea of substitution had
never entered his mind. But he was ignorant, and clumsy of speech, and
unaccustomed to analyze his motives. He could not put into words his
feeling that to do for the welfare of this orphaned and unwelcome little
creature all that they would have done for their own was in some sort a
memorial to him, and brought them nearer to him--that she might find in
it a satisfaction, an occupation--that it might serve to fill her empty
life, her empty arms.
But no! She thought, and the neighbors thought, and after a time Tyler
Sudley came to think also, that he had failed in the essential duty
to the dead--that of affectionate remembrance; that he was recreant,
strangely callous. They all said that he had seemed to esteem one baby
as good as another, and that he was surprised that his wife was not
consoled for the loss of her own child because he took it into his head
to go and toll off the Yerby baby from his father's half-brothers “ez
war movin' away an' war glad enough ter get rid o' one head o' human
stock ter kerry, though, _bein human_, they oughter been ashamed ter gin
him away like a puppy-dog, or an extry cat, all hands consarned.”
From the standpoint she had taken Laurelia had never wavered. It was
an added and a continual reproach to her husband that all the labor and
care of the ill-advised acquisition fell to her share. She it was who
must feed and clothe and tend the gaunt little usurper; he needs must
be accorded all the infantile prerogatives, and he exacted much time and
attention. Despite the grudging spirit in which her care was given she
failed in no essential, and presently the interloper was no longer gaunt
or pallid or apprehensive, but grew pink and cherubic of build, and
arrogant of mind. He had no sensitive sub-current of suspicion as to his
welcome; he filled the house with his gay babbling, and if no maternal
chirpings encouraged the development of his ideas and his powers of
speech, his cheerful spirits seemed strong enough to thrive on their own
stalwart endowments. His hair began to curl, and a neighbor, remarking
on it to Laurelia, and forgetting for the moment his parentage, said,
in admiring glee, twining the soft tendrils over her finger, that Mrs.
Sudley had never before had a child so well-favored as this one. From
this time forth was infused a certain rancor into his foster-mother's
spirit toward him. Her sense of martyrdom was complete when another
infant was born and died, leaving her bereaved once more to watch this
stranger grow up in her house, strong and hearty, and handsomer than any
child of hers had been.
The mountain gossips had their own estimate of her attitude.
“I ain't denyin' but what she hed nat'ral feelin' fur her own chil'ren,
bein' dead,” said the dame who had made the unfortunate remark about
the curling hair, “but Laurelia Sudley war always a contrary-minded,
lackadaisical kind o' gal afore she war married, sorter set in
opposition, an' now ez she ain't purty like she useter was, through
cryin' her eyes out, an' gittin' sallow-complected an' bony, I kin
notice her contrariousness more. Ef Tyler hedn't brung that chile
home, like ez not she'd hev sot her heart on borryin' one herself
from somebody. Lee-yander ain't in nowise abused, ez I kin see--ain't
acquainted with the rod, like the Bible say he oughter be, an' ennybody
kin see ez Laurelia don't like the name he gin her, yit she puts up with
it. She larnt him ter call Ty 'Cap'n,' bein' she's sorter proud of it,
'kase Ty war a cap'n of a critter company in the war: 'twarn't sech a
mighty matter nohow; he jes got ter be cap'n through the other off'cers
bein' killed off. An' the leetle boy got it twisted somehows, an' calls
_her_ 'Cap'n 'an' Ty 'Neighbor,' from hearin' old man Jeemes, ez comes
in constant, givin' him that old-fashioned name. 'Cap'n' 'bout fits
Laurelia, though, an' that's a fac'.”
Laurelia's melancholy ascendency in the household was very complete. It
was characterized by no turbulence, no rages, no long-drawn argument
or objurgation; it expressed itself only in a settled spirit of
disaffection, a pervasive suggestion of martyrdom, silence or sighs, or
sometimes a depressing singing of hymn tunes. For her husband had long
ago ceased to remonstrate, or to seek to justify himself. It was with
a spirit of making amends that he hastened to concede every point of
question, to defer to her preference in all matters, and Lauretta's sway
grew more and more absolute as the years wore on. Leander Yerby could
remember no other surroundings than the ascetic atmosphere of his home.
It had done naught apparently to quell the innate cheerfulness of his
spirit. He evidently took note, however, of the different standpoint
of the “Captain” and his “Neighbor,” for although he was instant in the
little manifestations of respect toward her which he had been taught,
his childish craft could not conceal their spuriousness.
“That thar boy treats me ez ef I war a plumb idjit,” Laurelia said one
day, moved to her infrequent anger. “Tells me, 'Yes, ma'am, cap'n,'
an' 'Naw, ma'am, cap'n,' jes ter quiet me--like folks useter do ter old
Ed'ard Green, ez war in his dotage--an' then goes along an' does the
very thing I tell him not ter do.”
Sudley looked up as he sat smoking his pipe by the fire, a shade of
constraint in his manner, and a contraction of anxiety in his slow, dark
eyes, never quite absent when she spoke to him aside of Leander.
She paused, setting her gaunt arms akimbo, and wearing the manner of
one whose kindly patience is beyond limit abused. “Kems in hyar, he do,
a'totin' a fiddle. An' I says, 'Lee-yander Yerby, don't ye know that
thar thing's the devil's snare?' 'N'aw, ma'am, cap'n,' he says, grinnin'
like a imp; 'it's _my_ snare, fur I hev bought it from Peter Teazely
fur two rabbits what I cotch in my trap, an' my big red rooster, an' a
bag o' seed pop-corn, an' the only hat I hev got in the worl'. An' with
that the consarn gin sech a yawp, it plumb went through my haid, An'
then the critter jes tuk ter a-bowin' it back an' forth, a-playin' 'The
Chicken in the Bread-trough' like demented, a-dancin' off on fust one
foot an' then on t'other till the puncheons shuck. An' I druv him out
the house. I won't stan' none o' Satan's devices hyar! I tole him he
couldn't fetch that fiddle hyar whenst he kems home ter-night, an' I be
a-goin' ter make him a sun-bonnet or a nightcap ter wear stiddier his
hat that he traded off.”
She paused.
Her husband had risen, the glow of his pipe fading in his unheeding
hand, his excited eyes fixed upon her. “Laurely,” he exclaimed, “ye
ain't meanin' ez that thar leetle critter could play a chune fust off on
a fiddle 'thout no larnin'!”
She nodded her head in reluctant admission.
He opened his mouth once or twice, emitting no sound. She saw how
his elation, his spirit of commendation, his pride, set at naught her
displeasure, albeit in self-defence, perchance, he dared not say a
word. With an eye alight and an absorbed face, he laid his pipe on the
mantel-piece, and silently took his way out of the house in search of
the youthful musician.
Easily found! The racked and tortured echoes were all aquake within
half a mile of the spot where, bareheaded, heedless of the threatened
ignominy alike of sun-bonnet or nightcap, Leander sat in the flickering
sunshine and shadow upon a rock beside the spring, and blissfully
experimented with all the capacities of catgut to produce sound.
“Listen, Neighbor!” he cried out, descrying Tyler Sudley, who, indeed,
could do naught else--“_listen!_ Ye won't hear much better fiddlin' this
side o' kingdom come!” And with glad assurance he capered up and down,
the bow elongating the sound to a cadence of frenzied glee, as his arms
sought to accommodate the nimbler motions of his legs.
Thus it was the mountaineers later said that Leander fell into bad
company. For, the fiddle being forbidden in the sober Laurelia's house,
he must needs go elsewhere to show his gift and his growing skill,
and he found a welcome fast enough. Before he had advanced beyond his
stripling youth, his untutored facility had gained a rude mastery over
the instrument; he played with a sort of fascination and spontaneity
that endeared his art to his uncritical audiences, and his endowment was
held as something wonderful. And now it was that Laure-lia, hearing
him, far away in the open air, play once a plaintive, melodic strain,
fugue-like with the elfin echoes, felt a strange soothing in the sound,
found tears in her eyes, not all of pain but of sad pleasure, and
assumed thenceforth something of the port of a connoisseur. She said
she “couldn't abide a fiddle jes sawed helter-skelter by them ez hedn't
larned, but ter play saaft an' slow an' solemn, and no dancin' chune,
no frolic song--she warn't set agin that at all.” And she desired of
Leander a repetition of this sunset motive that evening when he had come
home late, and she discovered him hiding the obnoxious instrument
under the porch. But in vain. He did not remember it. It was some vague
impulse, as unconsciously voiced as the dreaming bird's song in the
sudden half-awake intervals of the night. Over and again, as he stood by
the porch, the violin in his arms, he touched the strings tentatively,
as if, perchance, being so alive, they might of their own motion recall
the strain that had so lately thrilled along them:
He had grown tall and slender. He wore boots to his knees now, and
pridefully carried a “shoot-in'-iron” in one of the long legs--to his
great discomfort. The freckles of his early days were merged into the
warm uniform tint of his tanned complexion. His brown hair still
curled; his shirt-collar fell away from his throat, round and full and
white--the singer's throat--as he threw his head backward and cast his
large roving eyes searchingly along the sky, as if the missing strain
had wings.
The inspiration returned no more, and Laurelia experienced a sense of
loss. “Some time, Lee-yander, ef ye war ter kem acrost that chune agin,
try ter set it in yer remembrance, an' play it whenst ye kem home,” she
said, wistfully, at last, as if this errant melody were afloat somewhere
in the vague realms of sound, where one native to those haunts might
hope to encounter it anew.
“Yes, ma'am, cap'n, I will,” he said, with his facile assent. But his
tone expressed slight intention, and his indifference bespoke a too
great wealth of “chunes”; he could feel no lack in some unremembered
combination, sport of the moment, when another strain would come at
will, as sweet perchance, and new.
She winced as from undeserved reproach when presently Leander's
proclivities for the society of the gay young blades about the
countryside, sometimes reputed “evil men,” were attributed to this exile
of the violin from the hearth-stone. She roused herself to disputation,
to indignant repudiation.
“They talk ez ef it war _me_ ez led the drinkin', an' the gamin', an'
the dancing and sech, ez goes on in the Cove, 'kase whenst Lee-yander
war about fryin' size I wouldn't abide ter hev him a-sawin' away on the
fiddle in the house enough ter make me deef fur life. At fust the racket
of it even skeered Towse so he wouldn't come out from under the
house fur two days an' better; he jes sot under thar an' growled, an'
shivered, an' showed his teeth ef enny-body spoke ter him. Nobody don't
like Lee-yan-der's performin' better'n I do whenst he plays them saaft,
slippin'-away, slow medjures, ez sound plumb religious--ef 'twarn't a
sin ter say so. Naw, sir, ef ennybody hev sot Lee-yander on ter evil
ways 'twarn't me. My conscience be clear.”
Nevertheless she was grievously ill at ease when one day there rode up
to the fence a tall, gaunt, ill-favored man, whose long, lean, sallow
countenance, of a Pharisaic cast, was vaguely familiar to her, as one
recognizes real lineaments in the contortions of a caricature or the
bewilderments of a dream. She felt as if in some long-previous existence
she had seen this man as he dismounted at the gate and came up the path
with his saddle-bags over his arm. But it was not until he mustered an
unready, unwilling smile, that had of good-will and geniality so slight
an intimation that it was like a spasmodic grimace, did she perceive how
time had deepened tendencies to traits, how the inmost thought and the
secret sentiment had been chiselled into the face in the betrayals of
the sculpture of fifteen years.
“Nehemiah Yerby!” she exclaimed. “I would hev knowed ye in the happy
land o' Canaan.”
“Let's pray we may all meet thar, Sister Sudley,” he responded. “Let's
pray that the good time may find none of us unprofitable servants.”
Mrs. Sudley experienced a sudden recoil. Not that she did not echo his
wish, but somehow his manner savored of an exclusive arrogation of piety
and a suggestion of reproach.
“That's my prayer,” she retorted, aggressively. “Day an' night, that's
my prayer.”
“Yes'm, fur us an' our households, Sister Sudley--we mus' think o' them
c'mitted ter our charge.”
She strove to fling off the sense of guilt that oppressed her, the
mental attitude of arraignment. He was a young man when he journeyed
away in that snowy dawn. She did not know what changes had come in his
experience. Perchance his effervescent piety was only a habit of speech,
and had no significance as far as she was concerned. The suspicion,
however, tamed her in some sort. She attempted no retort. With a
mechanical, reluctant smile, ill adjusted to her sorrow-lined face, she
made an effort to assume that the greeting had been but the conventional
phrasings of the day. “Kem in, kem in, Nehemiah; Tyler will be glad
ter see ye, an' I reckon ye will be powerful interested ter view how
Lee-yander hev growed an' prospered.”
She felt as if she were in some terrible dream as she beheld him slowly
wag his head from side to side. He had followed her into the large main
room of the cabin, and had laid his saddle-bags down by the side of the
chair in which he had seated himself, his elbows on his knees, his hands
held out to the flickering blaze in the deep chimney-place, his eyes
significantly narrowing as he gazed upon it.
“Naw, Sister Sudley,” he wagged his head more mournfully still. “I kin
but grieve ter hear how my nevy Lee-yander hev 'prospered,' ez ye call
it, an' I be s'prised ye should gin it such a name. Oh-h-h, Sister
Sudley!” in prolonged and dreary vocative, “I 'lowed ye war a
godly woman. I knowed yer name 'mongst the church-goers an' the
church-members.” A faint flush sprang into her delicate faded cheek;
a halo encircled this repute of sanctity; she felt with quivering
premonition that it was about to be urged as a testimony against her.
“Elsewise I wouldn't hev gin my cornsent ter hev lef the leetle lam',
Lee-yander, in yer fold. Precious, precious leetle lam'!”
Poor Laurelia! Were it not that she had a sense of fault under the
scathing arraignment of her motives, her work, and its result, although
she scarcely saw how she was to blame, that she had equally with him
esteemed Leander's standpoint iniquitous, she might have made a better
fight in her own interest. Why she did not renounce the true culprit
as one on whom all godly teachings were wasted, and, adopting the
indisputable vantage-ground of heredity, carry the war into the enemy's
country, ascribing Leander's shortcomings to his Yerby blood, and with
stern and superior joy proclaiming that he was neither kith nor kin of
hers, she wondered afterward, for this valid ground of defence did not
occur to her then. In these long mourning years she had grown dull; her
mental processes were either a sad introspection or reminiscence. Now
she could only take into account her sacrifices of feeling, of time, of
care; the illnesses she had nursed, the garments that she had made and
mended--ah, how many! laid votive on the altar of Leander's vigor and
his agility, for as he scrambled about the crags he seemed, she was wont
to say, to climb straight out of them. The recollection of all this--the
lesser and unspiritual maternal values, perchance, but essential--surged
over her with bitterness; she lost her poise, and fell a-bickering.
“'Precious leetle lam','” she repeated, scornfully. “Precious he mus'
hev been! Fur when ye lef him he hedn't a whole gyarmint ter his back,
an' none but them that kivered him.”
Nehemiah Yerby changed color slightly as the taunt struck home, but he
was skilled in the more aesthetic methods of argument.
“We war pore--mighty pore indeed, Sister Sudley.”
Now, consciously in the wrong, Sister Sudley, with true feminine
inconsistency, felt better. She retorted with bravado.
“Needle an' thread ain't 'spensive nowhar ez I knows on, an' the
gov'mint hev sot no tax on saaft home-made soap, so far ez hearn from.”
She briskly placed her chair, a rude rocker, the seat formed of a
taut-stretched piece of ox-hide, beside the fire, and took up her
knitting. A sock for Leander it was--one of many of all sizes. She
remembered the first that she had measured for the bare pink toes which
he had brought there, forlorn candidates for the comfortable integuments
in which they were presently encased, and how she had morbidly felt that
every stitch she took was a renunciation of her own children, since a
stranger was honored in their place. The tears came into her eyes. It
was only this afternoon that she had experienced a pang of self-reproach
to realize how near happiness she was--as near as her temperament could
approach. But somehow the air was so soft; she could see from where she
sat how the white velvet buds of the aspen-trees in the dooryard had
lengthened into long, cream-tinted, furry tassels; the maples on the
mountain-side lifted their red flowering boughs against the delicate
blue sky; the grass was so green; the golden candlesticks bunched along
the margin of the path to the rickety gate were all a-blossoming. The
sweet appeal of spring had never been more insistent, more coercive.
Somehow peace, and a placid content, seemed as essential incidents in
the inner life as the growth of the grass anew, the bursting of the bud,
or the soft awakening of the zephyr. Even within the house, the languors
of the fire drowsing on the hearth, the broad bar of sunshine across
the puncheon floor, so slowly creeping away, the sense of the vernal
lengthening of the pensive afternoon, the ever-flitting shadow of the
wren building under the eaves, and its iterative gladsome song breaking
the fireside stillness, partook of the serene beatitude of the season
and the hour. The visitor's drawling voice rose again, and she was not
now constrained to reproach herself that she was too happy.
“Yes'm, pore though we war then--an' we couldn't look forward ter the
Lord's prosperin' us some sence--we never would hev lef the precious
leetle lam'”--his voice dwelt with unvanquished emphasis upon the
obnoxious words--“'mongst enny but them persumed ter be godly folks.
Tyler war a toler'ble good soldier in the war, an' hed a good name in
the church, but _ye_ war persumed to be a plumb special Christian with
no pledjure in this worl'.”
Laurelia winced anew. This repute of special sanctity was the pride of
her ascetic soul. Few of the graces of life or of the spirit had she
coveted, but her pre-eminence as a religionist she had fostered and
cherished, and now through her own deeds of charity it seemed about to
be wrested from her.
“Lee-yander Yerby hev larnt nuthin' but good in this house, an' all my
neighbors will tell you the same word. The Cove 'lows I hev been _too_
strict.”
Nehemiah was glancing composedly about the room. “That thar 'pears
ter be a fiddle on the wall, ain't it, Mis' Sudley?” he said, with an
incidental air and the manner of changing the subject.
Alack, for the aesthetic perversion! Since the playing of those
melancholy minor strains in that red sunset so long ago, which had
touched so responsive a chord in Laurelia's grief-worn heart, the crazy
old fiddle had been naturalized, as it were, and had exchanged its
domicile under the porch for a position on the wall. It was boldly
visible, and apparently no more ashamed of itself than was the big
earthen jar half full of cream, which was placed close to the fireplace
on the hearth in the hope that its contents might become sour enough by
to-morrow to be churned.
Laurelia looked up with a start at the instrument, red and lustrous
against the brown log wall, its bow poised jauntily above it, and some
glistening yellow reflection from the sun on the floor playing among the
strings, elusive, soundless fantasies.
Her lower jaw dropped. She was driven to her last defences, and sore
beset. “It air a fiddle,” she said, slowly, at last, and with an air of
conscientious admission, as if she had had half a mind to deny it. “A
fiddle the thing air.” Then, as she collected her thoughts, “Brother
Pete Vickers 'lows ez he sees no special sin in playin' the fiddle.
He 'lows ez in some kentries--I disremember whar--they plays on 'em in
church, quirin' an' hymn chunes an' sech.”
Her voice faltered a little; she had never thought to quote this fantasy
in her own defence, for she secretly believed that old man Vickers must
have been humbugged by some worldly brother skilled in drawing the long
bow himself.
Nehemiah Yerby seemed specially endowed with a conscience for the
guidance of other people, so quick was he to descry and pounce upon
their shortcomings. If one's sins are sure to find one out, there is
little doubt but that Brother Nehemiah would be on the ground first.
“Air you-uns a-settin' under the preachin' o' Brother Peter Vickers?” he
demanded in a sepulchral voice.
“Naw, naw,” she was glad to reply. “'Twar onderstood ez Brother Vickers
wanted a call ter the church in the Cove, bein' ez his relations live
hyar-abouts, an' he kem up an' preached a time or two. But he didn't git
no call. The brethren 'lowed Brother Vickers war too slack in his idees
o' religion. Some said his hell warn't half hot enough. Thar air some
powerful sinners in the Cove, an' nuthin' but good live coals an' a
liquid blazin' fire air a-goin' ter deter them from the evil o' thar
ways. So Brother Vickers went back the road he kem.”
She knit off her needle while, with his head still bent forward,
Nehemiah Yerby sourly eyed her, feeling himself a loser with Brother
Vickers, in that he did not have the reverend man's incumbency as a
grievance.
“He 'pears ter me ter see mo' pleasure in religion 'n penance, ennyhow,”
he observed, bitterly. “An' the Lord knows the bes' of us air sinners.”
“An' he laughs loud an' frequent--mightily like a sinner,” she agreed.
“An' whenst he prays, he prays loud an' hearty, like he jes expected
ter git what he axed fur sure's shootin.' Some o' the breth-erin'
sorter taxed him with his sperits, an' he 'lowed he couldn't holp but
be cheerful whenst he hed the Lord's word fur it ez all things work
tergether fur good. An' he laffed same ez ef they hedn't spoke ter him
serious.”
“Look at that, now!” exclaimed Nehemiah. “An' that thar man ez good ez
dead with the heart-disease.”
Laurelia's eyes were suddenly arrested by his keen, pinched, lined face.
What there was in it to admonish her she could hardly have said, nor how
it served to tutor her innocent craft.
“I ain't so sure 'bout Brother Vickers bein' so wrong,” she said,
slowly. “He 'lowed ter me ez I hed spent too much o' my life
a-sorrowin', 'stiddier a-praisin' the Lord for his mercies.” Her face
twitched suddenly; she could not yet look upon her bereavements as
mercies. “He 'lowed I would hev been a happier an' a better 'oman ef I
hed took the evil ez good from the Lord's hand, fur in his sendin' it's
the same. An' I know that air a true word. An' that's what makes me 'low
what he said war true 'bout'n that fiddle; that I ought never ter hev
pervented the boy from playin' 'round home an' sech, an' 'twarn't no sin
but powerful comfortable an' pleasurable ter set roun' of a cold winter
night an' hear him play them slow, sweet, dyin'-away chunes--” She
dropped her hands, and gazed with the rapt eyes of remembrance through
the window at the sunset clouds which, gathering red and purple and gold
on the mountain's brow, were reflected roseate and amethyst and amber at
the mountain's base on the steely surface of the river. “Brother Vickers
'lowed he never hearn sech in all his life. It brung the tears ter his
eyes--it surely did.”
“He'd a heap better be weepin' fur them black sheep o' his congregation
an' fur Lee-yander's short-comin's, fur ez fur ez I kin hear he air
about ez black a sheep ez most pastors want ter wrestle with fur the
turnin' away from thar sins. Yes'm, Sister Sudley, that's jes what
p'inted out my jewty plain afore my eyes, an' I riz up an' kem ter be
instant in a-do-in' of it. 'I'll not leave my own nevy in the tents
o' sin,' I sez. 'I hev chil'in o' my own, hearty feeders an' hard on
shoe-leather, ter support, but I'll not grudge my brother's son a home.'
Yes, Laurely Sudley, I hev kem ter kerry him back with me. Yer jewty
ain't been done by him, an' I'll leave him a dweller in the tents o' sin
no longer.”
His enthusiasm had carried him too far. Lau-relia's face, which at first
seemed turning to stone as she gradually apprehended his meaning and his
mission, changed from motionless white to a tremulous scarlet while he
spoke, and when he ceased she retorted herself as one of the ungodly.
“Ye mus' be mighty ambitious ter kerry away a skin full o' broken
bones! Jes let Tyler Sudley hear ez ye called his house the tents o' the
ungodly, an' that ye kem hyar a-faultin' me, an' tellin' me ez I 'ain't
done my jewty ennywhar or ennyhow!” she exclaimed, with a pride which,
as a pious saint, she had never expected to feel in her husband's
reputation as a high-tempered man and a “mighty handy fighter,” and with
implicit reliance upon both endowments in her quarrel.
“Only in a speritchual sense, Sister Sudley,” Nehemiah gasped, as he
made haste to qualify his asseveration. “I only charge you with havin'
sp'iled the boy; ye hev sp'iled him through kindness ter him, an' not
_ye_ so much ez Ty. Ty never hed so much ez a dog that would mind him!
His dog wouldn't answer call nor whistle 'thout he war so disposed. _I_
never faulted ye, Sister Sudley; 'twar jes Ty I faulted. I know Ty.”
He knew, too, that it was safer to call Ty and his doings in
question, big and formidable and belligerent though he was, than his
meek-mannered, melancholy, forlorn, and diminutive wife. Nehemiah rose
up and walked back and forth for a moment with an excited face and a
bent back, and a sort of rabbit-like action. “Now, I put it to you,
Sister Sudley, air Ty a-makin' that thar boy plough terday?--jes
_be-you-ti-ful_ field weather!”
Sister Sudley, victorious, having regained her normal position by one
single natural impulse of self-assertion, not as a religionist, but
as Tyler Sud-ley's wife, and hence entitled to all the show of respect
which that fact unaided could command, sat looking at him with a changed
face--a face that seemed twenty years younger; it had the expression it
wore before it had grown pinched and ascetic and insistently sorrowful;
one might guess how she had looked when Tyler Sudley first went up the
mountain “a-courtin,” She sought to assume no other stand-point. Here
she was intrenched. She shook her head in negation. The affair was none
of hers. Ty Sudley could take ample care of it.
Nehemiah gave a little skip that might suggest a degree of triumph.
“Aha, not ploughin'! But _Ty_ is ploughin', I seen him in the field. An'
Lee-yander ain't ploughin'! An' how did I know? Ez I war a-ridin' along
through the woods this mornin' I kem acrost a striplin' lad a-walkin'
through the undergrowth ez onconsarned ez a killdee an' ez nimble. An'
under his chin war a fiddle, an' his head war craned down ter it.” He
mimicked the attitude as he stood on the hearth. “He never looked up
wunst. Away he walked, light ez a plover, an' _a-ping, pang, ping,
pang_,” in a high falsetto, “went that fiddle! I war plumb 'shamed fur
the critters in the woods ter view sech idle sinfulness, a ole _owel_,
a-blinkin' down out'n a hollow tree, kem ter see what _ping, pang, ping,
pang_ meant, an' thar war a rabbit settin' up on two legs in the bresh,
an' a few stray razor-back hawgs; I tell ye I war mortified 'fore even
sech citizens ez them, an' a lazy, impident-lookin' dog ez followed
him.”
“How did ye know 'twar Lee-yander?” demanded Mrs. Sudley, recognizing
the description perfectly, but after judicial methods requiring strict
proof.
“Oh-h! by the fambly favor,” protested the gaunt and hard-featured
Nehemiah, capably. “I knowed the Yerby eye.”
“He hev got his mother's eyes.” Mrs. Sudley had certainly changed her
stand-point with a vengeance. “He hev got his mother's _be-you-ti-ful
blue_ eyes and her curling, silken brown hair--sorter red; little Yerby
in _that_, mebbe; but sech eyes, an' sech lashes, an' sech fine curling
hair ez none o' yer fambly ever hed, or ever will.”
“Mebbe so. I never seen him more'n a minit. But he might ez well hev a
_be-you-ti-ful_ curlin' nose, like the elephint in the show, for all the
use he air, or I be afeard air ever likely ter be.”
*****
Tyler Sudley's face turned gray, despite his belligerent efficiencies,
when his wife, hearing the clank of the ox-yoke as it was flung down in
the shed outside, divined the home-coming of the ploughman and his team,
and slipped out to the barn with her news. She realized, with a strange
enlightenment as to her own mental processes, what angry jealousy
the look on his face would have roused in her only so short a time
ago--jealousy for the sake of her own children, that any loss, any
grief, should be poignant and pierce his heart save for them. Now she
was sorry for him; she felt with him.
But as he continued silent, and only stared at her dumfounded and
piteous, she grew frightened--she knew not of what.
“Shucks, Ty!” she exclaimed, catching him by the sleeve with the
impluse to rouse him, to awaken him, as it were, to his own old familiar
identity; “ye ain't 'feared o' that thar snaggle-toothed skeer-crow in
yander; he would be plumb comical ef he didn't look so mean-natured an'
sech a hyper-crite.”
He gazed at her, his eyes eloquent with pain.
“Laurely!” he gasped, “this hyar thing plumb knocks me down; it jes
takes the breath o' life out'n me!”
She hesitated for a moment. Any anxiety, any trouble, seemed so
incongruous with the sweet spring-tide peace in the air, that one did
not readily take it home to heart. Hope was in the atmosphere like an
essential element; one might call it oxygen or caloric or vitality,
according to the tendency of mind and the habit of speech. But the heart
knew it, and the pulses beat strongly responsive to it. Faith ruled the
world. Some tiny bulbous thing at her feet that had impeded her step
caught her attention. It was coming up from the black earth, and the
buried darkness, and the chill winter's torpor, with all the impulses
of confidence in the light without, and the warmth of the sun, and the
fresh showers that were aggregating in the clouds somewhere for its
nurture--a blind inanimate thing like that! But Tyler Sudley felt none
of it; the blow had fallen upon him, stunning him. He stood silent,
looking gropingly into the purple dusk, veined with silver glintings
of the moon, as if he sought to view in the future some event which he
dreaded, and yet shrank to see.
She had rarely played the consoler, so heavily had she and all her
griefs leaned on his supporting arm. It was powerless now. She perceived
this, all dismayed at the responsibility that had fallen upon her. She
made an effort to rally his courage. She had more faith in it than in
her own.
“'Feard o' _him!_” she exclaimed, with a sharp tonic note of satire.
“Kem in an' view him.”
“Laurely,” he quavered, “I oughter hev got it down in writin' from him;
I oughter made him sign papers agreein' fur me ter keep the boy till he
growed ter be his own man.”
She, too, grew pale. “Ye ain't meanin' ter let him take the boy sure
enough!” she gasped.
“I moughtn't be able ter holp it; I dun'no' how the law stands. He air
kin ter Lee-yander, an' mebbe hev got the bes' right ter him.”
She shivered slightly; the dew was falling, and all the budding herbage
was glossed with a silver glister. The shadows were sparse. The white
branches of the aspens cast only the symmetrical outline of the tree
form on the illumined grass, and seemed scarcely less bare than in
winter, but on one swaying bough the mocking-bird sang all the joyous
prophecies of the spring to the great silver moon that made his gladsome
day so long.
She was quick to notice the sudden cessation of his song, the alert,
downward poise of his beautiful head, his tense critical attitude.
A mimicking whistle rose on the air, now soft, now keen, with swift
changes and intricate successions of tones, ending in a brilliant
borrowed roulade, delivered with a wonderful velocity and _elan_. The
long tail feathers, all standing stiffly upward, once more drooped; the
mocking-bird turned his head from side to side, then lifting his full
throat he poured forth again his incomparable, superb, infinitely
versatile melody, fixing his glittering eye on the moon, and heeding the
futilely ambitious worldling no mote.
The mimicking sound heralded the approach of Leander. Laurelia's heart,
full of bitterness for his sake, throbbed tenderly for him. Ah, what
was to be his fate! What unkind lot did the future hold for him in the
clutches of a man like this! Suddenly she was pitying his mother--her
own children, how safe!
She winced to tell him what had happened, but she it was who, bracing
her nerves, made the disclosure, for Sudley remained silent, the end of
the ox-yoke in his trembling hands, his head bare to the moon and the
dew, his face grown lined and old.
Leander stood staring at her out of his moonlit blue eyes, his hat far
back on the brown curls she had so vaunted, damp and crisp and clinging,
the low limp collar of his unbleached shirt showing his round full
throat, one hand resting on the high curb of the well, the other holding
a great brown gourd full of the clear water which he had busied himself
in securing while she sought to prepare him to hear the worst. His lips,
like a bent bow as she thought, were red and still moist as he now and
then took the gourd from them, and held it motionless in the interest
of her narration, that indeed touched him so nearly. Then, as she made
point after point clear to his comprehension, he would once more lift
the gourd and drink deeply, for he had had an active day, inducing a
keen thirst.
[Illustration: An active day, inducing a keen thirst 241]
She had been preparing herself for the piteous spectacle of his frantic
fright, his futile reliance on them who had always befriended him, his
callow forlorn helplessness, his tears, his reproaches; she dreaded
them.
He was silent for a reflective moment when she had paused. “But what's
he want with me, Cap'n?” he suddenly demanded. “Mought know I warn't
industrious in the field, ez he seen me off a-fiddlin' in the woods
whilst Neighbor war a-ploughin'.”
“Mebbe he 'lows he mought _make_ ye industrious an' git cornsider'ble
work out'n ye,” she faltered, flinching for him.
After another refreshing gulp from the gourd he canvassed this
dispassionately. “Say his own chil'n air 'hearty feeders an' hard on
shoe-leather?' Takes a good deal o' goadin' ter git ploughin' enough
fur the wuth o' feed out'n a toler'ble beastis like old Blaze-face thar,
don't it, Neighbor?--an' how is it a-goin' ter be with a human ez mebbe
will hold back an' air sot agin plough-in' ennyhow, an' air sorter idle
by profession? 'Twould gin him a heap o' trouble--more'n the ploughin'
an' sech would be wuth--a heap o' trouble.” Once more he bowed his head
to the gourd.
“He 'lowed ye shouldn't dwell no mo' in the tents o' sin. He seen the
fiddle, Lee; it's all complicated with the fiddle,” she quavered, very
near tears of vexation.
He lifted a smiling moonlit face; his half-suppressed laugh echoed
gurglingly in the gourd. “Cap'n,” he said, reassuringly, “jes let's hear
Uncle Nehemiah talk some mo', an' ef I can't see no mo' likely work fur
me 'n ploughin', I'll think myself mighty safe.”
They felt like three conspirators as after supper they drew their chairs
around the fire with the unsuspicious Uncle Nehemiah. However, Nehemiah
Yerby could hardly be esteemed unsuspicious in any point of view, so
full of vigilant craft was his intention in every anticipation, so slyly
sanctimonious was his long countenance.