Buch lesen: «The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage», Seite 5

"I reckon you'll not come if there's goin' to be dancin'," remarked Lance, hanging up his hat and seating himself at the table. "I hadn't thought of that. Well – we'll have to get along without you."

Roxy snorted inarticulate reprobation. Suddenly she demanded.

"Sylvane, whar's that branch of leaves I sent you after?"

With the words, Mary Ann Martha, unnoticed by her mother, abruptly dropped her shingle spoon, scrambled across Sylvane's long legs, and galloped wildly out into the bit of orchard beside the house, her mass of almost white curling hair flying comically about her bobbing head, a picture of energetic terror. Her young uncle looked after her, smiling tolerantly, and said nothing.

"The flies'll git more of this dinner than we'uns, if we don't have something. Why'n't you git me that branch o' leaves, Sylvane?" persisted his sister.

"Well, Sis' Roxy, I wanted to finish my axe-helve, so I sub-contracted that order o' yourn," answered Sylvane, deprecatingly. "Sent Ma'-An'-Marth' out to git a small limb."

"For the land's sake! An' her not taller than – " began Roxy querulously. But her father put in, with pacific intention,

"Here's the chap now with her peach-tree branch. Come on, Pretty; let Gran'pappy put it up 'side o' him at the table. Now sons, now daughter, air ye ready? This is a bountiful meal; and Roxy's cooked it fine as the best; we're mightily favored. We'll ax God's blessing on the food."

CHAPTER VI.
THE WEDDING

WEDNESDAY came, a glamorous day in early September. A breath of autumn had blown upon the mountains in the night, leaving the air inspiring – tingling cool in the shade, tingling hot in the sun. The white clouds were vagabonds of May time, though the birds were already getting together in flocks, chattering, restless for migration. Now at night instead of the bright come-and-go of fireflies there was a mild and steady lamping of glowworms in the evening grass. The katydids' chorus had dwindled, giving place to the soft chirr of ground and tree-crickets. There was a pleasant, high-pitched rustle in the stiffening leaves; the dew was heavy in the hollows, gray under the moon.

All day the woods were silent, except for the mocking whirr of grasshoppers rising into the sunshine, and an occasional squabble of crows in pursuit of a hawk.

Wild grapes were ripe – delicious, tart, keen-flavored things. In the pasture hollow a fleece of goldenrod, painted on the purple distance along with the scarlet globes of orchard fruit, was stripped by laughing girls for Callista's wedding decorations. Yes, summer was definitely departed; a new presence was here, an autumn wind in the treetops, an autumn light on the meadow, an autumn haze on the hills – a fine luminous purple, flecked with lights of rose and gold.

The Gentry place, with its central house of some pretensions and its numerous outlying cabins, presented on Wednesday afternoon something the appearance of a village undergoing sack. Open doors and windows, heaps of stuff, or bundles of household gear, or sheaves of garments being carried from place to place, suggested this impression, which seemed further warranted by the female figures emerging suddenly now and again from one cabin or another and fleeing with disheveled hair, wild gestures and incoherent babblings as of terror, to some other refuge. The girls had not come in yet from the pasture with their armloads of goldenrod and wild aster; but all three of the Hands sisters – good, faithful souls, neighborhood dependences for extra help at weddings and funerals – were hard at work in the very heart of the turmoil.

"Liza, have you seed Callista anywhar's?" panted Octavia Gentry, appearing in the main house, laden with a promiscuous assortment of clothing.

"Yes, I did," rumbled Little Liza from the chair on which she stood adjusting the top of a window curtain.

"I thought I heared Lance's banjo awhile ago," added the widow as she folded and disposed of the garments she had brought in, "and then I didn't hear it any more. I have obliged to get hold of Callista to tell me whar she wants these things put at."

"Yes, and you did hear Lance Cleaverage's banjo," confirmed Little Liza sadly. "Callisty heared it, too. She come a-steppin' down from her room like as if he'd called her, and she's walked herself out of the front door and up the road alongside o' him, and that's why you don't hear the banjo no more."

"Good land!" cried the mother-in-law that was to be. "I don't know what young folks is thinkin' of – no, I don't. It ain't respectable for a bride and groom to walk side by side on their weddin' day. Everybody knows that much. And I've got to have Callista here. Roxy Griever's sent word that she cain't come to the weddin' because its been given out to each and every that they'd be dancin'. I want Callista to see Lance and have that stopped. Hit's jest some o' Lance's foolishness. You know in reason its got to be stopped. Oh, Sylvane!" as a boyish figure appeared in the doorway. "Won't you go hunt up Callista and tell her I want her? And you tell yo' sister Roxy when you go home that there ain't goin' to be any dancin' here tonight. And just carry these here pans out to the springhouse whilst you're about it, Sylvane. And if you find Ellen Hands there tell her to come on in to me, please. I vow, nobody's been for the cows! Sylvane, whilst you're out you go up to the milk gap and see are they waitin' thar. Let down the draw-bars for 'em if they are."

Fifteen-year-old Sylvalnus Cleaverage laughed and turned quickly, lest further directions be given him.

"All right," he called back. "I'll 'tend to most of those things – as many of 'em as I can remember."

A privileged character, especially among the women, Sylvane made willing haste to do Octavia's errands. The boy was like his brother Lance with the wild tang left out, and feminine eyes followed his young figure as he hurried from spring-house to pasture lot. When he found Lance and Callista walking hand in hand at the meadow's edge he gave them warning, so that the girl might slip in through the back door, innocently unconscious of any offence against the etiquette of the occasion, and the bridegroom pass on down the big road, undiscovered.

"I reckon it's jest as well as 'tis," commented old Ajax from the security of the front door-yard, to which he had been swept out and cleaned out in the course of the preparations. "Ef Octavy had been give a year's warnin', she would have been jest about tearin' up Jack this-a-way for the whole time."

As evening fell, teams began to arrive, and the nearer neighbors came in on foot, with a bustle of talk and a settling of the children. Old Kimbro Cleaverage brought his daughter, Roxy Griever, with little Polly Griever, a relative of Roxy's deceased husband, and Mary Ann Martha.

"I knowed in reason you wouldn't have dancin' on yo' place," the widow shrilled, as she approached. Then as she climbed out over the wheel, she added in a lower tone to Little Liza Hands, who had come out to help her down, "But that thar sinful Lance is so pestered by the davil that you never know whar he'll come up next, and I sont Miz. Gentry the word I did as a warnin'. Tham men has to be watched."

Callista was ready, dressed in a certain white lawn frock – not for worlds would she have admitted that she had made it with secret hopes of this occasion. The helpers were still rushing to and fro, getting the wedding supper on the long tables, contrived by boards over trestles, on the porch and in the big kitchen, when Preacher Drumright rode sourly up.

It was Octavia Gentry who had been instrumental in bespeaking Drumright's services for the marriage, and indeed he was the only preacher in the Turkey Track neighborhoods at the moment or anywhere nearer than the Settlement itself. The church-going element of the region stood before this somewhat cantankerous old man in the attitude of confessed offenders. He was famous for raking the young people over the coals, and he arrogated to himself always the patriarch's privilege of scolding, admonishing, or denouncing, whenever the occasion might seem to him fit. For ten years Drumright had longed to get a fair chance at Lance Cleaverage. Ever since the boy – and he was the youngest in the crowd – joined with a half dozen others to break up a brush meeting which Drumright was holding, the preacher's grudge had grown. And it did not thrive without food; Lance was active in the matter of providing sustenance for the ill opinion of the church party, and he had capped his iniquities by taking his banjo as near the church as the big spring on that Sunday in mid-July. Drumright had prepared the castigating he meant to administer to Lance almost as carefully as he would have gotten ready a sermon.

With the advent of the preacher the last frantic preparations were dropped, and it was suddenly discovered that they were not absolutely necessary for the occasion. The guests gathered into the big front room, where the marriage was to be. Drumright took his stand behind a small table at its further end; Callista came down the stairs, joined Lance in the entry, and the two stepped into the room hand in hand.

That was a daunting front to address with reproof. People said that they were the handsomest couple that ever stood up together in the two Turkey Tracks. But after all, it was something more than physical beauty that arrested the eye in that countenance. Lance's face was lifted, and his eyes apparently saw not the room, the preacher, nor even the girl whose hand he held. He moved a thing apart, his light, swift step timed to unheard rhythms, a creature swayed by springs which those about him knew not of, addressed to some end which they could not understand. And Callista seemed to look only to him, to live only in him. Her fair face reflected the strange radiance that was on his dark, intense young visage.

It was Drumright's custom to make a little talk when about to perform the marriage ceremony, so there was neither surprise nor apprehension as he began to speak.

"Befo' I can say the words that shall make this here man and this here woman one flesh, I've got a matter to bring up that I think needs namin'."

The old voice rasped aggressively, and a little flutter of concern passed over Drumright's hearers.

"The Gentry family air religious, church-goin' people. Why Callista Gentry ain't a perfessin' member in the church this day is more than I can tell you-all here and now. Like enough some will say hit is the influence of the man a-standin' beside her; and supposin' this to be so, hit cain't be too soon named out to 'em."

If Lance heard any word of Drumright's harangue, he gave no sign; but Callista stirred uneasily, her nostrils flickered, and she glanced from the preacher to her bridegroom.

"I wonder in my soul," Drumright went on, "that any God-fearin' family would give they' child to a man that has been from his cradle up, as a body may say, the scoffer that you air, Lance Cleaverage."

Thus pointedly addressed, a slight start passed through the bridegroom's taut body, and Cleaverage turned a half-awakened eye upon the preacher.

"Are you aimin' to get 'em to stop the marriage?" he inquired bluntly. As he spoke, he dropped Callista's hand, caught it once more in the grasp of his other, and put his freed arm strongly about her waist. Thus holding her, he turned a little to face her mother and grandfather as well as the preacher.

A shock went through, the crowded room; pious horror and amaze on the part of the older people; among the younger folk a twittering tremor not unmixed with delight at the spirit of the bridegroom. You might wince beneath the preacher's castigations; you might privately grumble about them, and even refuse to pay anything toward his up-keep, thereby helping to starve his wife and children; but that you should presume to answer a preacher in the pulpit or elsewhere in the performance of his special office, was a thing inconceivable.

The bridegroom's family drew together at one side of the room, Kimbro Cleaverage, in his decent best, looking half affrightedly at the man who was miscalling his son; Roxy Griever, divided between her allegiance to the caste of preachers, all and singular, and tribal pride; Sylvane clutching his hands into fists, and hoping that Buddy would get the better of the argument; while Mary Ann Martha, in the grasp of Polly Griever, glowered and wondered.

"Lance Cleaverage," returned Drumright ponderously, "I respect yo' father, for he's a good man. I respect yo' sister – she's one too; for their sake I come here to perform this marriage, greatly agin my grain."

He was taking a long breath, having barely got under way, when Lance stopped him with a curt,

"Well, – are you goin' to do it – or are you not?"

People gazed with open mouths and protruding eyes. Where were the lightnings of Heaven, set apart for the destruction of the impious? Drumright himself was momentarily staggered.

"Er, yes – I am," he said finally, wagging his head in an obstinate, bovine shake. "After I've said my say, I aim to marry ye."

The little points of light that always danced deep down in Lance Cleaverage's eyes, flamed up like clear lamps at this statement.

"No, you'll not," he said promptly. "You'll marry us now – or not at all. If I wanted any of your talk, I'd come to your church and get it. I don't want any."

All this time his arm had been round Callista, the hand closed on her slim waist gently, but with a grip of steel. Had she wished to stir from his side, she could scarcely have done so. Now he turned toward the door and moved quietly away from the astonished preacher, taking her with him.

"Whar – whar you goin'?" faltered Drumright, dumbfounded.

"Down to Sourwood Gap to be wedded," the bridegroom flung back in his face. "Squire Ashe is up there from Hepzibah – he'll marry us without haulin' us over the coals first." And he made his way through the roomful of mute, dazed, unprotesting people. At the door he paused, and, with the air of a man alone with his beloved in desert spaces, bent and murmured something in the ear of his bride, then ran lightly down the steps and out into the dark to where the horses were tethered. He returned quickly, leading his two black ponies.

He found that in the few moments of his absence the company had awakened to the enormity of what was going on. There were a half-dozen people round Callista, most of them talking. Little Liza, who evidently believed that the finger of the Lord was in it, and that her brother Flenton was at last going to get the girl of his choice, clung to Callista's hand and wept. Flenton himself stood squarely in the bride's path, speaking low and eagerly. At the upper end of the room Octavia Gentry was almost in hysterics as she labored with the preacher, trying to get him to say that he would marry the pair at once if they would come back. Old Ajax had retired to his corner by the big fireplace, where he stood smiling furtively, and slowly rubbing a lean, shaven jaw, as he glanced from his daughter-in-law to his granddaughter in leisurely enjoyment. After all, there was much he liked well in Callista's chosen.

Roxana Griever had flown to supplement Octavia's entreaties with the preacher. Kimbro made his way toward the door, evidently with some half-hearted intention of remonstrating with his son. Sylvane had slipped out to help Lance with the horses – he guessed that his brother never meant to ride away from the Gentry place alone.

"He ain't fitten for you, Callisty," Hands was whispering over and over. "He ain't fitten for you. A man that will do you this-a-way on yo' wedding day, what sort o' husband is he goin' to make? Here's me, honey, that's loved you all your life, an' been a member o' the church in good standin' sence I was twelve years old. Callisty, I'd be plumb proud to lay down for you to walk over. You take me, and we'll have a weddin' here sure enough."

The words were breathed low into the bride's ear; yet attitude and air were eloquent, and Hands's position and intentions were so notorious, that the proposition might as well have been shouted aloud.

"Lance – you Lance! Callista, honey!" implored the mother's voice distressfully above the moving heads of the crowd. "You chillen wait till I can get thar. Preacher says he'll wed you now. Come on back in here."

"Yes, and when you git that feller back in here a-standin' before Preacher Drumright to be wedded, you'll toll a wild buck up to a tainted spring," chuckled old Ajax Gentry.

Lance only smiled. The lover, all aglow, rejected with contempt this maimed thing they would thrust upon him for a marriage. He was leading Callista's horse to the porch edge that she might mount, when he glanced up and found how strongly the pressure was being put upon his girl. The sight arrested his hurrying steps, and turned him instantly into the semblance of an indifferent bystander.

"Honey, they say a good brother makes a good husband," Little Liza was booming on in what she fondly believed was a tone audible only to Callista. "I tell you Flenton is the best brother any gals ever had."

Cleaverage stood gazing at them with eyes indecipherable, then – turned his back.

"And look at Lance Cleaverage," exhorted Little Liza, "a drinkin', coon-huntin', banjo playin' feller that don't darken the doors of a church – his own sister cain't never name him without tellin' how wicked he is. Let him go, honey – you let him go, an' take Flent."

Lance, standing with his back to them, holding his horses, had begun to whistle. At first the sound was scarcely to be heard above the babel of voices in the lighted room – but it came clearly to Callista's ears. Flenton's hand reached hers; Ellen joined her entreaties to those of Little Liza. Callista, while not a church member, had always aligned herself with the ultra-religious element; she had been the companion and peer of those eminently fitted and ever ready to sit in judgment on the unworthy. Now she heard all these joining to condemn Lance.

The tune outside went seeking softly among the turns and roulades with which Lance always embellished a melody. It was the song he had sung under her window. Her heart remembered the words.

"How many years, how many miles,

Far from the door where my darling smiles?

How many miles, how many years.?"

His musing, eyes were on the far line of mountains, velvety black against the luminous blackness of the sky; his gaze rested thoughtfully on a great star that hung shining in the dusk over the horizon's edge. He seemed deaf to the clatter and squabble, blind to the movement in the room behind him. Softly he whistled, like a man wandering pensive beside a lonely sea, or in some remote, solitary forest, a man untouched by the more immediate and human things of life. The two horses after snorting and pulling back at first sight of the unaccustomed lights and the noisy voices, put down their noses toward the long, lush dooryard grass.

"He ain't lookin' at you. He ain't a-carin'," Flenton whispered to her.

For the first time Callista glanced directly to where her bridegroom stood. His back was to her – yes, his back was to her. And though the little whistle went questing on with its "How many miles – how many years?" even as her eye rested on him he made a leisurely movement toward one of the horses, like a man who might be about to mount. Swift as a shadow she slipped through the hands of those around her and down the steps.

"Lance," she breathed. "Lance." Then she was in his arms. He had lifted her to the saddle.

"Good land!" wailed Octavia Gentry, "if you've got to go, Sis, they's no use ruinin' yo' frock. Here's your ridin' skirt," and she flourished the long calico garment and struggled to get down to the mounted pair.

Lance was on the other horse now. He paid no attention to any of them, but let his smiling gaze rove for the last time over the lighted windows, the noisy people, the long tables.

"What time will you-all be back?" called the still secretly chuckling old Ajax from the doorway, as he saw them depart.

"Never," answered Lance's clear hail.

"Oh, Lance – ain't you a-goin' to come back and have the weddin'?" began Octavia.

At this the bridegroom turned in his saddle, reining in thoughtfully. He would not accept this mutilated ceremony, yet the wedding of Lance Cleaverage should not be shorn in the eyes of his neighbors. Slowly he wheeled his horse and faced them all once more.

"Callista and me ain't coming back here," he assured them, without heat, yet with decision. "But I bid you-all to an infare at my house tomorrow night."

Then once more he wheeled his pony, caught at Callista's bridle, and sweeping into the big road, started the two forward at a gallop. His arm was round Callista's waist. Her head drooped in the relief of a decision arrived at, and a final abandonment to her real feeling that was almost swoon-like, on the conqueror's shoulder. The horses sprang forward as one.

"Callista – sweetheart," he whispered with his lips against her hair, "we don't want nothin' of them folks back there, do we? We don't want nothin' of anybody in the world. Just you and me – you and me."