Southern Lights and Shadows Part 6

For days Sammy had been in a very ill-promising mood; but he brightened as the foster-parents drove away in the bleak, gray, hostile forenoon, Huldy helping Aunt Cornelia to dress and make ready, tucking her lovingly into the wagon and beneath the thick old quilt.

The elder woman yearned over the girl with a mother's compa.s.sionate tenderness. Both Aunt Cornelia and Pap John looked with a pa.s.sionate, delighted antic.i.p.ation to when they would have their own child's baby upon their hearth. It was the more notable marks of this tenderness, of this joyous antic.i.p.ation, which Sammy had begun to resent--the gifts and the labors showered upon the young wife in relation to her coming importance, which he had barely come short of refusing and repelling. "Whose wife is she, I'd like to know? Looks like I cain't do nothin' for my own woman--a-givin' an' a-givin' to Huldy, like she was some po' white trash, some beggar!" But he had only "sulled," as his mother called it, never quite able to reach the point he desired of actually flinging the care, the gifts, and the loving labors back in the foster-parents' faces.

Pappy Blackshears pa.s.sed away quietly in the evening; and when he had been made ready for his grave by Cornelia's hands, her anxiety for the little daughter at home would not let her remain longer.

"I'm jest 'bleeged to go to Huldy," she explained to the relatives and neighbors gathered at the old Blackshears place. "I p'intedly da.s.sent to leave her over one night--and not a soul with her but Sammy, and he nothin'

but a chile--and not a neighbor within a mild of our place--and sech a night! Pap and me we'll hitch up an' mak' 'as'e back to Huldy. We'll be here to the funeral a Sunday--but I da.s.sent to stay away from Huldy nair another hour now." And so, at ten o'clock that bitter night, Pap and Aunt Cornelia came hurrying home.

As the wagon drove up the mountain trail to the house, the hounds came belling joyously to meet them; but no light gleamed cheerfully from the windows; no door was flung gayly open; no little Huldy cried out her glad greeting. Filled with formless apprehensions, Pap climbed over the wheel, lifted Cornelia down, and dreading they knew not what, the two went,--holding by each other's hand,--opened the door, and entered, shrinking and reluctant. They blew the smouldering coals to a little flame, piled on light-wood till the broad blaze rolled up the chimney, then looked about. No living soul was in any room. Finally Cornelia caught sight of a bit of paper stuck upon the high mantel. She tore it down, and the two read slowly and laboriously together the few lines written in Sammy's hand:

"I ain't going to allow my wife to live off any man's charity. I ain't going to be made to look like nothing in the eyes of people any longer.

I've taken my wife to my own place, where I can support her myself. I had to borrow your ox-cart and steers to move with, and Huldy made me bring some things she said mother had give her, but I'll pay all this back, and more, for I intend to be independent and not live on any man's bounty.

"Respectfully, your son,

"SAMUEL"

The two old faces, pallid and grief-struck, confronted each other in the shaken radiance of the pine fire.

"Oh, my po' chile, my po' little Huldy! Whar? His own place! My law!--whar?

Whar has he drug that little soul?"

An intuition flashed into Pap Overholt's mind. He grasped his wife's arm.

"W'y, Cornely," he cried, "hit's that cabin on The Bench! Don't ye know, honey? I give him that land when he was sixteen year old,--time he brung the prize home from the school down in the settlemint."

"The Bench! Oh, Lord--The Bench! W'y, hit 'll be the death of her. John, we cain't git to her too quick." And she ran from cupboard to press, from press to chest, from chest to bureau drawer, piling into John's arms the flask of brandy, the homely medicines, the warm garments, such bits of food as she could catch up that were palatable and portable. Pap, with more vulnerable emotions and less resolute nature, was incapable of speech; he could only suffer dumbly.

Arrived at the abandoned cabin on The Bench, the picture that greeted them crushed Pap's soft heart to powder, but roused in Aunt Cornelia a rage that would have resulted in a sharp settlement with Sammy, had it not been that, now as always, to reach the offender a blow must go through that same pitiful heart of John's. The young people had not long been at the cabin when the parents arrived. The little Huldy, moaning piteously, with a stricken, terrified look in her big, childish eyes, was crouched upon the floor beside a rickety chair. Sammy, sullen and defiant, was at the desolate hearth, fumbling with unskilled hands at the sodden chunks of wood he had there gathered.

The situation was past words. Pap, after one look at Huldy, went about the fire-building, the slow tears rolling down his cheeks. While Aunt Cornelia brought the bedding, the warm blankets and wrappings, and made the little suffering creature a comfortable couch, Pap wrought at the forlorn, gaping fireplace like a suffering giant. When the leaping flames danced and shouted up the chimney till the whole cabin was filled with the physical joy of their light and warmth, when steaming coffee and the hastily fetched food had been served to the others, and the little wife lay quietly for the moment, the two elders talked together outside where a corner of the cabin cut off the driving sleet. Then Sammy was included, and another council was held, this time of three.

No. He would not budge. That was _his_ wife. A fellow that was man enough to have a wife ought to be man enough to take keer of her. He wasn't going to have his child born in the house of charity. There was no thoroughfare.

Sammy was allowed to withdraw, and the council of two was resumed. As a result of its deliberations, Pap John drove away through the darkness and the sleet. By midnight two trips had been made between the big double log house at the Overholt place and the wretched cabin on The Bench, and all that Sammy would suffer to be brought to them or done for them had been brought and done. The cabin was, in a very humble way, inhabitable. There was food and a small provision for the immediate present. And here, upon that wild March night of screaming wind and sleet, and with only Aunt Cornelia as doctor and nurse, Huldy's child was born.

And now a new order of things began.

Sammy's energies appeared to be devoted to the thwarting of Pap Overholt's care and benefits. There should be no cow brought to the cabin; and so Pap John, who was getting on in years now, and had long since given up hard, active work, hastened from his bed at four o'clock in the morning, milked a cow, and carried the pail of fresh milk to Huldy and the baby, furtively, apologetically. The food, the raiment, everything had to be smuggled into the house little by little, explained, apologized for. The land on The Bench was rich alluvial soil. Sammy, in his first burst of independence, ploughed it (borrowing mule and plough from a neighbor--the one neighbor ever known to be on ill terms with Pap Overholt), and planted it to corn.

He put in a little garden, too; while Pap had achieved the establishment of a small colony of hens (every one of whom, it appeared, laid two or three eggs each day--at least that was the way the count came out).

The baby thrived, unconscious of all the grief, the perverse cruelty, the baffled, defeated tenderness about her, and was the light of Pap Overholt's doting eyes, the delight of Aunt Cornelia's heart. When she was eighteen months old, and could toddle about and run to meet them, and chattered that wonderful language which these two hearts of love had all their lives yearned to hear--the dialect of babyhood,--the twin boys came to the cabin on The Bench. And Pap Overholt's lines were harder than ever. Cornelia had sterner stuff in her. She would have called a halt.

"Oh, John!" she expostulated finally, when she saw her husband come home crestfallen one day, with a ham which Sammy had detected him smuggling into the cabin and ordered back,--"John honey, ef you was to stop toting things to the cabin and let it all alone--not pester with it another--"

"Cornely, Cornely!" cried Pap John, "you know Sammy cain't no mo' keep a wife and chillen than a p.e.c.k.e.rwood kin. W'y, they'd starve! Huldy and the chaps would jest p'intedly starve."

"No, they won't, John. Ef you could master yo' own soft heart--ef you could stay away (like he's tole ye a minny a time to do, knowin' 'at you was safe not to mind him)--Sammy would stop this here foolishness. He'd come to his senses and be thankful for what the Lord sent, like other people. W'y, John--"

"Cornely honey--don't. Don't ye say another word. I tell ye, this last year there's a feelin' in my throat and in my breast--hyer,"--he laid his hand pathetically over his heart,--"a cur'us, gone, flutterin' feelin'. And when Sammy r'ars up and threatens he'll take Huldy and the chaps--you know,"--he finished with a gesture of the hand and a glance of unspeakable pain,--"when he does that 'ar way, or something comes at me sudden like that--that we may lose 'em, hit seems like--right hyer,"--and his hand went again to his heart,--"that I can't bear it--that hit 'll take my life."

This was the last time Cornelia ever remonstrated with Pap John. She had a little talk with the new doctor from Hepzibah who bad succeeded old Dr.

Pastergood; and after that John was added to the list of her anxieties. He might carry the milk to the cabin on The Bench; he might slip in, when he deemed Sammy away--or asleep--and plough the corn; she saw the tragic folly of it, but must be silent. And so on that particular June morning, when Pap had put up the mule, clambered down the short-cut footway from The Bench to the old house, stopping several times to shake his head again and murmur to himself--"Whut you gwine do? There's them chaps; there's Huldy. Mustn't plough his co'n; mustn't take over air cow. Whut you gwine do?"--Aunt Cornelia's seeing eye noted his perturbation the moment he came in at the door. With tender guile she built up a considerable argument in the matter of a quarterly meeting which was approaching--the grove quarterly, in which Pap John was unfailingly interested, and during which there were always from two to half a dozen preachers, old and young, staying with them. So she led him away--ever so little away--from his ever-present grief.

It was the next day that he said to her, "Cornely, I p'intedly ain't gwine to suffer this hyer filchin' o' co'n them Fusons is a-keepin' up on me."

"Is the Fusons a-stealin' yo' co'n, John?" she responded, in surprise.

"W'y, they got a-plenty, ain't they?"

"Well, no, not adzactly, that is to say, Buck Fuson ain't got a-plenty. He too lazy and shif'less to make co'n of his own; and he like too well to filch co'n from them he puts his spite on. Buck Fuson he tuck a spite at me, last time the raiders was up atter that Fuson hideout; jes set up an'

swore 'at I'd gin the word to 'em. You see, honey, he makes him up a spite that-a-way--jes out o' nothin'--'cause hit's sech a handy thing to have around when he comes to want co'n. Thar's some one already purvided to steal from--some one 'at's done him a injury."

"Pappy! W'y, Johnny honey, sakes alive! What air ye ever a-gwine to do 'long o' that there thing?" For the old man had laboriously fetched out a rusty wolf-trap, and was now earnestly inspecting and overhauling it.

"Whut am I a-gwine to do 'long o' this hyer, Cornely? W'y, I am jes p'intedly a-gwine to set it in my grain-room. Buck Fuson air a bad man, honey. There's two men's blood to his count. They cain't nothin' be done to him for nair a one of 'em--you know, same's I do--'ca'se hit cain't be proved in a co't o' law. But I kin ketch him in this meanness with this hyer little jigger, and I'm a-gwine to do hit, jest ez sure ez my name's John Overholt!"

"Oh, Pappy! A leetle bit o' co'n fer a man's chillen--"

"Now, Cornely honey, that's a womern! Buck Fuson is the wrong kind o' man to have round. He's ben a stealin' my co'n now fer two weeks and mo'. Ef I kin ketch him right out, and give him a fa'r shamin', he'll quit the Turkey Tracks fer good. So fer as Elmiry and the chaps is consarned, they'll be better off without Buck 'n what they is with him."

At this moment Aunt Cornelia cried out joyously, "Oh, thar's my chile!" and ran to meet her daughter-in-law. The little girl--Cornelia the second--could navigate bravely by herself now, and Huldy was carrying the l.u.s.ty twin boys. In the flutter of delight over this stolen visit, the ugly wolf-trap threat was forgotten. It had been a month and more since Sammy had set foot in his parents' house. It had gone all over both Turkey Tracks that Sam Overholt declared he would never darken Pap Overholt's door again--Pap Overholt, who had tried to make a pauper of him, loading him with gifts and benefits, like he was shif'less, no-'count white trash! The little Huldy reported him gone to Far Canaan, over beyond Big Turkey Track, in the matter of some employment, which he had not deigned to make clearer to his wife. He would not be back until the day after to-morrow; and meantime she might stay with the old folks two whole days and nights! In the severe school to which life had put her, the little Huldy had developed an astonishing amount of character, of shrewdness, and perception, and a very fair philosophy of her own. To the elder woman's sad observation that it was mighty strange what made Sammy so "onthankful" and so "ha'sh" to his pappy, who had done so much for him, Huldy responded,

"No, Aunt Cornely, hit ain't strange, not a bit."

"Ain't strange? Huldy child, what do you mean?"

"W'y, don't you know, Aunt Cornely, ef he do Pappy that-a-way, when Pappy do so much fer him, then he don't have to be thankful. When everybody's a-tellin' him, 'Yo' pap's so kind, yo' pap does everything for you; look like you cain't be good enough to him,' he 'bleeged to find some way to shake off all that thankfulness 'at's sech a burden to him. And so when Pappy come a-totin' milk, an' a-totin' pork, an' a-ploughin' his co'n outen the weeds, w'y, Sammy jest draw down his face an' look black at Pappy, and make like he mad at him--like he don't want none o' them things--like Pappy jest pesterin' round him fer nothin'. but meanness. Now mind, Aunt Cornely, I ain't say Sammy knows this his own se'f. But I studied Sammy mighty well, an' _I_ know. Sammy gittin' tell he do me the same way. I wait on him hand and foot; I cook his bacon jest like he tol' me you did it fer him. I fix everything the best I kin (and mebby all three of the chillen a-cryin'

after me); and when he come in and see it all ready, and see how hard I got it, and seem like there's a call fer him to be thankful, then Sammy jest turns on hit all. He draw down his face at me and he say, black like: 'I don't want no bacon--what did you fix that shirt for that-a-way? Take away that turnip sallet--I cain't git nothin' like I want it.' Then, you know,"

with a little smile up into the other's face, half pitiful, half saucy,--"Then you know, Sammy don't have to be thankful. Hit was all done wrong."

It was the next evening--Sat.u.r.day evening. The entire household (which included Elder Justice and two young preachers from Big Turkey Track, with Brother Tarbush, one of the new exhorters) had returned from the afternoon's meeting in the grove. Supper had been eaten and cleared away.

The babies had been put to sleep; the two women and the five men--all strong and striking types of the Southern mountaineer--were gathered for the evening reading and prayer. Elder Justice, now nearly eighty years old, a beautiful and venerable person, had opened the big Bible, and after turning the leaves a moment, raised his grave, rugged face and read: "'Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death.'"

He paused, and on the intense stillness which followed the ceasing of his voice--the silence of evening in the deep mountains--there broke a long, shrill, agonized scream.

As every one of the little circle leaped to his feet, Aunt Cornelia's eyes sought her husband's face, and his hers. After that grinding, terrible cry, the stillness of the night was unstirred. Pap Overholt sprang to the hearth--where even in the midsummer months a log smoulders throughout the day, to be brightened into a cheery blaze mornings and evenings,--seized a brand, one or two of the others following his example, and ran through the doorway, across the little chip-yard, making for the low-browed log barn and the grain-room beside it.

None who witnessed that scene ever forgot it. Each one told it afterward in his own way, declaring that not while he lived could the remembrance of it pa.s.s from his mind. Pap Overholt's tall figure leaped crouching through the low doorway, and next instant lifted the blazing brand high above his head; the others followed, doing the same. There by the grain-bin, with ashy countenance and shaking limbs, the sweat of anguish upon his forehead, his eyes roving dumbly around the circle of faces revealed by the flickering light of the brands--there with the dreadful wolf-trap (locked by its chain to a stanchion) hanging to his right arm, its fangs bitten through and through the flesh, stood Sammy.

Pap Overholt's mind refused at first to understand. He had known (with that sort of moral a.s.surance which makes a thing as real to us as the evidence of the senses themselves) that it was Buck Fuson who had been stealing his grain. He had set his trap to catch Buck Fuson; not instantly could the mere sight of his eyes convince him that the trapped thief was the petted, adored, perverse son, who had refused his father's bounty when it had seemed the little wife and babies must starve. When he did realize, the cry that burst from his heart brought tears to all the eyes looking upon him.

Down went the tall, broad figure, down into the dust of the grain-room floor. And there Pap Overholt grovelled on his knees, his white head almost at the thief's feet, crying, crying that old cry of David's: "Oh, Sammy, my son! My son, Sammy! An' I wouldn't 'a' touched a hair o' his head. My G.o.d!

have mercy on my soul, that would 'a' fed him my heart's blood--an' he wouldn't take bite nor sup from my hand. Oh, Sammy! what did you want to do this to yo' po' old pappy fer?"

Elder Justice, quick and efficient at eighty years, had sprung to the lad's right arm, two of the younger men close after. Aunt Cornelia held her piece of blazing light-wood for them while they cut away the sleeve and made ready to bear apart the powerful jaws of the trap. The little Huldy had said never a word. Her small, white face was strained; but it did not bear the marks of shock and of horror that were written on every other countenance there. When they had grasped jaws and lever, and Elder Justice's kind voice murmured, "Mind now, Sammy. Hold firm, son; we air a-gwine to pull 'em back. Brace yo'se'f," the boy's haggard eyes sought his mother's face.

"Le' me take it, Aunt Cornely," whispered Huldy, loosing the light-wood from the elder woman's hand and leaving her free. And the next moment Sammy's left hand was clasped tight in his mother's; he turned his face round to her broad breast and hid it there; and there he sobbed and shook as the savage jaws came slowly back.