by Willa Cather
“‘Nelly Bly,’ course” she whispered, blushing.
“An’ yo’ll come to me, sho?”
Her only answer was to draw his big, blonde head down to her and hold it against her cheek.
“I must go now, Allen, mammy will be lookin’ fo’ me soon.” And she slipped from his arms and ran swiftly up the steep path toward the house.
Allen watched her disappear among the pines, and then threw himself down beside a laurel bush and clasping his hands under his head began to whistle softly. It takes a man of the South to do nothing perfectly, and Allen was as skilled in that art as were any of the F.F.V’s. who wore broadcloth. It was the kind of a summer morning to encourage idleness. Behind him were the sleepy pine woods, the slatey ground beneath them strewn red with slippery needles. Around him the laurels were just blushing into bloom. Here and there rose tall chestnut trees with the red sumach growing under them. Down in the valley lay fields of wheat and corn, and among them the creek wound between its willow-grown banks. Across it was the old, black, creaking footbridge which had neither props nor piles, but was swung from the arms of a great sycamore tree. The reapers were at work in the wheat fields; the mowers swinging their cradles and the binders following close behind. Along the fences companies of barefooted children were picking berries. On the bridge a lank youth sat patiently fishing in the stream where no fish had been caught for years. Allen watched them all until a passing cloud made the valley dark, then his eyes wandered to where the Blue Ridge lay against the sky, faint and hazy as the mountains of Beulah land.
Allen still whistled lazily as he lay there. He was noted for his whistling. He was naturally musical, but on Limber Ridge the mouth organ and jewsharp are considered the only thoroughly respectable instruments, and he preferred whistling to either. He could whistle anything from “Champagne Charley” to the opera airs he heard the city folks playing in the summer at the Springs. There was a marvelous sweet and mellow quality about that chirp of his, like the softened fire of the famous apple brandy he made from his little still in the mountains. The mountain folk always said they could tell Allen Poole’s whiskey or his whistle wherever they found them. Beyond his music and his brandy and his good heart there was not much to Allen. He was never known to do any work except to pour apples into his still and drink freely of the honied fire which came out of the worm. As he said himself, between his still and the women and the revenue officers he had scarcely time to eat. The officers of the law hated him because they knew him to be an incorrigible “moonshiner,” yet never could prove anything against him. The women all loved him because he was so big and blue-eyed and so thoroughly a man. He was happy enough and good natured enough; still it was no wonder that old Sargent did not want his daughter to marry the young man, for making whiskey on one’s own hook and one’s own authority is not a particularly safe or honorable business. But the girl was willing and Allen was very much so, and they had taken matters into their own hands and meant to elope that night. Allen was not thinking very seriously about it. He never took anything very seriously. He was just thinking that the dim blueness of the mountains over there was like her eyes when they had tears in them, and wondering why it was that when he was near her he always felt such an irresistable impulse to pick her up and carry her. When he began to get hungry he arose and yawned and began to stroll lazily down the mountain side, his heavy boot heels cutting through the green moss and craunching the soft slate rock underneath, whistling “My Bonnie Lies Over the Oean” as he went.
II.
It was about nine o’clock that evening when Allen crossed the old foot bridge and started down the creek lane toward the mountain. He kept carefully in the shadow of the trees, for he had good cause to fear that night. There was a little frown on his face, for when he got home at noon he found his shanty in confusion; the revenue officer had been there and had knocked the still to pieces and chopped through the copper worm with an ax. Even the winning of his sweetheart could not quite make up for the loss of his still.
The creek lane, hedged on either side by tall maples, ran by a little grave yard. It was one of those little family burying grounds so common in the south, with its white headstones, tall, dark cedars, and masses of rosemary, myrtle and rue. Allen, like all the rest of the Mountain men, was superstitious, and ordinarily he would have hurried past, not anxious to be near a grave yard after night. But now he went up and leaned on the stone fence, and looked over at the headstones which marked the sunken graves. Somehow he felt more pity for them than fear of them that night. That night of all nights he was so rich in hope and love, lord of so much life, that he wished he could give a little of it to those poor, cold, stiff fellows shut up down there in their narrow boxes with prosy scripture text on their coffin plates, give a little of the warm blood that tingled through his own veins, just enough, perhaps, to make them dream of love. He sighed as he went on, leaving them to their sleep and their understanding.
He turned aside into a road that ran between the fields. The red harvest moon was just rising; on one side of the road the tall, green corn stood whispering and rustling in the moonrise, sighing fretfully now and then when the hot south breeze swept over it. On the other side lay the long fields of wheat where the poppies drooped among the stubble and the sheaves gave out that odor of indescribable richness and ripeness which newly cut grain always has. From the wavering line of locust trees the song of the whip-poor-will throbbed through the summer night. Above it all were the dark pine-clad mountains, in the repose and strength of their immortality.
The man’s heart went out to the heart of the night, and he broke out into such a passion of music as made the singer in the locusts sick with melody. As he went on, whistling, he suddenly heard the beat of a horse’s feet upon the road, and silenced his chirping.
“Like as not itsthem government chaps,” he muttered.
A cart came around the bend in the road, Allen saw two men in it and turned aside into the corn field, but he was too late, they had already seen him. One of them raised his pistol and shouted, “Halt!”
But Allen knew too well who they were, and did not stop. The officer called again, and then fired. Allen stopped a moment, clutched the air above his head, cried “My Gawd!” and then ran wildly on. The officer was not a bad fellow, only young and a little hot headed, and that agonized cry took all the nerve out of him, and he drove back toward town to get the ringing sound out of his ears.
Allen ran on, plunging and floundering through the corn like some wounded animal, tearing up stalk after stalk as he clutched it in his pain. When he reached the foot of the mountain he started up, dragging himself on by the laurel and sumach bushes. When his legs failed him he used his hands and knees, wrenching the vines and saplings to pieces and tearing the flesh on hands as he pulled himself up. At last he reached the chestnut tree and sank with a groan upon the ground. But he rose again muttering to himself: “She’d be skeered to death if she seen me layin’ down.”
He braced himself against the tree, all blood and dirt as he was, his wedding clothes torn and soiled, and drawing his white lips up in the old way he whistled for his love:
“Nelly Bly shuts her eye
When she goes to sleep,
But in the morning when she wakes
Then they begin to peep.
High Nelly! Ho Nelly! listen unto me,
I’ll sing for you, I’ll play for you a charming melody.”
He had not long to wait. She came softly through the black pines, holding her white dress up carefully from the dewy grass, with the moonlight all about her in a halo, like a little Madonna of the hills. She slipped up to him and leaned her cheek upon his breast.
“Allen, my own boy! Why yo’ all wet, Oh its blood! its blood! have they hurt yo’ honey, have they hurt yo’?”
He sank to the ground, saying gently, “I’m afeerd they’ve done fo’ m
e this time, sweetheart. Itsthem damned revenue men.”
“Let me call Pap, Allen, he’ll go fo’ the doctor, let me go, Allen, please.”
“No, yo’ shant leave me. It ain’t fo’ many minutes, a doctor won’t do no good. Stay with me Nell, stay with me, I’m afeerd to be alone.”
She sat down and drew his head on her knee and leaned her face down to his.
“Take keer, darlin’, yo’ goin’ to git yo’ dress all bloody, yo’ nice new frock what yo’ goin’ to wear to the Bethel picnic.”
“Oh Allen! There ain’t no Bethel picnic no more, not nothin’ but yo’. Oh my boy! My boy!” and she rocked herself over him as a mother does over a little baby that is in pain.
“Its mighty hard to loose yo’, Nell, but maybe its best. Maybe if I’d lived an’ married yo’ I might a’ got old an’ cross an’ used to yo’ some day, an’ might a’ swore at you an’ beat yo’ like the mountain folks round here does, an’ I’d sooner die now, while I love yo’ better’n anything else in Gawd’s world. Yo’ like me, too, don’t yo’ dear?”
“Oh Allen! More’n I ever knowed, more’n I ever knowed.”
“Don’t take on so, honey. Yo’ will stay with me tonight? Yo’ won’t leave me even after I’m dead? Yo’ know we was to be married an’ I was to have yo’ tonight. Yo’ won’t go way an’ leave me the first night an’ the last, will yo’ Nell?”
The girl calmed herself for his sake and answered him steadily: “No, Allen. I will set an’ hold yo’ till mornin’ comes. I won’t leave yo’.”
“Thank yo’. Never mind, dear, the best thing in livin’ is to love hard, and the best thing in dyin’ is to die game; an’ I’ve done my best at both. Never mind.”
He drew a long sigh, and the rest was silence.
THE CLEMENCY OF THE COURT
“Damn you! What do you mean by giving me hooping like that?”
Serge Povolitchky folded his big workworn hands and was silent. That helpless, doglike silence of his always had a bad effect on the guard’s temper, and he turned on him afresh.
“What do you mean by it, I say? Maybe you think you are some better than the rest of us; maybe you think you are too good to work. We’ll see about that.”
Serge still stared at the ground, muttering in a low, husky voice, “I could make some broom, I think. I would try much.”
“O, you would, would you? So you don’t try now? We will see about that. We will send you to a school where you can learn to hoop barrels. We have a school here, a little, dark school, a night school, you know, where we teach men a great many things.”
Serge looked up appealingly into the man’s face and his eyelids quivered with terror, but he said nothing, so the guard continued:
“Now I’ll sit down here and watch you hoop them barrels, and if you don’t do a mighty good job, I’ll report you to the warden and have you strung up as high as a rope can twist.”
Serge turned to his work again. He did wish the guard would not watch him; it seemed to him that he could hoop all right if he did not feel the guard’s eye on him all the time. His hands had never done anything but dig and plow and they were so clumsy he could not make them do right. The guard began to swear and Serge trembled so he could scarcely hold his hammer. He was very much afraid of the dark cell. His cell was next to it and often at night he had heard the men groaning and shrieking when the pain got bad, and begging the guards for water. He heard one poor fellow get delirious when the rope cut and strangled him, and talk to his mother all night long, begging her not to hug him so hard, for she hurt him.
The guard went out and Serge worked on, never even stopping to wipe the sweat from his face. It was strange he could not hoop as well as the other men, for he was as strong and stalwart as they, but he was so clumsy at it. He thought he could work in the broom room if they would only let him. He had handled straw all his life, and it would seem good to work at the broom corn that had the scent of outdoors about it. But they said the broom room was full. He felt weak and sick all over, someway. He could not work in the house, he had never been in doors a whole day in his life till he came here.
Serge was born in the western part of the State, where he did not see many people. His mother was a handsome Russian girl, one of a Russian colony that a railroad had brought West to build grades. His father was supposed to be a railroad contractor, no one knew surely. At any rate by no will of his own or wish of his own, Serge existed. When he was a few months old, his mother had drowned herself in a pond so small that no one ever quite saw how she managed to do it.
Baba Skaldi, an old Russian woman of the colony, took Serge and brought him up among her own children. A hard enough life he had of it with her. She fed him what her children would not eat, and clothed him in what her children would not wear. She used to boast to baba Konach that she got a man’s work out of the young rat. There was one pleasure in Serge’s life with her. Often at night after she had beaten him and he lay sobbing on the floor in the corner, she would tell her children stories of Russia. They were beautiful stories, Serge thought. In spite of all her cruelty he never quite disliked baba Skaldi because she could tell such fine stories. The story told oftenest was one about her own brother. He had done something wrong, Serge could never make out just what, and had been sent to Siberia. His wife had gone with him. The baba told all about the journey to Siberia as she had heard it from returned convicts; all about the awful marches in the mud and ice, and how on the boundary line the men would weep and fall down and kiss the soil of Russia. When her brother reached the prison, he and his wife used to work in the mines. His wife was too good a woman to get on well in the prison, the baba said, and one day she had been knouted to death at the command of an officer. After that her husband tried in many ways to kill himself, but they always caught him at it. At last, one night, he bit deep into his arm and tore open the veins with his teeth and bled to death. The officials found him dead with his teeth still set in his lacerated arm. When she finished the little boys used to cry out at the awfulness of it, but their mother would soothe them and tell them that such things could not possibly happen here, because in this country the State took care of people. In Russia there was no State, only the great Tzar. Ah, yes, the State would take care of the children! The baba had heard a Fourth-of-July speech once, and she had great ideas about the State.
Serge used to listen till his eyes grew big, and play that he was that brother of the baba’s and that he had been knouted by the officials and that was why his little legs smarted so. Sometimes he would steal out in the snow in his bare feet and take a sunflower stalk and play he was hunting bears in Russia, or would walk about on the little frozen pond where his mother had died and think it was the Volga. Before his birth his mother used to go off alone and sit in the snow for hours to cool the fever in her head and weep and think about her own country. The feeling for the snow and the love for it seemed to go into the boy’s blood, somehow. He was never so happy as when he saw the white flakes whirling.
When he was twelve years old a farmer took him to work for his board and clothes. Then a change came into Serge’s life. That first morning he stood, awkward and embarrassed, in the Davis kitchen, holding his hands under his hat and shuffling his bare feet over the floor, a little yellow cur came up to him and began to rub its nose against his leg. He held out his hand and the dog licked it. Serge bent over him, stroking him and calling him Russian pet names. For the first time in his lonely, loveless life, he felt that something liked him.
The Davises gave him enough to eat and enough to wear and they did not beat him. He could not read or talk English, so they treated him very much as they did the horses. He stayed there seven years because he did not have sense enough to know that he was utterly miserable and could go somewhere else, and because the Slavonic instinct was in him to labor and keep silent. The dog was the only thing that made life endur
able. He called the dog Matushka, which was the name by which he always thought of his mother. He used to go to town sometimes, but he did not enjoy it, people frightened him so. When the town girls used to pass him dressed in their pretty dresses with their clean, white hands, he thought of his bare feet and his rough, tawny hair and his ragged overalls, and he would slink away behind his team with Matushka. On the coldest winter nights he always slept in the barn with the dog for a bedfellow. As he and the dog cuddled up to each other in the hay, he used to think about things, most often about Russia and the State. Russia must be a fine country but he was glad he did not live there, because the State was much better. The State was so very good to people. Once a man came there to get Davis to vote for him, and he asked Serge who his father was. Serge said he had none. The man only smiled and said, “Well, never mind, the State will be a father to you, my lad, and a mother.”
Serge had a vague idea that the State must be an abstract thing of some kind, but he always thought of her as a woman with kind eyes, dressed in white with a yellow light about her head, and a little child in her arms, like the picture of the virgin in the church. He always took off his hat when he passed the court house in town, because he had an idea that it had something to do with the State someway. He thought he owed the State a great deal for something, he did not know what; that the State would do something great for him some day, because he had no one else. After his chores he used to go and sit down in the corral with his back against the wire fence and his chin on his knees and look at the sunset. He never got much pleasure out of it, it was always like watching something die. It made him feel desolate and lonesome to see so much sky, yet he always sat there, irresistibly fascinated. It was not much wonder that his eyes grew dull and his brain heavy, sitting there evening after evening with his dog, staring across the brown, windswept prairies that never lead anywhere, but always stretch on and on in a great yearning for something they never reach. He liked the plains because he thought they must be like the Russian steppes, and because they seemed like himself, always lonely and empty-handed.