Judith of the Cumberlands. MacGowan Alice
as yet differentiated by darker greens and heavier shadows only where some group of pine or cedar stood. April in the Cumberlands is the May or early June of New England. Here March has the days of shine and shower; while to February belongs the gusty turbulence usually attributed to March. Now sounded the calls of the first whippoorwills in the dusk of evening; now the first mocking-bird sang long before day, very sweetly and softly, and again before moonrise; hours of sun he filled with bolder rejoicings, condescending in his more antic humour to mimic the hens that began to cackle around the barn. Every thicket by the water-courses blushed with azaleas; all the banks were gay with wild violets.
Throughout March’s changeful emotional season, night after night in those restless vehement impassioned airs, the cedar tree talked ardently to Judith. Through April’s softer nights she wakened often to listen to it. It went fondly over its first assurances. And the time of Creed Bonbright’s advent was near at hand now. Thought of it made light her step as she went about her work.
“Don’t you never marry a lazy man, Jude.”
The wife of Jim Cal Turrentine halted on the doorstep, a coarse white cup containing the coffee she had come to borrow poised in her hand as she turned to harangue the girl in the kitchen.
“I ain’t aimin’ to wed no man. Huh, I say marry! I’m not studyin’ about marryin’,” promptly responded Judith in the mountain girl’s unfailing formula; but she coloured high, and bent, pot-hooks in hand, to the great hearth to shift the clumsy Dutch oven that contained her bread.
“That’s what gals allers says,” commented Iley Turrentine discontentedly. “Huldy’s forever singin’ that tune. But let a good-lookin’ feller come in reach and I ’low any of you will change the note. Huldy’s took her foot in her hand and put out—left me with the whole wash to do, and Jim Cal in the bed declarin’ he’s got a misery in his back. Don’t you never wed a lazy man.”
“Whar’s Huldy gone?” inquired Judith, sauntering to the door and looking out on the glad beauty of the April morning with fond brooding eyes. The grotesque bow-legged pot-hooks dangled idly in her fingers.
“Over to Nancy Cyard’s to git her littlest spinnin’ wheel—so she said. I took notice that she had a need for that wheel as soon as ever she hearn tell that Creed Bonbright was up from Hepzibah stayin’ at the Cyards’s.”
Had not Iley been so engrossed with her own grievances, the sudden heat of the look Judith turned upon her must have enlightened her.
“Huldy knowed him right well when she was waitin’ on table at Miz. Huffaker’s boarding-house down at Hepzibah,” the woman went on. “I ain’t got no use for these here fellers that’s around tendin’ to the whole world’s business—they’ own chil’en is mighty apt to go hongry. But thar, what does a gal think of that by the side o’ curly hair and soft-spoken ways?”
For Judith Barrier at once all the light was gone out of the spring morning. The bird in the Rose of Sharon bush that she had taken for a thrush—why, the thing cawed like a crow. She could have struck her visitor. And then, with an uncertain impulse of gratitude, she was glad to be told anything about Creed, to be informed that others knew his hair was yellow and curly.
“Gone?” sounded old Jephthah’s deep tones from within, as Mrs. Jim Cal made her reluctant way back to a sick husband and a house full of work and babies. “Lord, to think of a woman havin’ the keen tongue that Iley’s got, and her husband keepin’ fat on it!”
“Uncle Jep,” inquired Judith abruptly, “did you know Creed Bonbright was at Nancy Card’s—stayin’ there, I mean?”
“No,” returned the old man, seeing in this a chance to call at the cabin, where, beneath the reception that might have been offered an interloper, even a duller wit than his might have divined a secret cordial welcome. “I reckon I better find time to step over that way an’ ax is there anything I can do to he’p ’em out.”
“I wish ’t you would,” assented Judith so heartily that he turned and regarded her with surprise. “An’ ef you see Huldy over yon tell her she’s needed at home. Jim Cal’s sick, and Iley can’t no-way git along without her.”
“I reckon James Calhoun Turrentine ain’t got nothin’ worse ’n the old complaint that sends a feller fishin’ when the days gits warm,” opined Jim Cal’s father. “I named that boy after the finest man that ever walked God’s green earth—an’ then the fool had to go and git fat on me! To think of me with a fat son! I allers did hold that a fat woman was bad enough, but a fat man ort p’intedly to be led out an’ killed.”
“Jude, whar’s my knife,” came the call from the window in a masculine voice. “Pitch it out here, can’t you?”
Judith took the pocket-knife from the mantel, and going to the window tossed it to her cousin Wade Turrentine, who was shaping an axe helve at the chip pile.
“Do you know whar Huldy’s gone?” she inquired, setting her elbows on the sill and staring down at the young fellow accusingly.
“Nope—an’ don’t care neither,” said Wade, contentedly returning to his whittling. He was expecting to marry Huldah Spiller, Iley’s younger sister, within a few months, and the reply was thus conventional.
“Well, you’d better care,” urged Judith. “You better make her stay home and behave herself. She’s gone over to Nancy Card’s taggin’ after Creed Bonbright. I wouldn’t stand it ef I was you.”
“I ain’t standin’—I’m settin’,” retorted Wade with rather feeble wit; but the girl noted with satisfaction the quick, fierce spark of anger that leaped to life in his clear hazel eyes, the instant stiffening of his relaxed figure. Like a child playing with fire, she was ready to set alight any materials that came within reach of her reckless fingers, so only that she fancied her own ends might be served. Now she went uneasily back to the hearthstone. Her uncle, noting that she appeared engrossed in her baking, gave a surreptitious glance into the small ancient mirror standing on the high mantel, made a half-furtive exchange of coats, and prepared to depart.
Up at the crib Blatch Turrentine was loading corn, and Jim Cal came creeping across from his own cabin whence Iley had ejected him. He stood for a while, humped, hands in pockets, watching the other’s strong body spring lithely to its task. Finally he began in his plaintive, ineffectual voice.
“Blatch, I take notice that you seem to be settin’ up to Jude. Do ye think hit’s wise?”
The other grunted over a particularly heavy sack, swung it to the waggon bed, straightened himself suddenly, and faced his questioner with a look of dark anger.
“I’d like to see the feller that can git her away from me!” he growled.
“I wasn’t a-meanin’ that,” said Jim Cal, patiently but uneasily shifting from the right foot to the left. “I’ll admit—an’ I reckon everybody on the place will say the same—that she’s always give you mo’ reason than another to believe she’d have ye. Not but what that’s Jude’s way, an’ she’s hilt out sech hopes to a-many. What pesters me is how you two would make out, once you was wed. Jude’s mighty pretty, but then again she’s got a tongue.”
“Her farm hain’t,” chuckled Blatch, pulling a sack into place; “and I ’low Jude wouldn’t have after her and me had been wed a short while.”
“I don’t know, Blatch,” maintained the fleshy one, timid yet persisting. “You’re a great somebody for havin’ yo’ own way, an’ Jude’s mighty high sperrity—why, you two would shorely fuss.”
“Not more than once, we wouldn’t,” returned Blatch with a meaning laugh. “The way to do with a woman like Jude is to give her a civil beatin’ to start out with and show her who’s boss—wouldn’t be no trouble after that. Jude Barrier has got a good farm. She’s the best worker of any gal that I know, and I aim for to have her—an’ this farm.”
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