The Common Lot and Other Stories

by Emma Bell Miles

  Some fellows who had been across during a slack in the weather to the jugs in the “little timber,” returning noisily to the cabin, half recognized the face at the window and spoke to him. Instinctively he drew back out of the light; and they, deeming now that they must have been mistaken, filed into the house.

  Luther did not return to the window; he was unable to endure the sight of Averilla dancing with the other lads. Instead, he cast himself face down under the rose-bushes. Something gleamed pale in the wet grass here—aces and kings of an unlucky deck flung out in the wrath of a loser; he felt an almost physical repugnance toward these symbols of wickedness. But the elder roses, rain-weighted, shattered in a purple drift across his hot temple and cheek, and their scent was that of the dark one in her hair.

  Something rustled in the crape-myrtles near him, and he warily got to his feet. Her voice called his name, ever so low. Through his body passed a soft, swift, tingling shock, as if one had touched him unexpectedly. He did not answer at once, but she had seen the movement, and laughed a little.

  “Bark ’lowed he seed ye, or somebody powerful like ye, at the window. I’m sure glad you came! I can’t stay out here with ye—there’s hardly girls enough to make up a set, and they’ll come lookin’ for me; but you come on in—a little while! Come dance with me.” She even drew his arm.

  He was able to answer her with firmness, “No.” Yet he lingered. And she. Presently he went on, and his voice rang tense, but truly toned on every word:

  “I have this to say to you—you come with me.”

  She looked at him, wondering.

  “The meeting breaks to-night, and to-morrow I’m going on into the other valley.”

  “You’ll be back to the baptizin’.”

  “I’ll not be back to no baptizin’.”

  “You’ll preach at the Blue Springs church.”

  “I’ll not come back to you again, never no more.”

  “Then,” she pouted, “I’ll go to town with pap, and never come back here no more, neither.”

  He was silent. Averilla pursued an imaginary advantage.

  “If you’ll stay, I will. You hate to go!”

  “I’ve got a work to do.”

  “Ah, what’s that? Why?”

  But it was his turn now. “Come with me. We’ll be married at Uncle Zack’s after the foot-washin’.”

  He stood, his wet hat crushed in his hands, awaiting her answer. For all his strong words, he felt weak as a babe. And Averilla, for all her pretty hesitation, knew her power. She shredded a rose with her lips and fingers before replying. The rain had melted to a drizzling mist, a keen, clean damp that caressed even while it invigorated. The fog usual to wet weather in these altitudes stole upon them now, and shut them round with so close a curtain that they could barely make out the red square of the window. The ring and throb of the dance beat round and through them both. At last said Averilla, sulkily, vexed perhaps because he was not sufficiently jealous to be angry:

  “No, there ain’t no use talkin’ about it. I ain’t ready to be tied to any man, let alone a preacher.”

  It was a buffet in the face. He took it standing straight.

  “Good-by, then,” he said, keenly hurt.

  Suddenly she leaned toward him, caught his face between her two hands, and kissed him on the mouth.

  Could it be?—he thought he heard a tremolo of weeping in her “Good-by.”

  A week may be a fearful lapse of time under some circumstances. Seven days had passed—seven days of wandering with Brother Brock on circuit, of unavailing endeavor to devote his best strength to his chosen allegiance and the work in hand; of fits of bitter rebellion succeeded by bitter remorse; of failure—he knew well enough that the church people were saying he “never done no good sence the Puncheon Camp Bresh-meetin’.” Even Brock had not quite accepted the excuse he gave them for absenting himself from the foot-washing; but no one connected the boy’s disappearance with Averilla Sargent, as they might have done if he had been seen with her afterward. Instead, all those to whom he was largely responsible for daily conduct decided merely, with sighs and shaking of grave heads, that he had been withheld from taking part in a peculiar and somewhat antiquated rite by the fear of ridicule.

  In a primitive social organization like theirs, the stress of daily living is such that nothing may be spared for the pursuit of pleasure. Any surplus of spirit must be turned to religious exaltation; there is no room for the graces and caprices of idleness. And whatsoever is not for must be against the one symbol of unity, the church. Where law is lax, and the elaborately linked mail of convention is absent, the only moral protection of the community is its religion. Hence the line drawn between the belle and the wanton is but slight; both are wasters of men, though the waste be only of time needed at the plough and of mental purpose that should be devoted to Bible study. A lad’s opportunity is scant enough at best for getting together his meagre start of property, acquiring the rudimentary education necessary to his daily round, probably eking out some small knowledge of a particular trade or craft, and finally selecting and winning a partner for that domestic stability which is his one chance of life’s happiness. He has no time to spend in catching butterflies. A man whose welfare depends on the crop of an acre is criminally foolish to sow any of it in wild oats.

  But, in thus depriving beauty of excuse for being, the danger is not first and chiefly to those who undervalue loveliness and charm and so miss them out of life; the real peril is to these qualities themselves, lest, accepting the valuation, they disport themselves accordingly. Venus and Diana, when they could be no longer divine, metamorphosed into vampire and demon. Were the lilies of the field to become convinced that they were creatures of evil, they might not cease blooming, but it is certain that they would begin at once to secrete poisonous juices.

  Averilla dressed herself most carefully on that midsummer Sunday morning; the shining hair was brushed to lustrous smoothness, and done in the way she knew to be most becoming; as for adornments, she waited till she could find them by Aunt Sa’ Jane’s gate. Any other mountain girl would have kept away from the Lowry cabin after what had happened, but no knight of old ever took more openly the path of conquest than this wearer of the dark rose. She sang as she walked, the ballad she had begun for Luther:

  “‘O Alizonde,’ the stranger sang,

  ‘The mortal sins are seven,

  And sweetest you of all sweet sin—

  What hope have I of heaven?’

  If you love me as I love you,

  O haste not into danger!

  “‘For Christian knight, my fault is dire

  As may not be forgiven,

  But lo, you, lady, of your rose

  My soul shall pass unshriven.’

  If you love me as I love you,

  What need have we of heaven?”

  She passed the groups of old men in the yard, noted that the boys were already pitching horseshoes about the barn, and appeared to Aunt Sa’ Jane, where that matron sat shelling pease in her kitchen, still singing a little under her breath and looking about with an enigmatic expression. Aunt Sa’ Jane glanced warily up. It would almost seem she was afraid of the girl. “Thank God, Luther ain’t here to see her like that,” crossed the old woman’s mind as she got the full beauty of the glowing face and alert young figure against the light.

  “Aunt Sa’ Jane,” began the newcomer, dropping lightly into a chair and beginning to help with the pease, “I come over to ask could I stay with you while pap and the boys goes down to the Settlement and finds out that they don’t like it. I ain’t willin’ to leave the mountains—not yet awhile, anyhow. Will ye keep me?”

  Lord, these young girls, as wasteful of time and opportunity as they were of the hearts and lives of men! Who was going to pay for Averilla’s keep if she left her father’s roof? Yet, in an absolutely even, almost caressing tone, the elder woman answered her.

  “Now, Averilly,” she began, “I wouldn’t feel that-a-wa
y about hit, if I was you. Yo’ pa needs ye. There’s a heap o’ good friendly folks lives in the Settlement, and you’re more suited like to ’em in many a way than you air to the mountain. I reckon they have a dance mighty nigh every night down thar.”

  The girl pouted. “I don’t know as I’ll ever dance again,” she murmured in a sulky tone that infinitely alarmed Aunt Sa’ Jane. If she was going to carry her pursuit of Luther to the extent of playing saint for a while, the poor boy was certainly doomed.

  “They’s an association I’ve hearn tell of down there, whar the best kind of young folks get together,” Aunt Sa’ Jane pursued, eagerly. “I don’t know as they dance, and I don’t know but they dance; yet I’ve heard tell that the gals has a sewin’-meetin’—sorter like a quiltin’—about onct-every-so-often, and I reckon the boys comes—town boys, with town manners. That ort to be fine.”

  She was decoying the girl as craftily as ever a mother partridge lures the enemy from her nest. Averilla turned away her face, feeling rebuked, disappointed, and not a little angry. But Aunt Sa’ Jane, having exhausted her resources of information concerning social opportunity in the Settlement, laid hastily hold of her next artifice.

  “Now, here’s a way ye can holp me,” she broke off, reaching a folded paper from the high smoke-enamelled fireboard. “I got a letter yistidy, and all them men’s been a-passin’ hit from hand to hand. But Luther he don’t write none too well, and we cayn’t none of us read to do any good, so we ain’t made out but part of hit.”

  The pease were forgotten. “From Luther!” cried Averilla, springing up so suddenly that she almost overturned the pan. But when the letter was put in her hand it proved disappointing. True, it said that he was coming—that he would be here this very morning—but it requested Aunt Sa’ Jane to have his few books and other belongings collected and ready, since he expected to “leave.” There was no explanation of where he was going, nor why; and the sheet rattled in the girl’s trembling fingers.

  “Well, there now!—I reckon he’s a-goin’ to take the far circuit. Wants his books—and I ain’t got up a one of ’em!” exclaimed Aunt Sa’ Jane, determined to bring the lesson home to her hearer. “You wanted to holp me, Averilly; cayn’t you jest step into the middle chamber and lay what you know to be Luther’s on the big bed, ready for packin’? He’s jest that-a-way, ef he’s set his mind to go this mornin’, only this mornin’ will do him.”

  The spring was all out of the girl’s step as she entered the middle room. There were his books on the shelf, but she stretched no hand to collect them. Instead, she sat down on the edge of the bed, leaned her cheek on her hand, and fell into a muse. Was Luther running away from her? She wondered if he was really going to take that far circuit which Aunt Sa’ Jane suggested as his destination.

  The inner chamber was closed against the sun glare, that it might not become heated through the summer day. A buzz of flies and the ticking of a clock sounded faintly from the main house. As her eyes became accustomed to the dim light, she made out the newspapered wall, the mirror on the old bureau, the boys’ clothes, of worn and faded homespun, mostly, hung beneath the gun-racks, and their rough box-trunks ranged below. A stately cat was visible in the open loft, watching a mouse-hole, and lizards hunting flies flickered in and out of chinks in the sun-warmed roof. She looked at the four-posters spread with counterpanes beautifully woven, wondering which of the pillows was to bear Luther’s head this night. For ever since Aunt Sa’ Jane had knit and washed his socks, and taught him the Bible she could barely read, and made his daily life for him, Luther had slept in this room with her other boys, and worked with them in the fields by day.

  From without came faintly the chatter of little ones building a playhouse, the murmur under the trees, and now and again a brief and delicate warble of wrens from the nest beneath the eaves. Once there was an angry gobble, followed immediately by the yap of a scared puppy, and general laughter.

  Then, abruptly, the heavy wooden shutter was pulled open and a dark rose flung in smote her cheek and dropped softly in her lap. After it a banjo was passed through the unglazed window and laid carefully on the counterpane. She caught her breath, for she thought she knew the hand holding the instrument. Learning forward, she whispered only the name—“Luther!”

  Instantly his face appeared in the window. There was a silent moment of hesitation. He half turned away; but Averilla was not to be so balked.

  “Luther—wait, Luther,” she began softly. “Aunt Sa’ Jane give me your letter to read. Was you—did you aim to go away? I was tryin’ to get a chance to stay here.”

  He turned startled eyes upon her. “To stay here?” he repeated, almost harshly. He studied her down-bent countenance intently, then put one hand on the window-sill and leaped in with a clear spring. Once where he could reach her, he turned her face up to his own, and, holding it thus between his palms, began his interrogatory.

  “What did you want to stay here for?”

  “You,” responded Averilla, almost under her breath.

  He laughed out suddenly. “And I was goin’ to the Settlement after you,” he told her, without reserve or modification. “I can’t live without you, Averil. I can’t forget you. I ain’t no ’count for man nor preacher if I can’t have you.”

  He dropped his arms down about her waist, and she laid her head on his breast. “Well,” she said, softly, “you’ve got me, Luther. Does that make it right?”

  “Yes—yes—yes! It’s bound to. It makes everything right. I ain’t no ’count for a preacher, anyhow. God knows I never meant to fail at . . . but this—this is stronger than I am. You can learn me to play cards and dance, Averil. I—we’ve got to be happy.”

  The beautiful head came up with a start. The girl stared at him with dilating dark eyes. She put a hand where her head had lain and pushed him away from her.

  “No—no—no!” she cried, as if in answer to her lover’s speech. “Oh, you haven’t understood. You’ve got it all wrong, Luther. I’ll go with you when you’re to preach. I’ll lead the singin’. Everybody shall see that here’s one soul you’ve saved. Oh, Luther, I can be good—for you.”

  A moment they clung together, trembling. The room was very still. Summer sounds from outside wafted through its casement. Whatever had been of misunderstanding, whatever seemed foreign in this change that had entered their lives, melted away. This was the supreme moment. They were not mere man and woman—they were mates.

  four

  The Home-Coming of Evelina

  From Putnam’s 6 (May 1909): 233–37

  In “The Home-Coming of Evelina” the central character is a mountain woman whose lot in life is to be constantly moving from one house and parcel of land to another. As a girl she had the misfortune, in her mind, to be born into a family where her father frequently saw new opportunities in new pieces of land to clear and cabins to raise. He made a successful living at these endeavors, even though his family lived in a perpetual state of uprootedness. Anselm, the man Evelina married with the hope of finding a permanent home, unfortunately fell into the same pattern, not because he profited from repeated moves but rather because he was no manager and thus moved of necessity. Taking place during one of these laborious journeys, the story traces Evelina’s anguish over her displacement and her longing for “home.” The epiphany that comes to her just before dawn is a typical Miles ending. Miles herself experienced multiple lateral moves in her married life for much the same reason as Evelina. The author may well have been drawing from personal experience here.

  . . .

  She was aghast at this last failure of her long-nourished hope. As she plodded beside the pitiful stack of battered and rusty household gear—home-made for the most part, and the rest indescribably cheap and ugly—Evelina Kell, with her babe at her breast, found herself muttering and moaning over and over: “Oh, I’m sick of it—I want to go home. I’m sick, I want to go home—I want to go home.” Tears at last blinded her eyes so that she stumbled. Her husband tu
rned from his team with a kindly admonition.

  “Now, mother, you’d better hush that, or you’ll make yourself sick sure enough, goin’ on so. Ride, honey; git up an’ ride—the nags can stand it. Whatever air ye grievin’ so about, anyhow? Look what a sightly evenin’ it is—red—we’ll have a fine day to-morrow.”

  She listened with a bitter, discrediting half-smile. This year, what with Anselm’s illness and a fire, the stack of household goods had dwindled until there was room for her to ride beside the children. The baby was now old enough to sit by her instead of being carried—“though there’ll be one in arms before the next movin’,” she said bitterly, communing with herself under her shadowing sunbonnet. Moreover, the team and wagon, such as they were, were this time Anselm’s own. “But there, we had to sell the cow to git it. Oh, I wish’t I could just go home . . .”

  She climbed submissively up. Jolting, swaying, sweltering, powdered thick with dust, the forlorn little group moved along between the ridges, stopping now and again to rest the mules or to drink of the wayside water. It was Samples’ Mill they were going this time, and with every mile the country became wilder, more heavily wooded. Evelina scarcely spoke as they rode along; the little ones drowsed, or sat in apathetic silence, only at intervals pointing out a rock or a bird’s nest amid the undergrowth. Anselm, seeing the general despondency, tried to cheer his woman as he ploughed through the dust, by assuring her of the tight shack and level truck-patch he had rented, and telling her how the mill men had offered him a chance to buy both. She murmured yes and yes, without interest. From having sojourned in many shacks she knew about what this one would be like—windowless, hot in summer and cold in winter as a paper shell, filled with fleas by the stray hogs that had slept under its floor, and impossible to render clean or attractive. As for the chance of buying—that, too, was an old story.