The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage

Without a word of excuse or explanation he dropped the girl's hand as he stood in the ring of players, caught his banjo down from the shelf, and leaving open mouths and staring eyes behind him, strode through the door. A moment later he was footing it out in the moonlight road, walking straight and fast toward the church where protracted meeting was going on, and where he guessed Callista would be with her family. A javelin, flame-tipped, had touched him. Something new and fiery danced in his veins. He would see her home. They would walk together, far behind the family group, in this wonderful white moonlight.

When he reached Brush Arbor church he avoided the young fellows lounging about the entrance waiting to beau the girls. He moved lightly to a window at the back of the building and looked in. There sat Octavia Gentry on the women's side, and old Ajax, her father-in-law, on the men's. Callista he could not find from his coign of vantage. An itinerant exhorter was on his feet, preaching loud, pounding the pulpit, addressing himself now and again to the mourners who knelt about the front bench. Lance cautiously put his head in and looked further. Somehow he knew, all in a moment, that this was what he had expected – what he had hoped for; Callista was at home waiting for him. Yet none the less he carefully examined the middle seats where might be found the courting couples. He would not put it beyond his Callista to go to church with some other swain and sit there publicly advertising her favor to the interloper.

When he was at last satisfied that she was not in the building, he turned as he had turned from Ola Derf, and made a straight path for himself from Brush Arbor to the Gentry place. Scorning the beaten highway of other men's feet, he struck directly into the forest, and through a little grove of second-growth chestnut, with its bunches of silver-gray stems rising slim and white in the light of the moon. Moonshine sifting through the leaves changed his work-a-day clothing to the garb of a troubadour. The banjo hung within easy reach of his fingers; he took off his old hat and tucked it under his arm, striking now and again as he went a twanging chord.

It was an old story to him, this walking the moonlit wild with his banjo for company. Many a time in the year's release, the cool, fragrant, summer-deep forest had called him by its delicate silver nocturnes, its caverns of shadow and milky pools of light, bidden him to a wild spring-running. On such nights his heart could not sleep for song. Sometimes, intoxicated with the rhythm, he had swung on and on, crashing through the dew-drenched huckleberry tangles, rocking a little, with eyes half closed, and interspersing the barbaric jangle of his banjo with quaint jodeling and long, falsetto-broken whoops, the heritage that the Cherokee left behind him in this land. But now it was no mere physical elation of youth and summer and moonlight. It was the supreme urge of his nature that sent his feet forward steadily, swiftly, as toward a purpose that might not be let or stayed. Speed – to Callista – that was all. He fell into silence, even the banjo's thrumming hushed to an intense quivering call of broken chords, hardly to be distinguished from the insect cries of love that filled the summer wood about him.

All the fathomless gulf of the sky was poured full of the blue-green splendors that flooded the night world of the mountains. Drops of dew spilled from leaf to leaf; down in the spring hollow he was spattered to the knees by the thousand soft, reaching fronds of cinnamon fern. Wild fragrances splashed him with great waves of sweetness. So the lords of the wild, under pelt and antler, have ever been wont to rove to their wooing; so restless are the wings that flutter among summer branches and under summer moons.

Between the banjo's murmuring chords, as he neared the Gentry clearing, once more a melody began to stray, like smoke which smoulders fitfully and must presently burst into flame. – Thrum-dum, thrum-dum, and then the tune's low call. It was a gypsy music, that lured with vistas of unknown road, the glint of water, and the sparkle of the hunter's fire; a wildly sweet note that asked, "How many miles?" – and again, out of colorless drumming, "How many years?.. how many miles?".. a song shadow-like in its come-and-go, rising at intervals to the cry of a passion no mortality has power to tame, and then, ere the ear had fairly caught its message, falling again into dim harmonies as of rain blown through the dark; – a question, and the wordless, haunting refrain for all answer. Just above his breath Lance voiced the words:

"How many years, how many miles,

Far from the door where my darling smiles?

How many miles, how many years.

Divide our hearts by pain and fears?"

The melody sank and trailed, drowned in a cadence of minors that sobbed like the rush of storm. Out of this, wild, as the wind's pleading, it rose again;

"It may be far, it may be near,

The water's wide and the forest drear,

But somewhere awaiting, surely I

Shall find my true love by and bye."

The lithe limbs threshed through the dew-drenched, scented undergrowth. The trees grew more openly now; clearing was at hand.

" – My true love – by and bye,"

hummed the light, sweet baritone.

Callista had petulantly refused to go to church with her mother and grandfather. For no reason which she could assign, she wanted to be alone. Then when they were all gone, she wished she had accompanied them. An indefinable disquiet possessed her. She could not stay in the house. Candle in hand she sought an outside cabin where stood the loom. Climbing to the loft room of this she set her light down and began to search out some quilt pieces, which she figured to herself as the object of her present excursion. Though she would have denied it with scorn, the idea of Lance Cleaverage filled her completely; Lance, the man who was preparing to marry her, yet upon whom – of all those who had come near her, in the free, fortuitous commerce of marriageable youth in the mountains – she had, it seemed to her, been able to lay no charm, to exert no influence. He met her; he exchanged cut and thrust with her, and he went his ways after their encounters, neither more nor less than he had been before. He came back seemingly at the dictates of time and chance only, and never hotter nor colder, never hastening to nor avoiding her. A bitterness tinged all her thought… She wondered if she would have seen him had she gone to meeting.. She reflected jealously that he was much more likely to be at the frolic at Derf's… She wished she knew how to dance.

All at once, on the vague introspection of her mood, she became aware of the recurrent stroke of a soft musical note – the humming of Lance's banjo. Crouching rigidly by the little chest that held her quilt scraps, she listened. It was a trick of the imagination – she had thought so much about him that she fancied him near. Then, with a sudden heavy beating of the heart, she realized that if he had been at the dance and gone home early he might be passing now on the big road. She smiled at her own folly; this tremulous low call could never be heard across two fields and the door-yard.

And it was a banjo.. it was Lance's banjo.. he was playing whisperingly, too, as he loved to do.

Then the strings ceased to whisper. Clearer came their voice and louder. Without thinking to extinguish her candle, she ran to the window and knelt hearkening. She looked down on the moonlit yard. All was silent and homely.. but that was Lance's banjo. Even as she came to this decision. Lance himself broke through the greenery at the edge of the near field, vaulted a low fence, and emerged into the open. He came on in the soft light, singing a little, apparently to himself.

Spellbound she listened, gripping the window ledge hard, holding her breath, choking, wondering what this new thing was that had come to her. Above him she was set like a saint enshrined, with the moonlight to silver her rapt, shining face, and the glow of the candle behind making a nimbus of her fair hair. Yet never at all (or she thought so) did Lance look up. Light footed, careless of mien, he circled the house once, still humming under his breath, and striking those odd, tentative chords on the banjo. Then, abruptly, when she had realized her position and would have hidden herself, or put out the candle which betrayed her, he stopped under her window and with upflung head was smiling straight into her eyes. She rallied her forces and prepared for the duel which always ensued when she and Lance met. She would give him as good as he sent. She would tell him that she had stayed away from church for fear she should see him. If he hinted that she had expected this visit, she would – she would say —

But this was a new Lance Cleaverage looking into her eyes – a man Callista had never seen before. Subtly she knew it, yet scarcely dared trust the knowledge. The young fellow below in the moonlight sent up no challenge to a trial of wits; he offered her no opportunity for sarcastic retort. Tossing aside his hat, making ready his banjo, he lifted his head so that the lean, dark young face with its luminous eyes was raised fully to her in the soft radiance, and struck some chords – strange, thrilling, importunate chords – then began to sing.

The serenade is a cherished courtship custom of primitive societies. Lance Cleaverage, the best banjo player in the Turkey Tracks, with a flexible, vibrant, colorful baritone voice, had often gone serenading with the other boys; but this – tonight – was different. He felt like singing, and singing to Callista; for the moment it was his form of expression. What he sang was his own version of an old-world ballad, with his love's name in place of the Scottish girl's to whom it was addressed three hundred years ago in the highlands of another hemisphere. Unashamed, unafraid – would anything ever make Lance either ashamed or afraid? – he stood in the white moonlight and sent forth his passionate, masterful call of love on the wings of song.

Callista's heart beat wildly against her arms where she rested on the window sill. Her lips were apart, and the breath came through them quick and uneven. Despite herself, she leaned forward and looked back into the eyes that gazed up at her. Was this Lance, the indifferent, taunting, insouciant, here under her window alone, looking up so at her – playing, singing, to her? Oh, yes, it was Lance. He wanted her, said the swift importunate notes of the banjo, the pleading tones of his voice, the bold yet loverlike attitude of the man. He wanted her. Well – a flood of tender warmth rose in her – she wanted him! For the first time probably in her life – misshapen, twisted to the expression of the coquette, the high and mighty, scornful miss who finds no lover to her taste – Callista was all a woman. The fires of her nature flamed to answer the kindred fire of his. The last, teasing note of the banjo quavered into silence. Lance pulled the ribbon over his head, laid the instrument by – without ever taking his eyes from her face – and said, hardly above a whisper,

"Callista, honey, come down."

No retort was ready for him.

"I – oh, I can't, Lance," was all Callista could utter.

With a "Well, I'm a-comin' up there, then," he sprang into the muscadine vine whose rope-like trunks ran up around the doorway below her. She only caught her breath and watched in desperate anxiety the reckless venture. And when he reached the level of her window, when, swinging insecurely in a loop of the vine, he stretched his arms to her, ready arms answered him and went round his neck. A face passion pale was raised to him, and eager, tremulous lips met his.

They drew apart an instant, then Callista – overwhelmed, frightened at herself – with a swift movement hid her face on his breast. He bent over her, and laid his dark cheek against hers, that was like a pearl. His arms drew her closer, closer; the two young hearts beat plungingly against each other. The arms that strained Callista so hard to Lance's breast trembled, and her slender body trembled within them. Lance's shining eyes closed.

67 "Callista – honey – darlin'," he whispered brokenly, "you do love me."

"Oh, Lance – Oh, Lance!" she breathed back.

And then his lips went seeking hers once more. She lifted them to him, and the lovers clung long so. The world swung meaninglessly on in space. The two clasped close in each other's arms were so newly, so intensely, blindingly, electrically awake to themselves and to each other, that they were utterly insensible to all else.

Finally Lance raised his head a bit. He drew a long, sobbing breath, and laying his face once more against the girl's murmured with tender fierceness,

"An' we ain't going to wait for no spring, neither. You'll wed me to-morrow – well, next week, anyway" – as he felt her start and struggle feebly.

"Oh, Lance – honey – no," she began. But he cut her short with vehement protestations and demands. He covered her face, her hair, her neck with kisses, and then declared again and again, in a voice broken with feeling, that they would be wedded the next week – they wouldn't wait – they wouldn't wait.

Shaken, amazed by her own emotions, terrified at the rush of his, Callista began to plead with him; and when that availed nothing, save to inflame his ardor, her cry was,

"Yes, Lance. Yes – all right – we will. We will, Lance – whenever you say. But go now, honey, won't you – please? Oh, Lance! They'll be coming home any minute now. If they was to find you here. Lance – Won't you go now, please, honey? Lance, darlin', please. I'll do just like you say – next week – any time, Lance. Only go now."

There was no sense of denying, or drawing herself back, in Callista's utterance. It was only the pleading of maiden terror. When Lance acquiesced, when he crushed her to him in farewell, her arms went round him once more, almost convulsively; with an equal ardor, her lips met the fierce, dominating kiss of his.

He got down from the window, his head whirling. Mechanically he found his banjo, flung the ribbon over his neck and turned the instrument around so that it hung across his shoulders. Thus, and with his hat again tucked under his arm, without ever looking back toward the house, he walked swiftly and unsteadily away, once more through the young chestnut wood, with its dapplings of shadow and moonlight. He dipped into the hollow where the spring branch talked to itself all night long in the silence and the darkness under the twisted laurel and rhododendrons; once more he stood on the little tonsured hill above the church. The lights were out; they had all gone home.

Below him was spread his world; the practised eye of this free night rover could have located every farm and cabin, as it all lay swimming in this wonderful, bewitched half-light. Those were his kindred and his people; but he had always been a lonely soul among them. The outposts of levity which he had set about the citadel of his heart had never been passed by any. Tonight, with an upheaval like birth or death, he had broken down the barriers and swept another soul in beside him; close – close. He would never be alone again – never again. There would always be Callista. In the intoxication, the ravishment of the moment, he made no reckoning with the Callista he had heretofore known, the Lance that had been; they should be always as now on this night of magic.

CHAPTER V.

THE ASKING

ON the comb of a tall ridge back of the Cleaverage place, Ola Derf caught up with Lance at last.

"I got to set down awhile till I can ketch my breath," the girl said jerkily. "I reckon I run half a mile hollerin' yo' name every step. Lance Cleaverage – and you never turned yo' head. I believe in my soul you heared me the first time I called."

Cleaverage did not take the trouble to affirm or deny. He flung himself back on the fern and pine needles with his hat over his face, and remarking, "Wake me up when you get your breath," affected to go to sleep. Ola Derf was as comfortable a companion as a dog, in that you could talk to her or let her alone, as the humor ran.

A cicada's whir overhead swelled to a pulsating screech and died away. The woods here opened into calm and lofty spaces which at a little distance began to be dimmed as with vaporized sapphire – the blue that melted the hills into the sky. His eyes were caught by an indigo-bird in the branches – a drop of color apparently precipitated by this marvel of azure held in solution by the summer air.

It was the morning after Lance had sung to Callista under her window, and his mind was yet swimming in dreams of her. He was roused from these by Ola's voice.

"Lance," she began and broke off. "Oh, Lance, I want to talk to you about – about – " Again her voice lapsed. She could see nothing of his face. His chest rose and fell rhythmically. "Lance – air you asleep?"

"Huh-uh. But if you keep on talkin' right good maybe I'll get to sleep."

She paid no attention to the snub, but addressed herself once more to what seemed a difficult bit of conversational tactics.

"Lance," came the plaint for the third time, "I wanted to name Callista Gentry to you. I – I – that thar gal don't care the rappin' o' her finger about you, nor any man."

Cleaverage, with the memory of last night warm at his heart, smiled under his hat brim and made no answer, save a little derisive sound which might have meant denial, indifference, or mere good-humored contempt of Ola herself.

"Oh, yes, I know," Ola nodded to her own thought, "they's a heap of 'em lets on not to like the boys; but with Callista Gentry hit goes to the bone. She don't care for nary soul in this round world but her own pretty self. She 'minds me of a snake – a white snake, if ever there was such a thing. You look at her. You ain't never seen her change color, whatever came or went."

The picture evoked of Callista's flushed, tender face lying upon his breast made the pulses of the man on the warm pine needles leap.

"Well," he prompted finally, "what's the trouble? Are you a true friend, that doesn't want me to get snake bit?"

Ola laughed out a short laugh.

"No," she said, drearily, "I'm just a fool that's got yo' good at heart, and don't like to see you get a wife that cares nothin' for you. Thar – I've said my say. Thar's no love in her, and thar's no heart in her. But if a pretty face and high and mighty ways is what takes you, of course you can follow yo' ruthers."

"Uh-huh," agreed Lance, pushing his hat back and sitting up. He cast a laughing, sidelong glance in her direction. "Ola," he said softly, "I'm a goin' to let you into a secret. The gals has pestered me all my life long with too much lovin', and my great reason for bein' willin' to have Callista Gentry is that she seems like you say, sorter offish."

To his intense surprise (he had been wont to jest much more hardily with her than this), Ola's face flushed suddenly a dark, burning red. She jumped to her feet like a boy.

"All right," she said in a throaty tone, her countenance turned away from him. "If that's so, I'm sorry I spoke. Tell Miz. Cleaverage all about it – and all about me and the other gals that run after you so turrible. I don't care."

But half way down the ridge her swift, angry, steps began to lag, and a little further on Lance overtook her.

"They's a-goin' to be a dance at our house a-Wednesday," she said in a penitent voice. "You're a-comin', ain't you, Lance?"

"Nope," returned the invited guest briefly.

He volunteered no excuse or explanation; and so, when the parting of their ways was reached, she demanded with imploring eyes on his face,

"Ye ain't mad with me, air ye. Lance? Why won't you come to my party?"

"Got somethin' else to do," Cleaverage returned nonchalantly. "Callista and me is goin' to be married a-Wednesday night."

Ola fell back a step, and clutched the sunbonnet which she carried rolled in her hands.

"You're a – w'y, Lance – you're jest a foolin'," she faltered.

Lance shook his head lightly, without a word.

"But – why, I was over at Gentry's this morning," she exclaimed finally. "Nobody thar said anything about it." She still watched his face incredulously. "They shorely would have said somethin', if Callista had named the day."

"She never named it," said Lance easily. "I named it myself, back there on the ridge whilst you was catchin' your breath – or wastin' it. We had allowed that a week from yesterday would do us, but it sort of come over me that Wednesday was the right time, and I'm goin' along by there right now to settle it all. Reckon if you folks are givin' a dance you won't heed a invite? Good-bye," and he turned away on his own trail.

Swift, unsmiling, preoccupied as a wild thing on its foreordained errand – the hart to the spring, the homing bird – Cleaverage made his way to the Gentry place. Callista felt him coming before he turned into the big road; she saw him while yet the leafage of the door maples would have confused any view less keen. She longed to flee. Then in a blissful tremor she could do nothing but remain. Octavia Gentry, carrying hanks of carpet chain to the dye-pot in the yard, caught sight of him and called out a greeting.

"Is Mr. Gentry about the place?" Lance asked her, as he lingered a moment with Callista's eyes on him from the doorway.

"Yes, Pappy's makin' ready to go down to the Settlement, and he ain't been to the field to-day. He's in the house somewhar's. Did you want to see him special, Lance?"

Cleaverage made no direct reply; and the widow added,

"Thar he is, right now," as Ajax Gentry stepped out into the open passage with a bit of harness in his hand which he was mending. A certain gravity fell on her manner as the two walked toward the house. It went through her mind that Cleaverage had never formally asked for Callista, and that now he was about to do so. She lifted her head proudly and glanced round at him. Lance Cleaverage was not only the best match in the whole Turkey Track region, but he had been the least oncoming of all "Sis's love-yers." You never could be sure whether Lance wanted the girl or was merely amusing himself; and Octavia had always been strongly set upon the match. When they came to the porch edge, Lance seated himself upon it and looked past the old man to where Callista's flower face was dimly discernible in the entry beyond.

"Good morning," he said impersonally. "I'm glad to find you at home, Mr. Gentry. I stopped a-past to name it to you-all that Callista and me has made up our minds to be wed a-Wednesday evening."

There was a soft exclamation from within; but mother and grandfather remained dumb with astonishment. Cleaverage glanced round at them with a slight impatience in his hazel eyes that held always the fiery, tawny glint in their depths. He detested having people receive his announcements as though they were astonishing – that is, unless it was his humor to astonish.

"Well," Grandfather Gentry began after a time, "ain't this ruther sudden?"

"Marryin' has to be done all of a sudden," Lance remarked without rancor. "I never yet have heard of gettin' married gradual."

"Why, Lance, honey," said the widow in a coaxing tone, "you ain't rightly ready for a wife, air ye? Ef you two young folks had named this to me – well, six months ago – I'd 'a' had Callista's settin' out in good order. Looks like Pappy 's right, and it is sorter suddent."

"What do you say, Callista?" inquired the postulant bridegroom without looking up.

In the soft dusk of the interior the girl's face was crimson. Here came the time when she could no longer pretend to be urged into the marriage by her mother, her grandfather, the course of events; but must say "yes" or "no" openly of her own motion. Last night's startling accost yet shook her young heart; the glamour of that hour came back upon her senses.

"I say whatever you say, Lance," she uttered, scarcely above a whisper.

Ajax Gentry laughed out.

"Well – I reckon that settles it," he said, jingling his harness and turning to leave.

"No – it don't settle nothin'," broke in Octavia anxiously. "Lance ain't got any land cleared to speak of over on his place, and he ain't put in any crop; how air the both of 'em to live? They'll just about have obliged to stay here with us. You can find work for Lance on the farm, cain't ye, Pappy?"

Old Ajax measured his prospective grand-son-in-law with a steady eye, and assured himself that there was not room on the farm nor in the house for two masters. He read mastery in every line of face and figure. Lance got to his feet so suddenly that he might have been said to leap up.