Judith of the Cumberlands Part 10

All eyes in the room turned to Blatchley Turrentine, the women in a flutter of terrified apprehension, the men with a brightening of interest; surely he would resent this interference in some notable manner. But Blatch was in fact too deadly to be merely high-tempered, quick in anger. For a moment he stared at Bonbright, trying to look him down; then those odd, whitey-grey eyes narrowed to mere slits. He laid the matter up in his mind; this was not the time for settling it--here before Judith Barrier and the women. He did not mean to content himself with mere fisticuffs, or even a chance pocket-knife which might double in his grasp and cut his own hand. To the immense surprise of everybody he stretched out his long arms, caught carelessly at the fingers of a player on either side of him, and, mending the line, began to move in rhythmic time to the fiddle.

It was soon observable that Creed Bonbright's presence caused Huldah Spiller's spirits to mount several notes in the octave. Whether it was that her own betrothed was looking on, and this an excellent chance to show him that even the town feller felt her charm, or merely Creed's personal attractions could hardly be guessed.

"Come on," she cried recklessly, "let's play 'Over the River to Feed my Sheep.' Strike up the tune, Wade."

The game she mentioned was also a forfeit play, with the difference that the kiss was more certain, being taken of mere choice--though delivered, of course, with due maidenly reluctance and a show of resisting--whenever the girl facing one could be caught over the line. All the young people played it; all the elders deprecated it. At the bottom of Judith's heart lay one reason for making a play-party and bidding Creed Bonbright to it; and now Huldah Spiller was blatantly calling out the unconfessed, the unconfessable; Wade was sullenly dropping into the old Scotch air; the long lines were forming, men opposite the girls--and the red-headed minx had placed herself directly across from Creed!

The laughing chains swayed back and forth to the measure of the music--advancing, retreating, pursuing, evading, choosing, rejecting, in a gay parody of courtship. Voices were added to that of the fiddle.

"Hit's over the river to feed my sheep, Hit's over the river to Charley; Hit's over the river to feed my sheep An' to kiss my lonesome darling,"

they sang.

Shadows crouched in the corners, flickering, dancing, threatening to come out and play, then shrinking back as the blaze leaped and the room widened. The rough brown walls took the shine and broidered themselves with a thread of golden tracery. In such an illumination the eyes shone with added l.u.s.ter, flying locks were all hyacinthine, the frocks might have been silks and satins.

In the movement of the game girls and boys divided. The girls tossed beribboned heads in unwonted coquetry, yet showed always, in downcast eyes and the modest management of light draperies, the mountain ideal of maidenhood. Across from them the line of youthful masculinity swayed; tall, lean, brown-faced, keen-eyed young hunters these, sinewy and light and quick of movement, with fine hands and feet, and a lazy pride of bearing. A very different type from that found in the lowlands, or in ordinary rustic communities.

Judith noted the other players not at all; her hot reprehending eyes were on the girl in the blue dress. She did not observe that she herself was dancing opposite Andy, while Pendrilla Lusk dragged with drooping head in the line across from the amiably grinning Doss Provine. Finding herself suddenly in the lead and successful, Huldah began to preen her feathers a bit. She withdrew a hand from the girl on her right to arrange the small string of blue gla.s.s beads around her neck.

"Jest ketch to my skirt for a minute," she whispered loudly. "I reckon hit won't rip, though most of 'em is 'st.i.tches taken for a friend'--I was that anxious to get it done for the party. Oh, Law!"

And then--n.o.body knew how it happened--she was over the line, her hold on the hands of her mates broken, she had tripped and fallen in a giggling blue lawn heap fairly at Bonbright's feet. He was in a position where the least gallant must offer the salute the game demanded, but to make a.s.surance doubly sure Huldah put out her hands like a three-year-old, crying,

"He'p me up, Creed, I b'lieve I've sprained my ankle."

The young fellow from Hepzibah was in a mood for play. After all he was only a big boy, and he had been long barred out from young people's frolics. Here was a gay, toward little soul, who seemed to like him. He stooped and caught her by the waist, picking her up as one might a small child, and holding her a moment with her feet off the floor. Something in the laughing challenge of her face as she protested and begged to be put down prompted him as to what was expected. He kissed her lightly upon the cheek before he released her.

As he set her down he encountered Wade Turrentine's eye. A spark of tawny fire had leaped to life in its hazel depth. The fiddler still clung faithfully to his office. If he missed a note now and again, or played off key, he might be forgiven. It is to be remembered that he sawed away without a moment's pause throughout the entire episode.

Creed reached out to join the broken line and touched Jeff's arm. The boy flung away from the contact with a muttered word. He looked helplessly at Judith, but she would not glance at him; head haughtily erect, long lashes on crimson cheeks, red lip curled to an expression of offence and disdain, the young hostess mended the line by joining the hands of the two girls on each side of her.

"You-all can go on playin' without me," she said in a constrained tone.

"I got to see to something in the other room."

"See here, Mister Man," remarked Blatch, as Judith prepared to leave.

"You're mighty free and permisc'ous makin' rules for kissin' games, but I take notice you don't follow none of 'em yo'se'f."

Judith halted uncertainly. To stop and defend Creed was out of the question. She was about to interpose with the general accusation that Blatch was trying to pick a fuss and break up her play-party, when Iley's voice, for once a welcome interruption, broke in from the doorway.

"Jude, we ain't got plates enough for everybody an' to put the biscuit on," called Jim Cal's wife. "Ax Creed Bonbright could we borry a few from his house."

Judith closed instantly with the diversion. She moved quickly toward the door; Bonbright joined her.

"Why yes," he said. "You know I told you to help yourself. Let me go over now and get what you want. Is there anything else?"

"That's mighty kind of you, Creed," Judith thanked him. "I reckon I better go along with ye and see. I don't think of anything else just now.

Iley, we'll be back quick as we can with all the plates ye need."

Together they stepped out into the soft dusk of the summer night, followed by the narrowed gaze of Blatch Turrentine's grey eyes.

Chapter VIII

On the Doorstone

Behind them the play was resumed in the lighted room; the whining of the fiddle, the thud and stamp of many feet, came to them softened and refined by a little distance. They were suddenly drawn together in that intimacy of two who leave the company and the lights on a special expedition. Judith made an impatient mental effort to release the incident of Huldah and the kiss, which had so unreasonably irritated her.

"If we was to go acrosst fields. .h.i.t would be a heap better," she advised softly, and they moved through the odorous, myriad-voiced darkness of the midsummer night, side by side, without speech, for a time. Then as Creed halted at a dim, straggling barrier which crossed their course and laid down a rail fence partially that she might the more easily get over in her white frock, she returned to the tormenting subject once more, opening obliquely:

"You and Huldy Spiller is old friends I reckon. Don't you think she's a powerful pretty girl?"

"Mighty pretty," echoed Creed absently. All girls were of an even prettiness to him, and Huldah Spiller was a pleasant little thing. He was wondering what he had done back there in the play-room that had set them all against him.

"Her and Wade is goin' to be wedded come September," put in Judith jealously.

"Yo' cousin will be getting a mighty fine wife."

The mountain man is apt to make his comments on the marriages of his friends with dignified formality, and Creed uttered the accustomed phrase without heat or enthusiasm; but it seemed to Judith that he might have said less--or more.

"Well, I never did like red hair," the girl managed to get out finally; "but I reckon hit's better than old black stuff like mine."

"My mother's hair was sorter sandy," Creed answered in his gentle, tolerant fashion. "Mine favours it." And he had not the wit to add that dark hair, however, pleased him best.

Judith stepped beside him for some moments in mortified silence.

Evidently he was green wood and could by none of her old methods be kindled. Then, their eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, they came out into a modified twilight in the clearing about the Bonbright house.

"You better unlock the door and go in first," suggested Judith, in a depressed tone.

"Why, I ain't got the key," Creed reminded her. "I left it with you--didn't you bring it?"

They drew unconsciously close together in the dark with something of the guilty consternation of childish culprits. A mishap of the sort ripens an acquaintance swiftly.

"What a gump I was!" Judith breathed with sudden low laughter. He could see her eyes shining in the gloom, and the dim outline of her figure. "I knowed well an' good you didn't have the key--hit's in the blue bowl on the fire-board at home."

"I ought to have thought of it," a.s.serted Creed shouldering the blame.

"And I'm sorry; I wanted to show you my mother's picture."

"An' _I'm_ sorry," echoed Judith, remembering fleetingly the swept and garnished rooms, the wreath of red roses; "I had something to show you, too."

Nothing was said of the dishes for the merrymakers at Judith's house.

Another interest was obtruding itself into the simple, practical expedition, crowding aside its original purpose. The girl looked around the dim, weed-grown garden, its bushes blots of deeper shadow upon the darkness, its blossoms vaguely conjectured by their odour.

"There used to be a bubby bush--a sweet-scented shrub--over in that corner," Creed hesitated. "I'd like to get you some of the bubbies. My mother used to pick 'em and put 'em in the bureau drawers I remember, and they made everything smell nice."

He had taken her hand and led her with him, advancing uncertainly toward the flowers. He felt her shiver, and halted instantly.