The Common Lot and Other Stories. Emma Bell Miles

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СКАЧАТЬ man told me last week that he wouldn’t hire a single man—said they was always out nights, and no good in the daytime.”

      Now Easter knew that Allison was never out at night to any ill purpose, and she smiled a bit wisely to herself. His favorite pose was that of the cosmopolitan, the widely experienced man; but that was pure boyishness. There was a rough innocence about him, despite his every-day familiarity with all the crimes that lie between the moonshine still and county court. What of evil there was in him seemed to have grown there as naturally as the acrid sap of certain wild vines or the bitterness of dogwood bark. The freakish lawlessness of even the worst mountaineer seems in some way different from the vice and moral deformity of cities, as new corn whiskey is different from absinthe.

      Under her sunbonnet the girl inquired, demurely, “Why ’n’t ye stay here?”

      “Oh, I’m jist restless, I reckon . . . I would stay if I had a home here.”

      That word “home” laid a finger on their lips for full five minutes. Again he ventured, flicking nervously with his whip at the roadside weeds:

      “And Mavity wants me in his new saloon. I seed him when I was in Fairplay last week. The wages is good.”

      She spoke now quickly enough. “Don’t go thar, Allison! I don’t want to be—worried—’bout you.”

      He turned away to hide a swift change of countenance, slashed hard at the inoffending bushes, and jerked out, in a husky, boyish voice, “What makes ye care?”

      She dared not be silent. “Because I know how good you air. Because I don’t want to see—a boy like you go wrong.”

      “I ain’t good!” he cried, almost roughly. Then he turned to find her looking at him serenely, silently—not quite smiling. . . .

      That was all, but it was almost a betrothal to the two. From this moment she tried to imagine what life with him would be like. The picture she saw clearest was of a low-browed cabin in the dusk; through its doorway, glowing with red firelight, a glimpse of a supper awaiting a man’s return.

      Mrs. Vanderwelt was as glad to see her daughter home again as was Easter to rejoin the family, but that did not prevent her levying on Easter’s wages. The dish-pan had gone past all mending, and the water-bucket had sprung such a leak that it was no longer fit for use except about the stable. The lantern globe was broken. So Easter reserved for herself only the price of eight yards of gingham.

      “Ye’re jist in time for the dance over to Swaford’s,” announced her younger sister, Ellender, when, after the supper dishes were washed, they sat down to tack carpet rags. “They’re goin’ to give one a-Sata’day night.”

      “You ’uns a-goin’?” asked Easter. Of course the boys would be there, and all the youngsters of the countryside—Allison, too. There are never enough girls to go round in a frolic in the mountains.

      It transpired, however, that Ellender had no dress—at least, none that could appear beside Easter’s contemplated purchase. So Easter was forced to consider the means of providing eight yards for her sister as well as for herself.

      This was on Monday. The sisters walked two miles to the store next day, and chose the double quantity of cheaper goods together. It was white with a small pink figure printed at intervals, coarse and loosely woven as a flour-sack. They stitched all day Wednesday, and finished the frocks Thursday morning. But on Thursday evening they received a letter recalling Easter to her sister’s house.

      Easter’s trembling hands dropped in her lap.

      “Cain’t you go this time, Ellender?” she pleaded.

      “Maw says I ain’t old enough to do what Cordy needs. She says you ain’t—sca’cely,” the younger sister protested.

      “You-all act like you wanted to git shut o’ me,” Easter almost wept. “Cordy can wait three days. I’m obliged to go to this dance.”

      But she knew it was not so. Only in her pain she struck at what was nearest.

      Easter’s return found an ominous tremor and strain in her sister’s affairs. At first her girl’s mind groped vainly for the cause. There was the endless toil of spring house-cleaning and truck-patch, of chickens and cows, with the ailing youngest to tend, and Jim Hallet going softly, outcast by his wife’s displeasure, while poor Cordy sat at night mending and freshening all the coarse little garments, scarcely outgrown, putting them in readiness for an expected use.

      Oh, it was hard, it was hard on Cordy, thought the girl, pondering this thing of which she had no experience. It was hard; but she had as yet only the outsider’s point of view.

      Next week she had a surprise. Allison brought his team on Saturday evening, and asked her, “provided she didn’t mind ridin’ a mule,” to go to the dance with him. It was a long way to Swaford’s Cove, and she would be fearfully tired to-morrow, but she was accustomed to pay dearly for every bit of pleasure, and did not hesitate. So he came again Sunday week to walk with her to the church at Blue Springs, and later took her to the close-of-school entertainment, where she had the pleasure of seeing Ellender speak a piece, clad in the frock that was the counterpart of her own.

      In the midst of corn-planting time the baby died. The weak life flickered out one night as it lay across Cordy’s knees. Such was her exhaustion that the physical need of sleep came uppermost, and her grief did not reveal itself till next day.

      The little body, cased in a rude pine box, was taken in the wagon to the untended graveyard by the Blue Springs church. Easter and Cordy rode beside Jim on the seat, and three neighbor women were behind in the wagon, sitting in chairs. These, with the Vanderwelt boys, who had helped dig the grave, were the only persons present at the burying. Cordy asked that one of the women should offer a prayer, but they protested that they could not.

      “I never prayed out loud—afore folks—in my life,” said one. “I wouldn’t know what to say.”

      “If one o’ you’ll hold my baby, I’ll try my best,” faltered the second, after some hesitation. “He’s cuttin’ teeth, and may not let nobody tetch him but me.”

      So it proved; and the third, a poor creature of questionable reputation, burst into hysterical sobbing, and answered merely that she did not feel fit.

      “I cain’t have it so,” whispered the poor mother, desperately. “I cain’t have my pore baby laid away without no prayer, like hit was some dead animal. Ef nobody else won’t say ary prayer—I will.”

      She stood forth, throwing back her sunbonnet, clasped her hands, shut her eyes tight, and gasped. One could see the working in her throat. They waited. Easter stared at the open grave, shallow, because its bottom was solid rock; the impartial sunshine on the crumbling rail fence, and the little group of workaday figures; the rude stones of other graves scattered through the tangle of briers and underbrush. Then Cordy drooped her head, and whispered, with infinite sadness:

      “Lord, take care of my pore baby, and give hit a better chance than ever I had.”

      “Amen!” Hallet’s deep voice concluded with a dry sob, and the three women whimpered after him, “Amen!”

      The earth was hastily shovelled in, and the woman who had accounted herself unfit to pray began crying out loud. Presently Jim led his wife back to the wagon.

      She СКАЧАТЬ