The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage. MacGowan Alice

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, СКАЧАТЬ