The Common Lot and Other Stories. Emma Bell Miles

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      All next week the bereaved mother went about her work muttering and weeping, until both Jim and Easter began to fear for her reason. But presently the work compelled her thoughts away from her loss. She began to take interest in the milk and the chickens; and she noticed Allison and Easter. She told her husband one day that those two would make a good match.

      Far from a match, however, was the present state of affairs in that quarter. The mountain people have an overmastering dread of attempting to cope with a delicate situation in words, insomuch that the neighbor who comes to borrow a cup of salt may very likely sit for half an hour on the edge of a chair and then go home without asking for it. And Allison had never kissed her again. But both knew, without having discussed the matter at all, that Allison wished to marry Easter, and that she, although Allison was undoubtedly her man of all men, could not obtain consent of her own mind to agree.

      Why?

      Cordy awaited her sister’s confidence, and at last it came.

      “I’m afeared,” the girl said, and her eyelids crinkled wofully, her mouth twisted so that she was fain to hide her face.

      “You don’t need to be afeared,” said Cordy, slowly, staring straight ahead of her. “You’d be better off with him than ye would at home, wouldn’t ye? Life’s mighty hard for women anywhars.”

      “Well, I don’ know,” said Easter, doubtfully.

      But when, some days after, Allison did formally ask her in so many words, she gave him the same reason for her uncertainty.

      “What air you ’feared of?” he demanded at once.

      She was silent, terribly embarrassed.

      “What is it you’re afeared of—dear? Tell me. Won’t you tell me?” He put his arms around her. She hid her face on his shoulder and began to cry. “You know I’d never mistreat you?”

      “Hit ain’t that.”

      “What, then?”

      “I’m just afeared—afeared of being married.”

      He took a little time over this, and met it with the argument, “Would you have any easier time if you didn’t get married?”

      She tried to consider this fairly, but there was not an unmarried woman in all her acquaintance to serve as a basis for comparison. Most girls in the mountains marry between the ages of twelve and nineteen. She saw, however, that it was a choice of slavery in her father’s house or slavery in a husband’s.

      Then Allison made a speech; his first, and perhaps his last. “Dear, dear girl, I’ll just do the very best I can for you. I cain’t promise no more than that. You know how I’m fixed. I’ve got nothing more to offer you than a cow or two, and a cabin, and what few sticks o’ furniture I’ve put in hit; but that’s more’n a heap o’ people starts with. Hit’s for you to say, and I don’t want to urge ye again’ your will an’ judgment. But I’ve got a chanst now to go North with some men that’ll pay me better wages than I ever have got, and I won’t git back till fall; and I—want—you,” he said, “to be my wife before I go. I want to know, whilst I’m away, that you belong to me. Then, if I was to happen to a accident, on the railroad or anywheres, you’d be just the same as ever, only you’d have the cows, and the team, and my place. Won’t you study about it?”

      Easter thought of that for days, in the little time she had for thinking. But she thought, too, of the other side of the picture. Poor child, she had no chance for illusions. Sometimes she felt that she would be walking open-eyed into a trap from which there was no escape save death.

      She thought of Cordy at that tiny grave. She dwelt upon her sister’s alienation from her husband. Would she, Easter, ever come to look upon Allison in that way?

      Yet the time drew near when Allison must go with those who had employed him. The thing must be decided. There came a heart-shaking day on which, clad in a new dress of cheap lawn made for the occasion, and a pair of slippers, Cordy’s gift, she climbed into his wagon beside the boy, rode away, and came back a wife.

      “But I mighty near wisht I hadn’t,” she said, thoughtfully, as she told her sister of the gayety of the impromptu wedding at home.

      He wrote every week, some three or four pages—a vast amount of correspondence for a mountaineer. At the end of a month he sent her money, more than she had ever had before. His pride in being able to do this was only equalled by hers as she laid out dollar after dollar, economically, craftily, with the thrift of experience, for household things. He had given no instructions as to how the money was to be used; so she bought her dishes and cooking-pots, a lamp, a fire-shovel, and, by way of extravagance, a play-pretty apiece for Suga’lump and Sonny-buck, and even a tiny cap for Cordy’s baby not yet arrived.

      Then, one day, taking the little boy with her, she went to Allison’s cabin to clean house, put her purchases in order, and make the place generally ready for living in on his return.

      She chose a fair blue day, not too warm for work. White clouds lolled against the tree-tops and the forest hummed with a pleasant summer sound. She brought water from the spring and scoured the already spotless floor, washed her new dishes and admired their appearance ranged on the built-in shelves across the end of the room, set her lamp on the fireboard, and then spread the bed with new quilts. She stood looking at these, recognizing the various bits of calico: here were scraps of her own and Ellender’s dresses, this block was pieced entirely of the boys’ shirts, this was a piece of mother’s dress, this one had been Cordy’s before she married; others had been contributed by girl friends at school. Presently she went to the door and glanced at the sun. It would soon be time to go back and help Cordy get supper, but she must first rest a little. Seating herself on the doorstep, she began to consider what other things were necessary for keeping house, telling them off on her fingers and trying to calculate their probable cost—pillow-slips, towels, a wash-kettle; perhaps, if Allison thought they could afford it, they would buy a little clock and set it ticking merrily beside the lamp on the fireboard, to be valued more as company than because of any real need of knowing the time of day. Her mother had given her a feather bed and two pillows on the morning of her wedding; Allison would whittle for her a maple bread-bowl, and a spurtle and butter-paddle of cedar; and she herself was raising gourds on Cordy’s back fence, and could make her brooms of sedge-grass.

      Thus planning, she felt a strange content steal upon her weariness. It was borne strongly in upon her mind that she was to be supremely happy in this home as well as supremely miserable. She ceased to ask herself whether the one state would be worth the other, realizing for the first time that this was not the question at all, but whether she could afford to refuse the invitation of life, and thus shut herself out from the only development possible to her.

      Little Sonny-buck toddled across the floor, a vision of peachblow curves and fairness and dimples. She gathered him into her arms and laid her cheek on his yellow hair, thrilling to feel the delicate ribs and the beat of the baby heart. He began to chirp, “Do ’ome, do ’ome, E’tah,” plucking softly at her collar. Easter bent low, in a heart-break of tenderness, catching him close against her breast. “Oh, if hit was—Allison’s child and mine—”

      On reaching home she kindled the supper fire and laid the cloth for the evening meal of bread and fried pork and potatoes; and it was given to her suddenly to understand how much of meaning these every-day services would contain if illuminated by the holy joy of providing for her own.

      She СКАЧАТЬ