“But what makes ye look so worried, Orphy?” demanded Bud.
“I’m a-studyin’ about you-uns,” she answered. “Man looks peakid to me.”
“Why, he’s been well all along,” said Dad. And the boy supplemented gruffly, “Aw, I aint sick.”
“Well, another thing’s worse, and that’s Prentice Roark. He’s been a-comin’ too often.”
“Not often enough,” cried the owner of Tiger in sheer bravado.
Orphy, not wishing to spoil anybody’s appetite, said no more at the time, but once abed the sisters talked it over.
“Bud spoke to Prentice,” admitted Zaraldie, “and he laughed and ’lowed that so long as Dad’s got obleeged to have liquor, hit mought as well be from his hand as anybody’s. I think myself that’s about the rights of hit. He—he—brung me a right pretty pin from the store a-Christmas, and I didn’t want to take hit. He told me that he was aimin’ to be a brother to me as soon as he could, so hit was all right.”
“He knows good and well there aint a true word in his mouth when he says that,” Orphy assured her. “I aint able to think well of him, Raldie; and I do wish he’d stay away from here.”
“You don’t have no idy, Orphy, how lonesome we git with you and Bud both gone, and Prentice is good company,” pleaded the little maid, loth to lose at once a hope and an ideal.
“I’m old enough to know my own mind, sister. There never was but one boy in the world for me, and I don’t never expect to see him no more.”
“Well, I’ll give Prent back his pin if you say to.”
“You better—and have no more to do with him.”
Next morning, Orphy, more than ever uneasy, cornered Bud.
“Why’n’t you notify Prentice to stop hangin’ round our house?” she began valiantly.
“He don’ hang round enough to bother me. Good Lord, sis! what have you got agin Prent? I’d have a fight on my hands right now if I was to send him a word like that,” countered Bud.
“You’ll have wors’n a fight if you don’t look out. I’m afeared for Raldie; she talks as if he was much to her. Our little sister! I don’t like hit.”
“Shpppp! That all? She’s only a little switch of a gal. Now don’t you worry; me and Dad’s enough to look out for her. If you feel anyways bothered, you’d best think better of what you’ve said, and take him yourself.”
After parting with Raldie, who had “walked a piece” of the way with her, Orphy left Bud’s well worn trail to the valley and turned into a fainter one that led across the creek.
By the dark sheen of frozen pools, past filigrees of the spray and drip of little cataracts woven over night, through the shivering trackless woods she descended, mile after mile, following the waters of Caney.
Prentice, in the rock-house that sheltered the still, had just got his fire going in the primitive furnace. Two other men, joint-owners with him of this industry, had left him in charge for the morning, and had gone to haul a sled of corn. From time to time a noise of squealing and trampling came from the thick brush down-hill, where his hogs in a pen were awaiting their share of the waste after boiling.
“Condamn your thick hides,” he sent good-naturedly to their address between tasks. “Want to call up ever’ revenuer in Tennessee?”
Suddenly, with an access of squealing, was mingled a clear young treble, singing an air that he and Zaraldie and her brothers had sung together round the cabin hearth not a week ago. He straightened himself and stood, gun in hand, with puzzled eyes on the trail.
As the girl’s blue-clad figure came gradually into view through the semitransparent maple brush, he drew a breath of relief, although his face still expressed considerable anxiety.
“Well!” he greeted her blithely, striding forward with lowered weapon. “I make you welcome, Orphy; but you’ve took a good deal on yourself a-comin’ here! If ye hadn’t a-sung that song, I’d a-took a shot at ye. Git to the fire and warm. We set on that boulder.” He threw his coat over it for a cushion. “I been tellin’ ’em this here place wasn’t well hid.”
“Tellin’ who?”
“Oh, my shotes down yonder!” he laughed. “Why, you aint clumb all the way down Caney to find that out, have ye?”
“No, nor to look at shotes, neither.”
She had laughed with him, but had not accepted the proffered seat, and now faced him with hands clasped before her.
“Prentice,” she said, “wont you please stop a-goin’ to our house?”
“Why, Orphy! whatever’s got ye now?”
“Well, I’ve got a special reason for axin’ sech a thing, or I wouldn’t. Hit would please me mightily for you to promise me you’d never go there no more.”
“Now, Orphy, s’fur’s the old man’s concerned, you know he’s nachally got to—”
“Oh, don’t say that to me!” she cried sharply. “That’s what they all told me at home. Hit’s something else I mean.”
“I aint, honestly, doin’ you-uns any harm that I know of.”
“You know—”
She began in a low voice, halted, and then rushed on:
“You know I never have thought so much of you as my folks do; and I don’t want Raldie to think too much of ye, neither.”
She had chafed so against the necessity of asking anything of Prentice that now her impatience and confusion betrayed her into unguarded speech.
The young man stood looking at her flushed face, and thinking of what she had said.
“Oh,” he said, quietly. “Why, I reckon the little trick likes me as well as I like her—for a sister. And I bid her to look at hit that way, too, because I’m always a-hopin’ hit’ll come to that yit!”
“Well, I let her know hit’ll never be!” cried Orphy, exasperated.
“Whatever made you do that, Orphy? Couldn’t you see that only made bad worse? She aint been studyin’ about me noways but as a likely brother, and now you’ve fixed things so hit may change.”
“But if you was to never go about her any more,” urged the girl.
“There’s an easier way, you know,” he suggested, coming closer. “Jist change your mind, Orphy. Make me her brother. Oh, now, don’t fly off. This is the first time the woman I want has ever sat by my fire. Jist think of hit. I won’t stay away from yourns’ house—not for sech a reason. Don’t—don’t send me away. Whilst I’m in this business there’s but few I can trust, and I’ve got no folks of my own. I’d fur ruther give up distillin’ if that’ll move ye,” he begged.
Her face softened as she thought upon his plea. It was true, there were few houses he could enter with confidence. Yet she had waked the weary night thinking of Zaraldie; she must not weaken now. Even should Prentice sever his connection with the blockade still, she would have but little to offer him.
Sadly she propounded the immemorial triangle:
“But if she was to care for you and you for me, and I care for—”
The incompleted sentence maddened him.
“Finish that sayin’,” he demanded harshly, pouncing on her and catching her by the shoulders. “Finish hit! Who do you mean?”
“Nobody,” she answered doggedly.
“Tell me!” he insisted.
“It was a long time ago,” she at last confessed. “I aint seen him for years.”
“I knowed there was some reason I couldn’t make no headway with you, but I never had thought of that. Mart, wasn’t hit—the boy your uncle raised? Shucks! we was all chaps-like when they went West, and he’s likely enough dead or married long ago.”
They stood silent, gazing out across the wintry gulch. At last she despaired of attaining any adjustment in this way, and turned to go. Her errand had failed.
“Aint ye goin’ to give me a answer?” he asked softly, turning with her into the woods.
“You’ve had your answer long ago. What you can want of a gal that despises you, I can’t see!”
“Maybe because I’ve followed ye so long; maybe because I’ve told folks hit was to be;
maybe because I’m jist that kind of a feller, but want ye I do, and have ye I will.” He spoke earnestly and without bravado. “I’ll let ye know how Raldie is, when I come to town next week.”
“You’d do well to go slow!” she retorted. “I give Bud what I thought about it, and he promised to look after her.”
Prentice would not let her see how deeply he was hurt by this; but under the lash of her defiance and suspicion he struck without taking thought:
“Oh, Bud’s all right. He’s a-learnin’to take his liquor like a man.”
As he turned back to stoke the rude furnace, and indeed all the rest of the week, he was haunted by the white shocked face she turned on him before vanishing round the rock.
When he again visited the cabin Bud showed him a letter from Orphy. Its cry went straight through Prentice’s armor:
“Bud, will you tell me, for God’s sake, is it true that you are drinking? I can’t sleep since I heard that. Let me know what could have started such talk.”
“I wonder who told her that tale,” was the boy’s comment.
“You write a answer and I’ll take hit down with me,” Roark advised, a little uneasily. He had not meant to be cruel.
He found Orphy, as he had feared, more than ever defiant, flung a little off her usual self-possession.
“I jist come to see if you’d changed your mind,” he began. “And to tell you that Raldie aims to keep that pin for a while, anyway. You don’t never know for certain.”
“Oh, Prentice, I’m might’ near sick. What makes you do me so? Didn’t Bud git my letter? Oh, of course you’d not know. I ask ye oncet again, wont you stay away from our house?”
She laid down the knife with which she was scraping vegetables, and looked steadily at him over the big pan in her lap.
Prentice folded and refolded his soft hat between his hands.
“Orphy, I can’t see for my life what makes you take on so. I’ve got a letter for ye from Bud; you can read hit right here. I was mean to tell ye what I did, but you’d riled me till I wasn’t fairly at myself.”
She reached for the letter, but he held it back.
“Tell me first,” he begged, “that you’ll give me a note to Raldie takin’ back what you’ve told her. Orphy, I aint sech a bad one as you believe. I jist want your word that you’ll marry me or nobody else,” he insisted.
“Oh, I’ll give ye that.”
“And you’ll write to the folks to say so?”
“Yes, yes; give me my letter!”
He came close to her, keeping the letter in his hand, looking in her face.
Orphy had risen, and now sprang back crying:
“Don’t you touch me, Prent Roark—give me my letter!” and he obeyed.
Eagerly Orphy scanned the lines in which Bud assured her that the only liquor he had taken was when he caught a chill from being out in the raw winter rain. He could tell her, he would never love liquor; he “knowed too much about it now for his own peace.” This was quite enough to set her at ease about Bud.
“If hit does you any good to know it, Prent, I hate you worse than ever for that lie,” she declared, folding the paper slowly.
“Don’t say that. Give me the writin’ to the folks, now, and I’ll go. I’m satisfied for the present to know that no man gits you if I don’t.”
So word went to the cabin home that sister had changed her mind and would some day “have” Prentice. But when the young wild-catter explained to Zaraldie that she might now wear his pin, she answered that she did not care for it any more—he could have it back.
It required resolution of a high order to remain away from home under the circumstances, but the wages that supplemented Bud’s earnings were not to be lightly foregone, and the woods were dark with summer ere Orphy came again. Dr. Lewis had planned for a few months’ vacation in Colorado and this allowed her a considerable stay.
July days are doubly long in the silent, beautiful loneliness that broods over Caney. All the blue, drowsy afternoon the girls sat on the porch and the boys sprawled in the shade in the clean swept yard. They held little speech, satisfied to be together under the home roof.
But here was a grown-up Zaraldie, quiet and reserved for all the old impulsive affection. Orphy thought she perceived a shadow on the young face beyond what a few months of responsibility should cast.
“Have you been worried about Man, honey?” she inquired.
“Why, I never noticed he was poorly till you spoke of hit,” replied the girl with some compunction.
“I reckon what you need’s a tonic, Man; but they tell me might’ near all of them’s got liquor in ’em, and I don’t want to commence givin’ ye that.”
“Prentice might have let me have some o’ his’n,” said Man, “but when I named it to him he ’lowed he wouldn’t hardly dast to with you promised to marry him. He told me he aims to quit makin’ liquor this month, anyway.”
“He’s ’lowancin’ mine,” was Dad’s contribution.
“Would you go to see Dr. Lewis before he goes West, Man?” she asked.
“Aw—I don’t know.”
The doctor’s office was no dragon’s den to Orphy, who had often put it to rights in the morning; and she was able to partly overcome the boy’s trepidation. It was decided that Bud should accompany his brother to the Settlement next day.
But Zaraldie’s trouble was beyond medical aid. That night, while the whippoorwills wailed in the edge of the woods and the garden sparkled with fireflies, Orphy was aware of her sister’s wakefulness; she could not be sure whether there was a tremor of inaudible sobbing.
At last she could no longer keep silent.
“Honey, what ails you? I can’t stand it not to know. Tell sister!”
She crouched beside the girl, on the patch work wrought by patient hands long dead, and speaking as to the child who a few years ago had been content, on waking from some terrifying dream, to find that sister’s breath still stirred her hair.
But she knew it was a woman who answered:
“I want to go away. I’m tired, tired of hit.”
“Where you want to go to?”
“I’d like to git me something to do, like you did. I can cook good now. Why can’t you and me jist change places?”
“I don’t see how we could do that, Raldie,” said the maid-mother, knowing how different was the work in town from everything learned in the cabin, and sure that Zaraldie among strangers would wither like transplanted mountain-laurel. “You see, when you said you wasn’t goin’ to school, I promised Miss’ Lewis I’d go back and stay with them another winter. But I wont promise for no longer, so you can get away next year.”
“Next year. Oh!” and Raldie’s voice broke.
“The boys and Dad couldn’t make out without us, or I’d jist take you with me.”
“Aint ye goin’ to git married and settle down?”
“Not this year,” temporized Orphy, weakly.
The days drew forward, slipping one by one, beads of a golden rosary, but threaded on a triple strand of pain.
One night as they dressed for a play-party in a neighboring cove, Orphy inquired, as she was about to fasten Zaraldie’s collar:
“Where’s your pin?”
“What you axin’ me that for?” flashed Zaraldie. “You still mad cause Prentice give hit to me?”
“Why, I jist thought hit would look pretty on you. I wasn’t never mad about it,” said Orphy, in surprise at the outburst.
“I done lost hit long ago.”
And Raldie fell to brooding.
That evening, in the course of a game, Prentice chose Zaraldie for a partner—Zaraldie in a white dress, curls, and string of beads, sweet and warm as a velvet rose. “Fire on the mountain, fun, boys, fun,” he sang, dancing all over with the mountaineer swing, his head just clearing the rafters.
As he took the girl’s hand to lead her through their part, suddenly Orphy knew. That flushed, sweet face, with a dark-eyelashed twilight of modesty veiling
its starry happiness, could mean but one thing.
It was Prentice who, on the way home, let her know how he and Zaraldie had been together at a number of frolics during the past winter.
“She’s good company oncet she gits a-goin’. And I think, seein’ she’s to be my sister, you nee’n’to object. I do think you treat me scandalous.”
Orphy was baffled, wordless. Prentice never presumed on the promise she had given him, but she felt bound by it to a semblance of friendliness. There seemed nothing she could do.
As the summer went on, her knowledge of Raldie’s poor, little, unconfessed love became a wall between the sisters. Neither was able to speak of it; neither could think of anything else. Prentice’s appearance in the low doorway at any hour sufficed to set both girls acutely on the defensive.
And he caught himself more than once watching Zaraldie, or doing small services and offering small services for the glance of warm thanks she could not forbear giving him. Zaraldie was being happy while she could. Orphy had promised that she should go to town when Prent was married; but “I needn’t go; it will be the end of life to me,” thought the young girl; and meantime, “Nobody need know that I care.” Yet sometimes, when she and Prentice were alone together, a current of emotion flashed from one to the other; their speech fell away into silence, and they smiled at each other with trembling lips.
“If Orphy would only look at me like that!” was his longing.
One day, when the blue and gold of September was inclining toward the richer purple and scarlet of autumn, Prentice hauled a load of apples to town. As Orphy was now ready to return to her place there, he offered her a seat in his wagon.
“If Man’ll help me load ’em he can ride over the mountain with me, too, and see that doctor again. My Limber-twigs is all honest produce this time,” he added, laughing. “I’m out of the liquor business oncet for all.”
Almost the look he craved rewarded him.
When Man came home he sat till far in the night recounting what the doctor had told him of the West.
“He seed our uncle Ed out there. Says you can ketch feesh with your hands in Uncle Ed’s errigation ditches. And he raises, I don’t recollect what all; you ride over his land a hour before you git to the house. And when he heared the doctor was from this part of the country, he axed about us, and Doctor Lewis he told about me, and—and he ’lowed he aimed to send for me to come out there.”
The Common Lot and Other Stories Page 13