Judith of the Cumberlands. MacGowan Alice
particular to call it “aurbu’n,” but a body might as well say red when they were namin’ it, because red was what it was. If a man admired a turkey egg he would be likely to see beauty in Huldah’s complexion—some folks might wear a sunbonnet to bed, and freckle they would! A vision of the laughing black eyes and white flashing teeth that went with Huldah Spiller’s red ringlets and freckles, and made her little hatchet face brilliant when she smiled or laughed, suddenly put Judith on foot and running to the door.
“Uncle Jep,” she called after the tall receding form, “Oh, Uncle Jep!”
He turned muttering, “I hope to goodness Jude ain’t goin’ to git the hollerin’ habit. There’s Iley never lets Jim Cal git away from the house without hollerin’ after him as much as three times, and the thing he’d like least to have knowed abroad is the thing she takes up with for the last holler.”
“Uncle Jep,” came the clear hail from the doorway, “don’t you fail to find Huldy and send her straight home. Tell her Iley’s nigh about give out, and Jim Cal’s down sick in the bed—hear me?”
He nodded and turned disgustedly. What earthly difference did it make about Jim Cal and Huldah and Iley? Why should Judith suddenly care? And then, being a philosopher and in his own manner an amateur of life, he set to work to analyze her motives, and guessed obliquely at them.
The sight of his broad, retreating back evidently spurred Judith to fresh effort. “Uncle Jep!” she screamed, cupping her hands about her red lips to make the sound carry. “Ef you see Creed Bonbright tell him—howdy—for me!”
The sound may not have carried to the old man’s ears, but it reached a younger pair. Blatch Turrentine was just crossing through the grassy yard toward the “big road,” and Broyles’s mill over on Clear Fork, where his load of corn would be ground to meal with which to feed that blockaded still on the old Turrentine place which sometimes flung a delicate trail of smoke out over the flank of the slope across the gulch. As he heard Judith’s bantering cry, Blatch pulled up his team with a muttered curse. He looked down at her through narrowed eyes, jerking his mules savagely and swearing at them in an undertone. He was a well-made fellow with a certain slouching grace about him as he sat on his load of corn; but there were evil promising bumps on either side of his jaws that spoke of obstinacy, even of ferocity; and there was something menacing in his surly passivity of attitude. He looked at the girl and his lip lifted with a peculiar sidelong sneer.
“Holler a little louder an’ Bonbright hisself’ll hear ye,” he commented as he started up his team and rattled away down the steep, stony road.
Sunday brought its usual train of visitors. The Turrentine place was within long walking distance of Brush Arbor church, and whenever there was preaching they could count on a considerable overflow from that direction. The Sunday after Creed Bonbright put in an appearance at Nancy Card’s, there was preaching at Brush Arbor, but Judith, nourishing what secret hopes may be conjectured, refused to make any preparation for attending service.
“An’ ye think ye won’t go to meeting this fine sunshiny Sabbath mornin’, Sister Barrier?” Elder Drane put the query, standing anxious and carefully attired in his best before Judith on the doorstep of her home.
She shook her dark head, and looked past the Elder toward the distant ranges.
“I jest p’intedly cain’t git away this morning,” she said carelessly.
The Elder combed his sandy whiskers with a thoughtful forefinger. Not thus had Judith been wont to reply to him. Always before, if there had been denial, there were too, reasons adduced, shy looks from the corners of those dark eyes and tender inquiries as to the health of his children.
“Is they—is they some particular reason that you cain’t go this morning?” the widower inquired cautiously.
There was, and that particular reason lay as far afield as the Edge and Nancy Card’s place, but Judith Barrier did not see fit to name it to this one of her suitors, who had brought her perhaps more glory than any other. She was impatient to be rid of him. Like her mother Earth, having occupied her time for lo! these several years in the building of an ideal from such unpromising materials as were then at hand, she was ready to sweep those tentative makings—confessed failures now that she found the type she really wanted—swiftly, ruthlessly to the limbo of oblivion.
Elihu Drane stood high among his neighbours; he was a man of some education as well as comfortable means. His attention had been worth retaining once; now she smiled at him with a vague, impersonal sweetness, and repeated her statement that she couldn’t go to church.
“I’ve got too much to do,” she qualified finally. “Looks like the work in this house never is finished. And there’s chicken and dumplin’s to cook for dinner.”
The Elder’s pale blue eyes brightened. “Walk down to the gate with me, won’t you?” he said hopefully, “I’ve got somethin’ to talk to you about.”
When they were out of earshot of the house, he began eagerly, “Sister Barrier you’re workin’ yourse’f to death here, in the sweet days of your youth. I did promise the last time that I never would beg you again to wed me, but looks like I can’t stand by and hold my peace. If you was to trust yourse’f to me things would be different. I never did hold with a woman killin’ herse’f with hard work. My first and second had everything that they could wish for, and I was good and ready to do more any time they named what it was. I’ve got a crank churn. None of these old back-breaking, up-and-down dashers for me. I hired a woman whenever my wife said the word. I don’t think either of mine ever killed a chicken or cut a stick of firewood from the time they walked in the front door as a bride till they was carried out of it in their coffins.”
He stared eagerly into the downcast face beside him, but somewhere Judith found strength to resist even these dazzling propositions.
“I ain’t studyin’ about gittin’ wedded,” she told him most untruthfully. “Looks like I’m a mighty cold-hearted somebody, Elder Drane. I jest can’t fix it no way but to live here with my Uncle Jep and take care of him in his old days. Oh, would you wait a minute?” as they reached the horse-block and the Elder began to untie his mount with a discouraged countenance. “Jest let me run back to the house—I won’t keep you a second. I got some little sugar cookies for Mart and Lucy.”
Mart and Lucy were the Elder’s children. He stood looking after her as she ran lithely up the path, and wondered why she could love them so much and him so little. She came back laughing and a bit out of breath.
“I expect we’ll have company to-day,” she told him comfortably. “We always do when there’s preaching at the church, and I ’low I’d better stay home and see to the dinner.”
The Elder had scarcely made his chastened adieux when the Lusk girls came through the grove walking on either side of a young man.
The Lusk girls were Judith’s nearest neighbours—if you excepted Huldah Spiller at Jim Cal’s cabin, and at the present Judith certainly was in the mind to make an exception of her. The sisters were seldom seen apart; narrow shouldered, short waisted, thin limbed young creatures, they were even at seventeen bowing to a deprecating stoop. Their little faces were alike, short-chinned with pink mouths inclined to be tremulous, the eyes big, blue, and half-frightened in expression, and the drab hair drawn away from the small foreheads so tightly that it looked almost grey. They inevitably reminded one of a pair of blue and white night-moths, scarcely fitted for a daylight world, and continually afraid of it.
“Cousin Lacey’s over from the Far Cove,” called Pendrilla before they reached Judith. “Ain’t it fine? Ef we-all can git up a play-party he says he’ll shore come ef we let him know in time.”
The young fellow with them, their cousin Lacey Rountree, showed sufficient resemblance to mark the family type, but his light eyes were lit with reckless fires, and his short chin was carried with a defiant tilt.
“What you foolin’ along o’ that old feller for, Judith?”