Judith of the Cumberlands Part 29

"Oh, no!" disclaimed Pendrilla, joining her sister on the floor at Judith's feet. "They ain't nothin' like foolishness about a sh.o.r.e-enough dumb supper. Why, Judith, Granny Peavey, our maw's mother, told us oncet about a dumb supper that her and two other gals made when she was but sixteen year old, and her sweetheart away from her in Virginny, and she didn't know whar he was at, an' they brought her tales agin him."

"Well?" prompted Judith feverishly. "Did it do any good? Did she find out anything?"

"Her and two others went to a desarted house at midnight--you know that's the way, Jude."

Judith nodded impatiently.

"They tuck 'em each some bread an' salt, an' a candle to put the pins in and name. They done everything backwards--ye have to do everything backwards at a dumb supper. I don't know what happened when the candle burned down to the other girls' pins--I forget somehow--but when the pin Granny had stuck in the candle an' named for her lover was melted out and fell, the do' opened and in he walked and set down beside her. They wasn't a word said betwixt 'em. He tasted her salt, an' he et her bread; and then he was gone like a flash! And at that very same identical time that thar young man was a-crossin' the mountains of Virginny. It drawed him--don't you see, Judith?--it drawed him to Granny. He came back to her, sh.o.r.e enough, three months after, and they was wedded. He was our grandpap, Adoniram Peavey--and every word of that's true."

Judith sank lower in her splint-bottomed chair, looking fixedly above the flaxen heads at her knees, out through the open door, across the chip pile, and away to the bannered splendours of the autumn slopes.

Cliantha laid her head in Judith's lap and began to whimper.

"They's awful things chanced at them thar dumb suppers," she shivered. "I hearn tell of one gal that never had no true-love come, but jest a big black coffin hopped in at the do' and b.u.mped around to her place and stopped 'side of her. My law, I believe I'd die ef sech as that should chance whar I was at!"

Judith's introverted gaze dropped to the girl's face.

"I reckon that gal died," she suggested musingly, "I don't know as I'd care much ef the coffin come for me. Unless--he--was to come, I'd ruther it would be the coffin. Pendrilly," with a sudden upflash of interest, "what is it that comes? Is it the man hisself--or a ghost?"

"'T ain't a ghost--a sh.o.r.e-enough ha'nt," argued Pendrilla soberly, sitting back on her heels, "not unless 'n the man's dead, hit couldn't be. Hit wasn't no ha'nt of Grandpap Peavey--and yet hit wasn't grandpap hisself. I reckon it was a sort of seemin'--jest like a vision in the Bible. Don't you, Jude?"

"I 'low," put in Cliantha doubtfully, "that if the right feller is close by when he's called by a dumb supper, he comes hisself. But ef he's away off somewhars that he cain't git to the place, then this here seemin'

comes. An' ef he's dead and gone--why you'll see his ha'nt."

"They's jest three of us," whispered Pendrilla. "Three is the right number--but I know in my soul I'd be scared till I wouldn't be no manner of use to anybody."

"Hit's comin' close to Hollow Eve," suggested Cliantha. "That's the time to hold a dumb supper ef one ever should be held. Hit'll work then, ef it wouldn't on no other night of the year."

"It has to be held in a desarted house," Pendrilla reiterated the condition. "Ef you was to hold a dumb supper, Jude, we could go to the old Bonbright house itse'f--ef we had any way to git in."

"I've got the key," said Judith scarcely above her breath. "Creed left it with me away last April, to get things for the--for the play-party."

Chapter XXIII

The Dumb Supper

It was the thirty-first of October, All Souls' eve, that mystic point of contact between the worlds when quick and dead are fabled to walk the ways of earth together, to meet eye to eye, and hold converse. A web of mountain legend clings dimly about this season.

The spirit of it--weird, elfin--was abroad, the air was full of it as, alone out in the gusty darkness of the autumn night, at eleven o'clock, Judith walked swiftly toward the Lusk place. Wrapped in a little packet she carried bread and salt, and a length of candle. She went across fields, and thus cut down the distance till it was possible to walk it in fifteen minutes.

As she approached the house, Speaker, a barely grown hound-pup, came rollicking out to meet her, leaping about her shoulder-high, frisking back toward the porch and waiting for her, all the while barking joyously.

"My Lord!" said Pendrilla's sleepy small voice when Judith tapped on their window in the wing of the building where the girls roomed. "Ef that thar fool hound-pup ain't loose! I hope he don't wake up Grandpap. Cain't you make him hush, Judith?"

Judith stooped and caressed the dog for a moment, quieting him. The girls presently appeared in the doorway fully dressed and, as it seemed, with their packets made, in addition to which Cliantha carried an old lantern unlighted in her hand.

"I'll light it as soon as we get out in the road," she announced whisperingly.

When they would have secured the dog that he might not follow them, they found that he, wise for his age, had disappeared.

"I bet he's run down the road apiece; he'll be a-hidin' in the bushes waitin' for us," Cliantha opined pessimistically. But there was nothing to be done about it, and they set out, to be intercepted in just such manner as she foretold.

"I vow, I ain't so mighty sorry Speaker's along of us," Pendrilla said after they had vainly browbeaten, threatened, and stoned the hound to drive him back through the gate. "He's a mighty heap of company and protection out thisaway in the night."

"Girls," said Judith, suddenly halting them all in the little byroad which they were travelling, "don't you think we'd better cut across here?

Hit'll be a lot nearer."

"Grandpap's jest ploughed that thar field to put in his winter wheat,"

objected Pendrilla. "Hit'll make mighty bad walkin'."

"But we'll get there quicker," urged Judith feverishly, and that closed the argument. Between them the Lusk girls had succeeded in lighting the old lantern; by its illumination the party climbed the rail fence, and struggled for some distance across the loose hillocks of ploughed ground.

"Hit wouldn't make such awful walkin' if it had been drug," Cliantha murmured. In the mountains they hitch a horse to a log or a large piece of brush and, dragging this over the ploughed ground, make shift to smooth it without a harrow.

They had hobbled about one third of the toilsome way when there came a rush of galloping hoofs, the girls had barely time to crouch and cry out, Speaker barked loud, and suddenly half a dozen young calves ran almost into them.

"Oh landy!" cried Pendrilla. "Ef them thar calves ain't broke the fence again! Grandpap will be so mad--and we don't darst to tell him that we know of it."

"Come on," urged Judith. "We've got to get over there."

But it was found when they would have moved forward that they could not shake off their unwelcome escort. The calves had been tended occasionally in the dusk by a man with a lantern, and they hailed this one as a beacon of hope. Finally even Judith, desperately impatient to be gone, agreed that they would have to turn back and put the meddlesome creatures into their pasture and lay up the fence before they could make any progress.

"Hit'll save time," she commented briefly, as though time were the only thing worth considering now.

At last, one after the other, they climbed the fence at the side of the Bonbright place. The air was soft, heavy with coming rain. Up through the weed-grown yard they went, greeted and beckoned by the odours of Mary Bonbright's garden, thyme and southernwood, herbs by the path-side, clumps of brave chrysanthemums, a wandering spray or two of late-blooming honeysuckle. Judith trembled and locked her teeth together in anguish as she remembered that other night in the odorous dusk when she and Creed had stood under these trees and sought in the darkness for the bush of sweet-scented shrub.

The empty house bulked big and black before them in the gloom. She took the key from her pocket and opened the front door, Pendrilla and Cliantha clinging to her in an ecstasy of delicious terror. She stepped into the front room, struck a match, and lighted her candle. It was half-past eleven by the small nickel alarm-clock which she carried. Its busy, bustling, modern tick roused strange, incongruous echoes in the old house, and reproved their errand.

Speaker made himself at home, coming in promptly, seeking out the corner he preferred, and turning around dog-fashion before he lay down and composed himself to half-waking slumbers.

"I reckon in here will be the best place," murmured Cliantha, seeking a candlestick from the mantel for their light. "We could set around this table."

"It's more better ef we-all set on the flo'," reminded Pendrilla doubtfully. "Don't ye ricollect? all the dumb suppers we ever hearn tell of was held thataway. Set on the flo' and put yo' bread and salt on the flo' in front of you."

"Mebbe that's becaze they was held in desarted houses, and most generally desarted houses don't have no tables nor chairs in 'em," Cliantha speculated.

From the moment the lantern revealed the room to them, Judith had stood drawn back against the wall curiously rigid, her hand at her lip, her over-bright eyes going swiftly from one remembered object to another.

This fleeting gaze fixed itself at last on the inner door.

"I'll go in the other room a minute for--for something," she whispered finally. "You gals set here. I'll be right back. I've got two candles."

She lighted the second candle, left the girls arranging the dumb supper, and stole, as though some one had called her, into that room which she had made ready for Creed's occupancy on the night of the play-party. It had reverted to its former estate of dust and neglect. She looked about her with blank, desolate eyes which finally found upon the bed a withered brown something that held her gaze as she crept toward it--the wreath of red roses!

There it was, the pitiful little lure she had put forward to Love, the garland she had set in place to show Creed how fine a housewife she was, how grandly she would keep his home for him. The brave red roses, the bold laughing red roses, their crimson challenge was shrivelled to darkened shreds, each golden heart was a pinch of black dust; only the th.o.r.n.y stems remained to show what queen of blossoms had been there.