The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage. MacGowan Alice
body cain't be too careful about all these here things," she said with a solemn sniff. "Hit's easy at a time like this for something to be did that crosses the luck."
Women came and went through the open doors, silent almost as the little breeze that played between. Everybody wore the same expression of mournful acquiescence in the natural order of things. Greetings were exchanged in low tones. Callista, carrying a basket of garden asters, came up the front walk, looking openly for her mother, guarding a little warily against Flenton Hands's approach. Some girls hurrying out to seek ferns in the low places of the wood met her, and she turned back with them, joining her activities to theirs and making a wreath of the flowers she had brought.
Flenton Hands was thirty years old. To have arrived at this age unmarried is, in the mountains, in some measure a reproach. True, he aligned himself sharply with the religious element of the community, and this, when youthful masculinity is ever apt to choose the broad way where there is more company, bespoke for him a certain indulgence or toleration that would have been denied a typical old bachelor.
He was cantankerous old Preacher Drumright's right hand at all times, and Drumright was safe always to approve him. He was the kind of man who seeks the acquaintance and company of those well-to-do and older than himself, paying a sober court to respectability and money, and thus coming eventually to be rated as one of the elders, while he yet held the dubious position of an unmarried male who shilly-shallied in the matter of wedding.
No actual scandal ever attached to Flenton Hands. If there were improprieties to be debited against him, he kept such matters out of the sight of Turkey Track people, and only a vague rumor of something discreditable associated itself with his Valley connections to warrant young girls in pouting their lips and referring to him as "that old Flenton Hands"; while their mothers reproved and told them that he was one of the best young men, as well as one of the best matches, in the neighborhood.
So far as personal appearance went, he was well enough, yet with a curious suggestion of solidity as though his flesh might have been of oak or iron. The countenance, too, with its round, high cheek-bones, had an unpleasing immobility, resting always in a somewhat slyish cast of expression which the odd slant of the light gray eyes gave to it. For the rest, he was thin-lipped, with thick, straight, dark hair, and an almost urban air of gentlemanliness, an effort at gentility which, in a shorter and more cheerful individual, would have been smug.
"Flenton's gone for the coffin," Sallie Blevins said. "He always tends to it when there's anything to do that calls for money to be spent."
"I reckon he's got a plenty," supplied little Rilly Trigg; "but someway I never could like his looks greatly. There, I oughtn't to have said that – and his granny laying dead in the house that-a-way."
Callista did not add her opinion to this discussion, but finding that she was in no danger of meeting Flenton, hurried the others promptly up to the house. As soon as she came in sight, Little Liza, six feet tall, with a jimber-jaw and bass voice, came and fell upon her neck and wept. Little Liza Hands got her descriptive adjective from being the third of the name. To-day she was especially prominent, because Granny Yearwood, the first Eliza, ninety pounds of fiery energy and ambition, had at last laid down the burden of her days. Her daughter, Eliza the second, had lain beside her husband, Eliphalet Hands, in churchyard mold these twenty years; and her big daughter, with the bovine profile, the great voice, and the timid, fluttered soul of a small child, remained in the world, the only Eliza Hands – yet still Little Liza to those about her. And for her name's sake, Little Liza was chief mourner.
The Hands girls all had a sort of adoring attitude toward Callista Gentry. Flenton wanted her, and they had been trying to get Flenton everything he wanted since he was small enough to cry for the moon, and strike at the hand which failed to pluck it down for him. Callista had not intended to stay. She was to be over later in the day – or the same night, rather – with the young people who sat up. But Little Liza managed to detain her on one pretext or another until the coffin arrived and Granny was finally placed therein.
"Just look at them thar shiny trimmin's on that thar coffin," admired Little Liza, jogging Callista's elbow. "That's Flent. That's my brother Flent. They ain't a thing he grudges to them he loves."
Callista uttered a soothing and satisfactory reply, and was making her escape, when Hands himself overtook her at the door. His features were drawn to an expression of great solemnity, one which suited them ill, for he had the upslanting brow, the pointed face and the narrow eye that, lightened by mirth, may be antic, but without the touch of humor is forbidding and even sinister.
"You're not going to leave us, air you?" he inquired in a carefully muffled tone, as though indeed Granny was sleeping lightly and might be easily wakened.
"Mother's going to stay now, and I'm coming back to-night," Callista hastened to say.
"I'm mighty glad you air," returned Flenton, with a heavy sigh. "In these times of affliction, hit's a powerful comfort to me to have you in sight."
Callista edged closer to the others. She was not unwilling to be seen standing whispering with Flenton. He was a good match, a creditable captive of any girl's bow and spear; yet she did not enjoy his love-making, least of all now that it was mingled with this ill-sorted solemnity.
"Flenton, have they sent word to your Uncle Billy's folks?" asked Octavia Gentry, making her appearance in the doorway behind the two.
"Yes'm," returned Flenton, not pleased to be interrupted, yet necessarily civil to the woman whom he hoped to have for a mother-in-law.
"And does the Bushareses and Adam Venable and his wife know hit? Is Mary a-comin'?" she pursued the catalog. "What about the Aspel Yearwoods out in Big Buck Gap – has anyone went out there? And Faithful Yearwood, that married Preacher Crowley – ain't they livin' down in the Tatum neighborhood?"
"Yes'm, they air," confirmed Flenton. "Cousin Ladd 'lowed to send one o' his chaps on a nag to Faithful Crowley's folks; and Ab Straley was to let them at Big Buck Gap know." Though impatient, he made a decent end. When he looked around, Callista had quietly moved away.
The day's work was over; men and boys began to arrive at the Hands place, some carrying lanterns. From early candle lighting till near the turn of the night the house would be full; then the elders, men and women on whose day labor a family must depend, would begin to slip away, except a few old widowers and bachelors who might remain smoking on the steps outside; and a circle of young folks who would be left sitting in the lamplight and fireshine of the main room. Flenton knew of old experience just how the night would go. He longed inexpressibly to be one of those up-sitting young people that he might push his chair close to Callista Gentry's and whisper to her in the privilege of the hour. Yet he was held back by a consideration for his dignity as one of the bereaved.
"Miz. Gentry," said Roxy Griever, "will you stay and he'p with the supper – they aim to have a reg'lar meal put on the table at about midnight – settin' up with the dead is mighty wearin'."
"I 'low the gals would rather tend to that theirselves," deprecated Octavia, mildly. "I mind how it was when I was a gal. I never did want some old women pesterin' around at sech a time."
She cast a swift glance to where Callista sat, her fair head bent, the lamplight upon its bright burden of corn-colored braids, Lance Cleaverage, his hands in his pockets, standing before the girl regarding her, and evidently about to say something.
The Widow Griever's look followed Octavia's to the front room in which half-a-dozen couples had paired off, whispering, giggling a bit if the truth must be told, with an occasional undernote of hysteria in the giggles.
"That's jest the reason," she announced, straightening up from the hearth where she had been stirring a vast boiler full of very strong coffee. "The gals that lets tham men have their way is foolish. They'll rue the day they done so. Men persons would always have the old folks leave, and the young folks run things to suit theirselves; but I don't believe in sech."
On the mental horizon of the Widow Griever there hovered ever a vast, dun, evil-promising cloud known as "tham men." She never alluded to the opposite sex in any way other than collectively, and named them in this manner, which held in it all of reproach. Her father – gentle soul – presented himself to her under the