The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage. MacGowan Alice

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СКАЧАТЬ on to say that I began to suffer in the prospect of offerin' you my company up to the church-house. Lord, some gals will make courtin' out of anything!"

      A subdued snicker sounded from the screen of leafage behind the spring. Several young people lingered there for the fun of hearing Lance Cleaverage and Callista Gentry fuss. The red began to show itself in the girl's smooth, fair cheeks. She caught her wide hat by its strings and got suddenly to her feet.

      "Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Lance Cleaverage," she said coldly, "I never took enough notice of you to see was you courtin' me or some other girl; and I'll thank you now to step yourself out of my way and let me get on to the church-house. I've got to lead the tribble, come service time. I can't stand fooling here with you, nor werry my-self to notice are you courting me or somebody else."

      She held her graceful head very high. If she swung the hat by its strings a thought too rapidly, it was the only sign she gave of any excitement as she gained the path.

      Cleaverage ranged himself beside her, leaving the banjo in the bushes. "All right – all right," he remarked in a pacifying tone. "I'm willin' to walk up to the door with you, if that's what's troublin' you so greatly; but I don't want to go in and sit alongside of you on the middle seats. You take your place on the women's side, like a good gal, and let me have some peace, settin' over with the men."

      For a moment she was dumb. Half a dozen had pushed into view, and were listening to them now. They all understood that Lance knew well enough she must sit with the singers, yet his open refusal to accompany her to the middle seats, where the courting couples generally found place, was not the less galling.

      "Tell him you won't never step yo' foot in church beside him, Callista," prompted a man's voice, and Flenton Hands stepped out on the path, twisting a bit of sassafras in his fingers and looking from one to the other with quick shiftings of his gray eyes.

      Lance laughed radiantly but soundlessly, his face and eyes shining with mirthful defiance. The girl looked down and trifled with her hat ribbons.

      "Why don't you say it?" inquired Cleaverage at length. Hands leaned forward and stared eagerly at her, his mouth a little open and his breath coming quick. He had always been the most pertinacious of Callista's followers; an older man than any of the others, he brought to bear on his wooing the persistence and determination of his years.

      Callista just glanced at the younger man, and let her gaze rest on Hands.

      "What's the use of telling him what he already knows mighty well and good?" she said finally.

      "Give me the pleasure of walking up with you this morning, then," Hands encroached eagerly.

      With negligent composure Callista looked about her. She was not willing to walk with Lance – she doubted if he would ask her again. She was not willing to discredit him and go with Hands. She was determined that Cleaverage should not walk with another girl.

      "Come on, Ola," she coolly addressed the figure plainly to be seen behind Hands. "Let's you and me hurry over and see what hymns Brother Drumright is going to use. You sing mighty good counter, and I'd like to have you next to me."

      Ola Derf could not refuse. It was almost equal to social rehabilitation to be allowed to walk with Callista Gentry from the spring to the church, to sit beside her in the singing seats; yet the brown girl cast uneasy glances backward till she saw Lance, whistling melodiously, turn to the blooming azalea bush and catch up his banjo from it. She stopped in her tracks, holding Callista back.

      "Whar – whar ye gwine, Lance?" she inquired anxiously. If Cleaverage was not coming to church it would scarcely be worth while for her to torture herself with an hour of old Preacher Drumright's holding forth. "Whar ye gwine?" she reiterated, as the other girl pulled her sleeve and attempted to hurry on.

      "Whar you and Callista ca'n't come," returned Lance, speaking over his shoulder unceremoniously.

      "Ain't ye gwine to stay to preachin'?" persisted the brown girl. "I – I thought ye was, or I – ain't ye gwine to stay?"

      "No," drawled Cleaverage. "I just brought the banjo to please Callista – because I promised her I would, when she begged me to. I had no notion of staying to listen to Drumright."

      "Come on – if you're a-coming," Callista admonished the Derf girl with a little flash of temper which Lance did not fail to observe, any more than she missed the chuckle with which he received it.

      "Well, I'm a-goin' with ye," announced Ola. She let go Callista's arm, and turned back to where Lance was taking a shadowy path into the forest.

      "I told you, gals couldn't come," Cleaverage bantered her. But Ola persisted.

      "I can go wherever you can go. Lance – wait! Wait for me – I'm a-comin'."

      "Callista'll be mad," objected Cleaverage. "She begged and begged me, and I wouldn't leave her come along of me; now if I take you, she'll be mad."

      "Like I cared where you went or who went with you!" Callista retorted, eyes shining blue fire, head crested. "Come on, Mr. Hands, it's time we were stepping, if we want to get in to go through the hymns."

      "And you will sit alongside of me?" Hands's voice pleaded close to her ear.

      Ola and Lance were of the same age; the blond girl, lingering half indignant, could remember how hardy, free little Ola Derf used to play with the boys, always singling Lance Cleaverage out as the companion for her truant expeditions. Now in mute denial of Hands's petition, Callista shook her head, and in doing so managed to glance round and get a tormenting glimpse of Ola and Lance disappearing together between the trees. Under the green domes of oak and liriodendron, the latter starred all over now with orange-tawny tulips, she saw them pass. Wine of summer was in the veins of the forest. Even the sober oaks, wreathed like bacchanals, overflowed with sweetness from their wrappings of wild grape. The two with the banjo took their way down a steep path toward a jade-green pool, a still reach of water arched over by fantastic tangles of laurel and rhododendron, black as the tents of Kedar, lighted only by the flash of a water-fall that caught the sun. This was the baptismal place.

      The daughter of the house of Gentry turned her face resolutely toward respectability and the church, albeit there was no joy in the countenance. Strung out over a quarter of a mile were courting couples bent toward the same destination. To these young hearts it seemed well worth while to have lain under the heel of winter to attain this marvelous summer morning with its green-clothed forest, its wreathing of blossoms where they passed. Clean and cool as a bell's note, the song of a thrush deep in the wood spilled jeweled drops of sound through the trembling branches overhead. A catbird's sonata rippled boldly out upon the very path. A canopy of bloom was woven and flung over the spring by the black, knotty fingers of the laurel. Bees tumbled happily in the bosom of the fairest drooping clusters, their hum nearly drowned by the heavy gurgle of the creek water.

      Callista drew in her breath sharply. Summer and sun and light and love everywhere – and she was walking up to the church-house with Flenton Hands, while back on some forest by-path, with music at his finger ends and Ola Derf beside him, Lance Cleaverage forgot her with a laugh.

      CHAPTER II.

      THE UP-SITTING

      GRANNY YEARWOOD – the grandmother of Flenton Hands and his sisters – was dead. The work-hardened old body had parted with its flame of life reluctantly; for nearly a year she had been declining toward the end; and during the last months the family had cared for her almost day and night. They were worn out with the toil of it before she herself wore out. But now it was all over. The first outburst of noisy lamentation, which СКАЧАТЬ