Under her sunbonnet the girl inquired, demurely, “Why ’n’t ye stay here?”
“Oh, I’m jist restless, I reckon . . . I would stay if I had a home here.”
That word “home” laid a finger on their lips for full five minutes. Again he ventured, flicking nervously with his whip at the roadside weeds:
“And Mavity wants me in his new saloon. I seed him when I was in Fairplay last week. The wages is good.”
She spoke now quickly enough. “Don’t go thar, Allison! I don’t want to be—worried—’bout you.”
He turned away to hide a swift change of countenance, slashed hard at the inoffending bushes, and jerked out, in a husky, boyish voice, “What makes ye care?”
She dared not be silent. “Because I know how good you air. Because I don’t want to see—a boy like you go wrong.”
“I ain’t good!” he cried, almost roughly. Then he turned to find her looking at him serenely, silently—not quite smiling. . . .
That was all, but it was almost a betrothal to the two. From this moment she tried to imagine what life with him would be like. The picture she saw clearest was of a low-browed cabin in the dusk; through its doorway, glowing with red firelight, a glimpse of a supper awaiting a man’s return.
Mrs. Vanderwelt was as glad to see her daughter home again as was Easter to rejoin the family, but that did not prevent her levying on Easter’s wages. The dish-pan had gone past all mending, and the water-bucket had sprung such a leak that it was no longer fit for use except about the stable. The lantern globe was broken. So Easter reserved for herself only the price of eight yards of gingham.
“Ye’re jist in time for the dance over to Swaford’s,” announced her younger sister, Ellender, when, after the supper dishes were washed, they sat down to tack carpet rags. “They’re goin’ to give one a-Sata’day night.”
“You ’uns a-goin’?” asked Easter. Of course the boys would be there, and all the youngsters of the countryside—Allison, too. There are never enough girls to go round in a frolic in the mountains.
It transpired, however, that Ellender had no dress—at least, none that could appear beside Easter’s contemplated purchase. So Easter was forced to consider the means of providing eight yards for her sister as well as for herself.
This was on Monday. The sisters walked two miles to the store next day, and chose the double quantity of cheaper goods together. It was white with a small pink figure printed at intervals, coarse and loosely woven as a flour-sack. They stitched all day Wednesday, and finished the frocks Thursday morning. But on Thursday evening they received a letter recalling Easter to her sister’s house.
Easter’s trembling hands dropped in her lap.
“Cain’t you go this time, Ellender?” she pleaded.
“Maw says I ain’t old enough to do what Cordy needs. She says you ain’t—sca’cely,” the younger sister protested.
“You-all act like you wanted to git shut o’ me,” Easter almost wept. “Cordy can wait three days. I’m obliged to go to this dance.”
But she knew it was not so. Only in her pain she struck at what was nearest.
Easter’s return found an ominous tremor and strain in her sister’s affairs. At first her girl’s mind groped vainly for the cause. There was the endless toil of spring house-cleaning and truck-patch, of chickens and cows, with the ailing youngest to tend, and Jim Hallet going softly, outcast by his wife’s displeasure, while poor Cordy sat at night mending and freshening all the coarse little garments, scarcely outgrown, putting them in readiness for an expected use.
Oh, it was hard, it was hard on Cordy, thought the girl, pondering this thing of which she had no experience. It was hard; but she had as yet only the outsider’s point of view.
Next week she had a surprise. Allison brought his team on Saturday evening, and asked her, “provided she didn’t mind ridin’ a mule,” to go to the dance with him. It was a long way to Swaford’s Cove, and she would be fearfully tired to-morrow, but she was accustomed to pay dearly for every bit of pleasure, and did not hesitate. So he came again Sunday week to walk with her to the church at Blue Springs, and later took her to the close-of-school entertainment, where she had the pleasure of seeing Ellender speak a piece, clad in the frock that was the counterpart of her own.
In the midst of corn-planting time the baby died. The weak life flickered out one night as it lay across Cordy’s knees. Such was her exhaustion that the physical need of sleep came uppermost, and her grief did not reveal itself till next day.
The little body, cased in a rude pine box, was taken in the wagon to the untended graveyard by the Blue Springs church. Easter and Cordy rode beside Jim on the seat, and three neighbor women were behind in the wagon, sitting in chairs. These, with the Vanderwelt boys, who had helped dig the grave, were the only persons present at the burying. Cordy asked that one of the women should offer a prayer, but they protested that they could not.
“I never prayed out loud—afore folks—in my life,” said one. “I wouldn’t know what to say.”
“If one o’ you’ll hold my baby, I’ll try my best,” faltered the second, after some hesitation. “He’s cuttin’ teeth, and may not let nobody tetch him but me.”
So it proved; and the third, a poor creature of questionable reputation, burst into hysterical sobbing, and answered merely that she did not feel fit.
“I cain’t have it so,” whispered the poor mother, desperately. “I cain’t have my pore baby laid away without no prayer, like hit was some dead animal. Ef nobody else won’t say ary prayer—I will.”
She stood forth, throwing back her sunbonnet, clasped her hands, shut her eyes tight, and gasped. One could see the working in her throat. They waited. Easter stared at the open grave, shallow, because its bottom was solid rock; the impartial sunshine on the crumbling rail fence, and the little group of workaday figures; the rude stones of other graves scattered through the tangle of briers and underbrush. Then Cordy drooped her head, and whispered, with infinite sadness:
“Lord, take care of my pore baby, and give hit a better chance than ever I had.”
“Amen!” Hallet’s deep voice concluded with a dry sob, and the three women whimpered after him, “Amen!”
The earth was hastily shovelled in, and the woman who had accounted herself unfit to pray began crying out loud. Presently Jim led his wife back to the wagon.
She spoke but once during the ride homeward. “An’ I’ve got no idy the next’ll thrive any better,” she said, dry-eyed. Easter, sitting in one of the chairs back in the wagon, held her peace; so this was what life might mean to a woman.
All next week the bereaved mother went about her work muttering and weeping, until both Jim and Easter began to fear for her reason. But presently the work compelled her thoughts away from her loss. She began to take interest in the milk and the chickens; and she noticed Allison and Easter. She told her husband one day that those two would make a good match.
Far from a match, however, was the present state of affairs in that quarter. The mountain people have an overmastering dread of attempting to cope with a delicate situation in words, insomuch that the neighbor who comes to borrow a cup of salt may very likely sit for half an hour on the edge of a chair and then go home without asking for it. And Allison had never kissed her again. But both knew, without having discussed the matter at all, that Allison wished to marry Easter, and that she, although Allison was undoubtedly her man of all men, could not obtain consent of her own mind to agree.
Why?
Cordy awaited her sister’s confidence, and at last it came.
“I’m afeared,” the girl said, and her eyelids crinkled wofully, her mouth twisted so that she was fain to hide her face.
“You don’t need to be afeared,” said Cordy, slowly, staring straight ahead of her. “You’d be better off with him than ye would at home, wouldn’t ye? Life’s mighty hard for women anywhars.”
“Well, I don’ know,” said Easter, doubtfully.
&nb
sp; But when, some days after, Allison did formally ask her in so many words, she gave him the same reason for her uncertainty.
“What air you ’feared of?” he demanded at once.
She was silent, terribly embarrassed.
“What is it you’re afeared of—dear? Tell me. Won’t you tell me?” He put his arms around her. She hid her face on his shoulder and began to cry. “You know I’d never mistreat you?”
“Hit ain’t that.”
“What, then?”
“I’m just afeared—afeared of being married.”
He took a little time over this, and met it with the argument, “Would you have any easier time if you didn’t get married?”
She tried to consider this fairly, but there was not an unmarried woman in all her acquaintance to serve as a basis for comparison. Most girls in the mountains marry between the ages of twelve and nineteen. She saw, however, that it was a choice of slavery in her father’s house or slavery in a husband’s.
Then Allison made a speech; his first, and perhaps his last. “Dear, dear girl, I’ll just do the very best I can for you. I cain’t promise no more than that. You know how I’m fixed. I’ve got nothing more to offer you than a cow or two, and a cabin, and what few sticks o’ furniture I’ve put in hit; but that’s more’n a heap o’ people starts with. Hit’s for you to say, and I don’t want to urge ye again’ your will an’ judgment. But I’ve got a chanst now to go North with some men that’ll pay me better wages than I ever have got, and I won’t git back till fall; and I—want—you,” he said, “to be my wife before I go. I want to know, whilst I’m away, that you belong to me. Then, if I was to happen to a accident, on the railroad or anywheres, you’d be just the same as ever, only you’d have the cows, and the team, and my place. Won’t you study about it?”
Easter thought of that for days, in the little time she had for thinking. But she thought, too, of the other side of the picture. Poor child, she had no chance for illusions. Sometimes she felt that she would be walking open-eyed into a trap from which there was no escape save death.
She thought of Cordy at that tiny grave. She dwelt upon her sister’s alienation from her husband. Would she, Easter, ever come to look upon Allison in that way?
Yet the time drew near when Allison must go with those who had employed him. The thing must be decided. There came a heart-shaking day on which, clad in a new dress of cheap lawn made for the occasion, and a pair of slippers, Cordy’s gift, she climbed into his wagon beside the boy, rode away, and came back a wife.
“But I mighty near wisht I hadn’t,” she said, thoughtfully, as she told her sister of the gayety of the impromptu wedding at home.
He wrote every week, some three or four pages—a vast amount of correspondence for a mountaineer. At the end of a month he sent her money, more than she had ever had before. His pride in being able to do this was only equalled by hers as she laid out dollar after dollar, economically, craftily, with the thrift of experience, for household things. He had given no instructions as to how the money was to be used; so she bought her dishes and cooking-pots, a lamp, a fire-shovel, and, by way of extravagance, a play-pretty apiece for Suga’lump and Sonny-buck, and even a tiny cap for Cordy’s baby not yet arrived.
Then, one day, taking the little boy with her, she went to Allison’s cabin to clean house, put her purchases in order, and make the place generally ready for living in on his return.
She chose a fair blue day, not too warm for work. White clouds lolled against the tree-tops and the forest hummed with a pleasant summer sound. She brought water from the spring and scoured the already spotless floor, washed her new dishes and admired their appearance ranged on the built-in shelves across the end of the room, set her lamp on the fireboard, and then spread the bed with new quilts. She stood looking at these, recognizing the various bits of calico: here were scraps of her own and Ellender’s dresses, this block was pieced entirely of the boys’ shirts, this was a piece of mother’s dress, this one had been Cordy’s before she married; others had been contributed by girl friends at school. Presently she went to the door and glanced at the sun. It would soon be time to go back and help Cordy get supper, but she must first rest a little. Seating herself on the doorstep, she began to consider what other things were necessary for keeping house, telling them off on her fingers and trying to calculate their probable cost—pillow-slips, towels, a wash-kettle; perhaps, if Allison thought they could afford it, they would buy a little clock and set it ticking merrily beside the lamp on the fireboard, to be valued more as company than because of any real need of knowing the time of day. Her mother had given her a feather bed and two pillows on the morning of her wedding; Allison would whittle for her a maple bread-bowl, and a spurtle and butter-paddle of cedar; and she herself was raising gourds on Cordy’s back fence, and could make her brooms of sedge-grass.
Thus planning, she felt a strange content steal upon her weariness. It was borne strongly in upon her mind that she was to be supremely happy in this home as well as supremely miserable. She ceased to ask herself whether the one state would be worth the other, realizing for the first time that this was not the question at all, but whether she could afford to refuse the invitation of life, and thus shut herself out from the only development possible to her.
Little Sonny-buck toddled across the floor, a vision of peachblow curves and fairness and dimples. She gathered him into her arms and laid her cheek on his yellow hair, thrilling to feel the delicate ribs and the beat of the baby heart. He began to chirp, “Do ’ome, do ’ome, E’tah,” plucking softly at her collar. Easter bent low, in a heart-break of tenderness, catching him close against her breast. “Oh, if hit was—Allison’s child and mine—”
On reaching home she kindled the supper fire and laid the cloth for the evening meal of bread and fried pork and potatoes; and it was given to her suddenly to understand how much of meaning these every-day services would contain if illuminated by the holy joy of providing for her own.
She fell asleep late that night, smiling into the darkness, but was awakened, it seemed to her, almost at once. Cordy stood before her, lamp in hand, laughing nervously; her temples glistened with tiny drops of sweat, and her eyes were dark and strange.
“It’s time,” said she.
When it was over, and they could, in the gray morn, sit down for a few minutes’ rest before cooking breakfast. Easter saw Jim approach the bed on tiptoe. His wife smiled, and raised the coverlet softly from over a wee elevation. Tears came into the girl’s eyes, and she rose hastily and went to build a fire in the stove.
Beside the wagon road that was the sole avenue of communication between the Blue Spring district and the outer world, Easter sat on the mossy roots of a great beech awaiting her husband’s return. Her sunbonnet lay on the ground at her feet, and she was enjoying herself thoroughly, alone in the rich October woods. She was now almost a woman; her abundant vitality had early ripened into a beauty as superbly borne as that of a red wood-lily. She had walked a long way among the ridges, her weight swinging evenly from one foot to the other at every step with a swift, light roll; she was taking time for once in her life to rejoice with the autumn winds and the riot of color and autumn light. How much of outdoor vigor was incarnate in that muscular body of beech towering beside her! Easter’s eyes ran up from the spreading base to the first sweep of the lower branches, noting the ropelike torsion under the bark. A squirrel, his cheeks too full of nuts even to scold her, peeped excitedly from one hiding-place after another, and finally scampered into safety round the giant bole. Then through a rent in the arras of pendent boughs she saw her man coming.
His grandfathers both had worn the fringed hunting-shirt and the moccasins; and though he himself was clad in the Sunday clothes of a workingman, he moved with the plunge and swing of their hunting gait. Such a keen, clean face as she watched it, uplifted to the light and color and music of the hour! His feet rustled the drifting leaves, and he sang as he came.
It seemed but a
moment’s mischief to hide herself behind a tree so as to give him a surprise; but the prompting instinct was older than the tree itself—old as the old race of young lovers.
. . . Suddenly they were face to face. He never knew how he cleared the few remaining steps, nor how he came to be holding both the hands she gave him. They laughed in sheer happiness, and stood looking at each other so, until Easter became embarrassed and stirred uneasily. He drew her hand within his arm as she turned, and, not knowing what else to do, they began to walk together along the leaf-strewn roadside, but stopped as aimlessly as they had started.
To him a woman’s dropped eyes might have meant anything or just nothing at all. He scarcely dared, but drew her to him and bent his head. And somehow their lips met, and his arms were about her, and his cheek—a sandpapery, warm surface that comforted her whole perturbed being with its suggestion of man-strength and promise of husbandly protection—lay against hers.
That kiss was a revelation. To him it brought the ancient sense of mastery, of ownership—the certainty that here was his wife, the mate for whom his twenty years had been period of preparation and waiting. And the tears of half-shamed fright that started under Easter’s lids were dried at their source by the realization that it was her own man who held her, that he loved her utterly, and that her soul trusted in him. She lifted her arms, and her light sleeves fell back from them as she pushed them round his neck.
“Oh, Allison, Allison, Allison, Allison!” she murmured, as she had said his name over to herself so many hundreds of times; only, now she was giving herself to him for good or ill with every repetition.
The Common Lot and Other Stories Page 5