“I dip my pen in golden ink, to write my love a letter,
And tell her that most every day I love her a little better.”
The nearly perfect monogamy of the region renders it unlikely that a mountaineer compose verses in honor of any but the one woman. As his wife came in Macon tossed the new song at her with a half humorous, but wholly gallant bow.
She laughed, as it seemed to her, immoderately—there was so much to laugh at! She turned once more to the babe in the cradle; how rosy he was, and how he laughed, too. She went, on feet that love made light, to prepare her dinner of herbs.
Later, she might lose sight of the vision somewhat, for we are all as incapable of holding constantly to great thoughts as of putting such definitely into words; but when the trailing glories paled, here was a child, gloriously alive, to remind her that she had once been inspired with the profoundly rational courage of seeing things as they are.
And on the cradle, pieced by Nigarie in the summer mornings while both babies slept, lay a little quilt of the pattern they had named the Friendship’s Urn.
three
A Dark Rose
From Harper’s Monthly Magazine 118 (February 1909): 426–33; illustrated by Lucius Wolcott Hitchcock
Averilla Sargent, the pampered village flirt in “A Dark Rose,” leads young Luther Estill, a budding country preacher, on a merry chase as he woos her to be his wife. Thinking that the constriction of a preacher’s life is not what she had in mind for herself, Averilla declines initially, but then she accepts him and declares herself ready to be a preacher’s wife with all the “goodness” that entails. But the conversion perhaps comes too easily for Averilla and causes the reader to suspect her sincerity. Other questions arise as well: Is Miles deliberately presenting Averilla as an unreliable narrator? Is she positing this character as an archetype of the Appalachian woman who must play a role of subservience because she has no other option in the patriarchal culture she lives in?
. . .
Five preachers, in the intervals of a brush-meeting on Puncheon Camp Creek, were enjoying the hospitality of Brother Zack Lowry, whose big log house was near the place of meeting. Aunt Sa’Jane, the house-mother, quick and tireless as an ant despite her fifty-odd years, was clearing the dinner from the table in the open entry, and the men, sitting on the long porch, told stories of past revivals.
Luther Estill, youngest of the group, was not listening to the stories; neither was he watching the movements of Aunt Sa’ Jane, who, ever since he was cast, a lonely little lad, into her hands, had mothered him. He heard only Averilla in the room beyond. The Sunday “singin’” was really over, and the other singers dispersed to get ready for the evening meeting; but she, who never had any pressing work to do, and seemed always ready for any occasion, lingered alone at the organ. One is supposed, in respect, to sing only hymns or pieces of a religious nature where the preacher is a guest; but this girl was choosing songs strange to Luther’s ears. “Hick’s Farewell” he knew; the “Cowboy’s Lament” he had heard; but these ballads, centuries old, of poignant yearning and regret, he had never heard before. Aunt Sa’ Jane and his far-away mother had crooned to him—but this new manner of singing, this heart-expression, drew him strangely.
The old voices on the porch droned on, with occasional feeble laughter; but her contralto filled the echoing room with its pleading minors and cadences of passion. What was this that had come like a red flame searing his consecrated life?
From the overheard conversation of several boys, who had been loath to leave Averilla at the organ, he had gathered that there was to be a dance that night, a “frolic,” at the very hour of the foot-washing—an open defiance flung in the face of the Church, at the climax of its campaign against the devil. Averilla’s father, Lark Sargent, had been for years the arch-enemy of the few forces that made for righteousness along the Sourwood Mountain circuit. Now they were soon to be rid of him, for he had sold his land to a mining syndicate and given out that he, with Averilla and her brothers, would move to the Settlement, a valley town, to live; but before they were ready to leave the district he was not averse to firing a parting shot. He was flush with the recent sale; there would be plenty of cards and whiskey. Let Averilla break up the meeting if she could.
When the song was ended, the singer came out on the porch, swinging her sunbonnet by the strings. Her dark gaze swept the four elderly preachers’ indifferently, but met young Luther’s with a smile.
“Who’s goin’ to conduct the meetin’ to-night? You?” she asked, pausing before him. The watchfulness of the four was turned aside by these words, and under their resurgent buzz of talk she added: “Come a piece with me. I’ve got something to tell you.”
He hesitated a moment; then, with a kindling of his dreamy face, took up his hat and followed her out of the yard, while the other preachers looked at one another.
This house had been his home until, being “called to preach,” he had ceased to have need of a home. Strange that in all those years he had never really seen this daughter of a neighbor! What was this change wrought by a few months in him—or her?
“I wish’t I was a little boy, and could go barefooted in the road again,” he said, overtaking her outside the gate. “This white dust feels like velvet.”
The powerful scent of mountain-mint and bee-balm came to them, called up from the roadside by the evening air; and fainter, finer breaths came at intervals out of the forest. All afternoon a procession of dazzling thunderheads had been sailing slowly along the horizon toward a mellow rolling of distant thunder, as marching to the seat of war. Now they were piled, sierras above sierras, opposite the sunset, flushed with pure color from base to peak, and glowing from time to time with a silent excitement of lightnings. Passing the mounded bush that almost buried Lowry’s gate, the girl had plucked a belated rose; it glowed now in her musky, heavy hair, matching the vivid softness of her mouth. Each time she turned her face to him in talking, her eyes sang; and she moved with a buoyancy unlike the gait of the ordinary mountain girl, who is apt to be weary in the cradle from her mother’s killing toil. She was all music, the lovely thing! Luther was like to forget his office. But along with the duteous performance of ancient rites had descended to him something of the austerity of priesthood. He presently broke upon her rippling chatter, bethinking himself to speak sternly.
“I guess I know what you’re aimin’ to tell me. I heard Bark and ’Vander and them a-talkin’. You’re goin’ to have a big dance to-night.”
She persisted, however, in speaking as to the boy who was walking a “piece” of the way with her. “Yes; don’t you wish’t you was comin’? Can’t you, anyway?”
He tried to counter with a rebuke—“You’d do much better to come to the foot-washin’”; but he saw it fall on stony ground.
“Come, and we’ll learn you to dance,” she challenged.
“Why, you know that I’d be turned out of the church next day!”
“Well, you’re too young to be a preacher; you’ve never had your life. Just think, you’ll get old and die before you’ve had any playtime!”
Had not his own heart told him so in the night-watches but lately? Ah, the cooing, lilting singsong of her voice! the bubbling gurgle of throaty laughter! her velvet beauty!
“I wouldn’t for anything!”
“Come up awhile and look on, can’t you?—after you’ve been to the meeting.”
“No-o; I can’t think of hit, Averilla.”
Of what use to say no to one who would not take it for answer? His refusal only changed her mood for the worse; her tone became one of raillery, without, however, detracting from the warmth and dearness of her presence.
“How many chickens did Aunt Sa’ Jane kill for all you-uns to-day? Two to a preacher is what she ’lows, I think. Let’s see”—she pretended to count on her fingers—“all but one of ol’ Top-knot’s early brood! La! just think how lonesome he’ll feel a-flyin’ up to roost to-night!
“Whereve
r these feet-washin’ preachers go,
They never leave a chicken for to crow-crow-crow—
They never leave a chicken for to crow.”
She peeped around into his face with sweet mischief, laughing; and he could but laugh with her. Tossing her head on her rounded neck, she began to dance along the road before him, singing through the tinted twilight:
“It was the Lady Alizonde
Looked forth from her dark tower;
She saw the stranger minstrel ride
That came to be her wooer.
If you love me as I love you,
There’ll be no time to tarry.
“She from her casement lightly cast
A rose as dark as sin;
Your sign of sure defeat, although
Against the field you win!
If you love me as I love you,
No knife can cut our love in two!”
“Do come down for awhile—just to hear Alf King play the banjo—just a little while! You don’t hafto be a good boy all the time. Here’s your short cut back to Uncle Zack’s barn.”
He said good night, but he heard her song all the way back to Lowry’s through the dusk of the summer woods:
“If you love me as I love you,
There’ll be no time to tarry—”
There had been a conference, or business meeting, earlier in the day, setting in order the church’s affairs; so that now all who sat forward, ready to take part in the foot-washing, were approved members in good standing. But out of Luther, who was wont to throw himself into this work with glad abandon, the joyous sense of fellowship with them had gone and could not be rekindled. He sat only a little apart from the rest, yet as far away in thought as if lost in those caverns of shadow cast by flaring pine torches under the woods behind him. A sibilant buzz of gossip rose above the whispering leaves, for the service was not yet begun. That distant rolling of thunder was coming nearer, though it had brought as yet neither wind nor rain.
So many people gathered here, all bound to him with what he had been taught from babyhood was the highest and truest bond of which humanity was capable—and yet all insignificant, all suddenly worthless, because Averilla the alien was not present. He was astounded that his life’s endeavor should have so played him false. He felt that he stood at the parting of the ways, that a choice lay before him—to serve his Lord no longer, or to see his love no more. He would not have been the youngster he was, chosen and flattered for a gift of tongues in things spiritual, if he had not put the matter to himself in somewhat magniloquent phrases.
“Gittin’ along todes time, ain’t hit?” suggested a brother, after glancing across the space to see that the crowd was “about gathered in.”
“Reckon hit’ll come up a rain?” asked another. They all peered anxiously at the black sky, but were unwilling to forego the service.
“Maybe the storm ain’t comin’ here; hit may go round an’ swing off down the river. That roarin’s mainly the heat on the Side.”
“Looks like the devil’s bent on whippin’ us out if he can,” said Brother Brock, who was chosen to conduct the foot-washing. “Hit’s done rained us out two meetin’-nights this week.” But he took his place—a seat on the rough platform; he crossed one leg over the other, threw back his head, and began to sing:
“Go, preacher, and tell it to the people,
Pore mourner’s found a home at last.”
He was joined by the “leader” and other singers, and there were not three voices in the crowd that had not caught the strain by the end of the second verse. Like most of the hymns they employed, this one was a sort of incantation, a repetition of a half-dozen lines over and over indefinitely. When Brock had heard enough he rose, and the people became silent, awaiting his direction. He announced in measured ministerial tones:
“We don’t aim to protract the meetin’ any longer, except that there’ll be a baptizin’ in Puncheon Camp Creek to-morrow at nine (nine o’clock, didn’t you say, Brother Barlow?). Yes, at nine o’clock; and I want you all to come and bring your families to see these twenty-two dear converts dipped and brought into the fold. And let us all sing and praise the Lord; yes, we’ll aw-aw-awl sing and praise the Lord. I further announce that there’s to be preachin’ in the Blue Springs Church by Brother Rogers tomorrow night, and a experience meetin’ Wednesday night; and after that Brother Estill’s to take charge and preach there the second Sunday in each month. I reckon that’s all the ’nouncements I have to make. Now let us throw ourselves heart an’ soul into this meetin’ with all sinceriousness; let us not be disturbed nor distracted by the powers of darkness nor the thunder; the Lord will take care of us. Brother Rogers, will you lead us in prayer?”
As a matter of fact, three or four prayed together, at the top of their voices. Luther caught scattered phrases of reference to the “pleasures of the weekend,” and knew that the frolic at Sargent’s was present in all minds as a lure of the enemy to destruction, with Averilla as chief beguiler. Songs followed, a big-lunged, swinging chant in which every soul joined with good will. But to Luther, under the spell of another voice and music in expression of a different aspiration, it seemed for the first time to have no meaning, no immediate connection with anything of vital importance in his life.
“Oh, we’ll lay down the Bible and go home,
Yes, we’ll lay down the Bible and go home,
We’ll lay down the Bible and go home,
Bright angels standing at the door,”
mechanically he sang with the rest; but even while the chapter ordained for this sacrament was being read, the boy was trying to remember the weird and moving melody of the ballad of Lady Alizonde which he had heard that evening. Averilla’s words were in his mind all during the sermon—an exhortation the fervor of which well-nigh exhausted its deliverer, and wrought the nerves of the listeners to a keen tension. There was still no rain; but the thunder was crashing now, and the lightning outlined the tossing boughs more vividly at every flash.
“Even so ought ye to wash one another’s feet,” repeated the preacher again and again. Between the threat of storm and the proximity of Sargent’s dance, it was inevitable that a note of antagonism should ring out from time to time. “And what did He do then—yes, what did He do then? He girded Himself with a towel. Yes, He girded Himself with a towel.” Here Brock knotted a towel about his waist. “You hypocrites and sinners in the back o’ the camp can jist laugh if you want to; if ye do ye’re a-makin’ fun o’ what your Master did; I’m a-doin’ jist what He did now—yes, I’m a-doin’ jist what He did now.”
But there was none to smile at the quaintness of the old ceremony, for all except the faithful and those under close parental or avuncular surveillance were half a mile away, dancing to the banjoes. The bread and wine had been passed, and they had begun to sing,
“In all humility we now
Each other’s feet do lave,”
when the storm came upon them in earnest, as if by the personal malice of a living thing. Light javelins of rain shot through the tree tops, sounding a patter on the leaves; then heavier spears pierced the roof of the brush shelter. A few drops struck the faces of the sleeping babes, who at once woke and added their wail to the clamor. No mountain man minds a wetting, but among the sisters there was a hasty readjustment of sunbonnets and shawls. Several began to shriek hysterical triumph:
“Glory, glory! My soul’s happy!”
“Glory to the blessed Lamb!”
“Amen! O sweet Saviour!”
“Glo-o-ry!”
Brock saw that he must take command of the situation. Not for nothing had he been a competent shepherd for thirty-five years. He held up one hand and shouted: “Let us all walk to Brother Lowry’s house, singing as we go, and thar continue the sacrament. Brother Rogers,” he added in a lower voice, “if you and Brother Lowry’ll holp me, we’ll carry these pitchers an’ things over.” He headed the procession with a torch-bearer, both voicing hallelujahs on the way.
“Where am I going?” he muttered; but he knew. “I am weighed in the balance and found—Send the thunderbolt, O Master!” He bared his throat and looked into the eyes of the storm, thinking how death would be better than the blight that must follow his course. But he felt the tide rising, steady and certain, its current saying always below the thunder, “Averilla—Averilla—Averilla.” He must see her face again—he knew, in the very instant of prayer, that he would see her. The rain lashed forward, screaming; the wind got beneath it and lifted and waved it like a sheet; and so he stumbled on, whipped by desire—now the crash and the torrent! Except for the changing play of colored lightnings through the blaring rain he could not see an inch of the way. The earth under his feet trembled to a short, deep booming, nearly continuous—suggestive of close range, of breathless fighting, of the short-arm jolt, of clinch and break away. He breathed deeply, and was glad of the rivulets that coursed over his shoulders and chest. At last he reached the plain road and fell into the swinging stride of the mountains. At the same time the downpour softened to a steady drumming, and the night became a little less dark. He hastened on until he saw the red glow of light from the doorway of Sargent’s cabin.
The revel was now at its height. Rain had driven into the porch all the lookers-on, and he was able to peer unobserved in at the low, square window by the chimney. Already flung far off his usual pivot of thought and feeling, he was still further unstrung by the ring-tamp-a-tankle of the banjoes and the singing fiddle. His blood bounded to the rhythm of the dancers’ play. There was Averilla with ’Vander Bolton, who was dancing with the Indian-like intensity of the mountaineer. Ah! Her dress, her hair, her gleaming face! The perfume of her flesh, the music of her every motion, the warmth and color and charm of her! . . . And he had neither part nor lot in her life. But, oh, if she would only come out—come with warm hands and ripe lips and a tender word—come out to him! If they two together might leave the merrymakers, and the congregation, too, and go utterly away from both! . . .
The Common Lot and Other Stories Page 7