The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage

"I've built me a good cabin, and it's all ready. Callista and me are goin' into no house but our own," he said brusquely. "Ain't that so, Callista?"

Again the girl within the doorway answered in that hushed, almost reluctant voice,

"Just as you say. Lance."

And though grandfather laughed, and Mother Gentry objected and even scolded, that ended the argument.

"I'll stop a-past and leave the word at Hands's," Lance told them as he turned to go. "Is there anyone else you'd wish me to bid, mother?"

That "mother," uttered in Lance's golden tones, went right to the widow's sentimental heart. She would have acceded to anything he had proposed in such a way. Old Ajax smiled, realizing that Lance meant to triumph once for all over Flenton Hands.

As Cleaverage walked away, the mother prompted, almost indignantly.

"Why didn't ye go down to the draw-bars with him, Callista? I don't think that's no way to say farewell to a young man when you've just been promised."

Gentry looked at his daughter-in-law through narrowed eyes, then at Callista; his glance followed Lance Cleaverage's light-footed departure a moment, and then he delivered himself.

"I ain't got nothing agin your marryin' Lance Cleaverage Wednesday evening," he said concisely to Callista. "I ain't been axed; but ef I had been, my say would still be the same. All I've got to tell you is that thar was never yet a house built of logs or boards or stones that was big enough to hold two families."

"Why, Pap Gentry!" exclaimed Octavia in a scandalized tone. "This house is certainly Callista's home, and I'm sure I love Lance as well as I ever could a own son. If they thought well to live here along of us this winter, I know you wouldn't hold to that talk."

"I reckon you don't know me so well as ye 'lowed ye did," observed Gentry; "for I would – and do. Lance Cleaverage has took up with the crazy notion of marryin' all in haste. He ain't got no provision for livin' on that place of his. Well, I tell you right now, he cain't come and live in my house. No, nor you cain't pack victuals over to 'em to keep 'em up."

A coquette according to mountain ideals, carrying her head high with the boys, famous for her bickerings with Lance, Callista Gentry had always been a model at home, quiet, tractable, obedient. But the face she now turned upon her grandfather was that of a young fury. All her cold pride was up in arms. That secret, still spirit of hers, haughty, unbent, unbroken, reared itself to give the old man to understand that she wanted nothing of him from this on. She – Lance's wife – the idea of her begging food from Grandfather Gentry!

"If you two'll hush and let me speak," she said in an even tone, "I reckon I'll be able to set grandpappy's mind at rest. You can give me the wedding – I reckon you want to do so much as that for your own good name. But bite or sup I'll never take afterwards in this house. No, I won't. So far from carryin' victuals out of it, you'll see when I come in I'll have somethin' in my hand, grandpap. I invite you and mother right now to take yo' Sunday dinners with me when you want to ride as far as the Blue Spring church. But," – she went back to it bitterly – "bite or sup in this house neither me nor Lance will ever take." Then, her eyes bright, her usually pale cheeks flaming, she turned and ran up the steep little stairs to her own room. Octavia looked reproach at her father-in-law; but Ajax Gentry spat scornfully toward the vacant fireplace, and demanded,

"Now she's a pretty somebody for a man to wed and carry to his home, ain't she? I say, Sunday dinners with her! Can she mix a decent pone o' corn bread, and bake it without burnin' half her fingers off? She cain't. Can she cut out a hickory shirt and make it? She cain't. Could she kill a chicken and pick and clean it and cook it – could she do it ef she was a starvin'? She could not. She cain't so much as bile water without burnin' it. She don't know nothin' – nothin' but the road. She's shore a fine bargain for a man to git. To have a passel o' fool boys follerin' after her and co'tin' her, that's all Callisty's ever studied about, or all you ever studied about for her."

"Well, pappy," Octavia bridled, considerably stung, "I don't think you' got much room to talk. In yo' young days, from all I ever heared – either from you or from others – you was about as flighty with the gals, and had about as many of 'em follerin' after you, as Sis is with the boys."

She looked up at her father-in-law where he lounged against the fire-board. Grandly tall was old Ajax Gentry, carrying his seventy years and his crown of silver like an added grace. His blue eye had the cold fire of Callista's, and his lean sinewy body, like hers, showed the long, flowing curves of running water.

"O-o-o-oh!" he rejoined, with an indescribable lengthened circumflex on the vowel that lent it a world of meaning. "O-o-o-oh!.. a man! Well – that's mighty different. If a feller's got the looks – and the ways – he can fly 'round amongst the gals for a spell whilst he's young and gaily, and it don't do him no harm. There's some that the women still foller after, even when he's wedded and settled down" (Ajax smiled reminiscently). "But when a man marries a gal, he wants a womern– a womern that'll keep his house, and cook his meals, and raise his chillen right. The kind o' tricks Callisty's always pinned her faith to ain't worth shucks in wedded life. Ef I was a young feller to-morrow, I wouldn't give a chaw o' tobaccer for a whole church-house full o' gals like Callisty, an' I've told you so a-many's the time. Yo' Maw Gentry wasn't none o' that sort – yo' mighty right she wasn't! She could cook and weave and tend a truck patch and raise chickens to beat any womern in the Turkey Tracks, Big and Little. I say, Sunday dinner with Callisty!" he repeated. "Them that goes to her for a dinner had better pack their victuals with 'em."

Octavia gathered up her hanks of carpet-warp and started for the door.

"All right, Pappy," she said angrily. "All right. I raised the gal best I knowed how. I reckon you think the fault – sence you see so much fault in her – comes from my raisin'; but I know mighty well an' good that the only trouble I ever had with Sis, was 'count o' her Gentry blood. How you can expect the cookin' o' corn pones and makin' o' hickory shirts from a gal that's always got every man in reach plumb distracted over her, is more'n I can see." Octavia went out hastily before her father-in-law could make the ironic reply which she knew to expect; and after a moment or two, Ajax himself moved away toward the log stable to begin his harnessing.

Callista had hurried to her bedroom, slammed the door, and was alone with her own heart. As for Lance, walking beneath the chestnuts, he had no wish to have her beside him under the old man's humorous, semi-sarcastic gaze and his prospective mother-in-law's sentimental, examining eye. He wanted her to himself. He thought with a mighty surge of rapture of the approaching time when they could shut out all the world and find once more that island of delight where they should dwell the only created beings. He, to share his honeymoon with the Gentry family! He laughed shortly at the thought.

It was Little Liza that opened the Hands door to him, and her light eyes softened unwillingly as they beheld his alert figure on the step. Little Liza was tormented with an incongruously soft heart, painfully accessible to the demands of beauty and charm.

"Howdy," she said. She had not seen Lance Cleaverage since the day of the funeral; but she had heard from her brother and her sisters that his behavior on that occasion was unseemly, if not positively disrespectful.

Lance barely returned her greeting, then he broached his errand.

"Jane! Ellen! Oh, Flent!" she called distressfully, when she had his news, "Come on out. Lance Cleaverage is here, waitin' to invite you to his weddin'."

The two sisters came out on the porch, but Flenton did not make his appearance.

"Howdy, Lance. Who is it?" inquired Ellen Hands. "Callista Gentry hasn't took you, has she?"

"Well," drawled Lance, lifting a laughing eye to the line of big, gray-faced women on the rude, puncheon-floored gallery, "you can make it out best way you find. The weddin' is to be held at the Gentry place. If it ain't Callista, it's somebody mighty like her."

Little Liza's lip trembled.

"You Lance Cleaverage," she said huskily, "you're a-gettin' the sweetest prettiest thing that ever walked this earth. I do know that there ain't the man livin' that's fit for Callisty. I hope to the Lord you'll be good to her."

Again Lance regarded the doleful visages before him and laughed.

"You-all look like I'd bid you to a funeral rather than to a weddin'," he said, lingering a bit to see if Flenton would show himself.

Hands was just inside the window. He knew well what had been said. Nothing could have been less to his taste than the going out to receive such an invitation.

"Thar – you see now, Flent," said Little Liza tragically, as she encountered her brother when they turned from watching Lance away. "You've lost her. Oh, law! I always thought if I could call Callisty Gentry sister, it would make me the happiest critter in the world."

"You may have a chance so to call her yet," said Hands, who showed any emotion the announcement may have roused in him only by an added tightening of lip and eye. "Wednesday ain't come yet – and hit ain't gone."

"Well, hit'll come and hit'll go," said Ellen heavily. "Lance Cleaverage gits what he starts after, and that's the fact."

"Yes," agreed Little Liza, "he shore does. I don't reckon I could have said no to him myself."

"Lance Cleaverage!" echoed her brother. "Well, he's born – but he ain't buried. I never did yet give up a thing that I'd set my mind on. I ain't said I've given up Callista Gentry."

The three looked at him rather wildly. Talk of this sort is unknown among the mountain people. Yet they could but feel the woman's admiration for his masculine high-handedness of speech.

At the Cleaverage place they were making ready for the noonday meal when Lance brought his news home. The table, with its cloth of six flour-sacks sewed end to end, was set in the cool entry. The Dutch oven, half buried in ashes, was full of buttermilk-dodgers, keeping hot. At the other side of the broad hearthstone, Roxy Griever bent above a dinner-pot dishing up white beans and dumplings. Beside her Mary Ann Martha held a small yellow bowl and made futile dabs with a spoon she had herself whittled from a bit of shingle, trying to get beans into it. Her mother's reproofs dropped upon her tousled and incorrigible head with the regularity of clockwork.

"You, Mary Ann Marthy, I do know in my soul you' the worst child the Lord ever made: Where do you expect to go to when you die? Look at that thar good victuals all splattered out in the ashes. That's yo' doin'. You' jest adzackly like yo' uncle Lance."

Then Sylvane, who was shaping an axe-helve in the doorway, looked up and said, "Here comes Lance himself." And Kimbro Cleaverage pushed another chair towards the table.

"Well," said the bridegroom expectant, looking about on the shadowed interior of the cabin, dim to his eyes after the glare outside, "I've got a invite for you-all to a weddin'."

"Not you and Callista?" exclaimed Sylvane, his boyish face glowing. "Oh, Lance – she ain't said yes, has she?"

"No, Buddy," Lance flung over his shoulder, and you saw by his smile the strong affection there was between them, "she ain't said yes – but I have. I've set the time for Wednesday, and the Gentry place is all uptore right now getting ready for it. I reckon" – his eye gleamed with the mischievous afterthought – "I reckon they'll clear the big barn for dancing."

As though the word had been a catch released in her mechanism, Roxy Griever straightened up, spoon in hand, with a snort.

"You Lance Cleaverage – you sinful soul!" she began, pointing her bean spoon at him and thus shedding delightful dribblings of the stew which Mary Ann Martha instantly scraped up, "you air a-gettin' the best girl in the two Turkey Tracks – and here you take the name of dancin' on yo' sinful lips at the same time!"

"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."

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